The Chilean poet Pablo Neruda once described the emotional suffering that can be caused by the absence of someone in our lives,“Absence is a place so vast that you will pass through its walls and hang pictures in the air.” In Mary Shelley’s novel, Frankenstein, abandonment plays a large role in affecting the creature created by Victor Frankenstein. Victor has an unending thirst for knowledge that leads him to animate a creature made of dead body parts, when the creature is brought to life Victor is immediately disgusted and leaves his creation. The creature who is left on his own eventually kills all of Victor’s family and his friend. The creature’s violent behavior is due to the anger he feels from the lack of nurture he receives from his creator, however one could argue that the cause was his innate evil. …show more content…
The creature did not care for anyone, he only felt malice since the moment he was animated. After the creature tries to help a human from death and is only returned by being shot utters this cry,“ Inflamed by pain, I vowed eternal hatred and vengeance to all mankind,” (Shelley 130). The creature may have tried to help someone but he only does this in the most dire of circumstances and truly only wishes evil upon mankind. After Victor has gone against his promise of creating a companion for the creature, the creature says,“ I may die but first you, my tyrant and tormentor, shall curse the sun that gazes your misery,” (158). The creature has no compassion for killing Victor’s family and only has a heart full of vengeance due to his being inherently evil. The monster in many instances is able to show human emotion and caring, his malicious acts are only due to his anger at
Victor selfishly creates the Creature to gain prestige, pretentiously claiming himself as a human god when he succeeds and saying it was for the sake of humanity. In reality, he creates a grotesque being and abandons it the moment his illusions shatter, making the creature a victim because he denies the responsibility of raising it causing hardships for it. Victor also believes the creature is a reprobative individual since it kills his brother and foists Justine’s execution, thus he acts inimical towards it throughout the whole novel as he invectively exclaims, “Abhorred monster! Fiend that thou art! The tortures of hell are too mild a vengeance for thy crimes” (93).
Child abandonment is a choice a parent made to not be in their child life. In doing so, this causes a failure to have a strong relationship with their offspring, which can lead to an instability in child's life and the feelings of loneliness and hatred towards their parents. Abandoned children begin to think about doubts and uncertainty in their life. These neglected children are put in pain and misery at such a young age that might hangs how they act as they grow older. Throughout their life all they think about is the self-worth and why their life is set up a certain way.
The novel Frankenstein brings to light many problems and situations that shed light on the faults of mankind. Cruelty was a huge factor in the novel; throughout Frankenstein is cruel to his body and to his creation. When he first makes the creature he runs from it, leaving the creature to fend for himself; even when reuniting with the creature he continues displays cruelty. The creature, in turn exhibits Victor cruelty right back. Within Frankenstein cruelty can be attributed, often affecting both Victor and the creature; serving as a crucial motivator and revealing their anger, pain, frustration till eventually both die.
Victor is stirred by his work, but not in a positive manner. He goes on to explain his feelings towards the creature by saying, “… my heart sickened and my feelings were altered to those of horror and hatred” (136). Victor is so bewildered and repulsed by the creature that he misses key signs of violence, from the creature, that may have saved Victor’s family had he not been so
The gothic fiction novel Frankenstein by Mary Shelley centralizes on humanity and the qualifications that make someone human. The content of the novel Frankenstein depicts a monster displaying human traits that his creator Victor does not possess: empathy, a need for companionship, and a will to learn and fit in. Throughout the novel Shelley emphasizes empathy as a critical humanistic trait. The monster displays his ability to empathize with people even though they are strangers. On the other hand Victor, fails to show empathy throughout the novel even when it relates to his own family and friends.
The creature becomes defensive. "Life...is dear to me, and I will defend it" (Shelley 96), this is ironic because not only does the creature kill others showing his selfishness, which he is mirroring Victor 's earlier selfish intentions for creating the creature, but earlier he was suicidal. Now the creature has to ask permission for a better life from a person that doesn 't even seem to value it. The creature also reminds
The novel Frankenstein by Mary Shelley says a person is responsible for their actions if they do not weigh the possible consequences of their actions before making their final decision. Throughout the novel, Mary Shelley shows the consequences of actions that are done without proper thought beforehand. Victor Frankenstein wants to create life, he wants to be god, and his lust for this goal overtakes his common sense. Victor rushes into making his creature and then makes rash decisions which also contributes to his demise and the death of several of his close friends and family. The monster should be held responsible for his actions to a certain extent, however, his actions are influenced by Victor’s initial impetuous decisions.
Like stated before, the monster learned what it is to be human by observing the family in the cabin. He had the desire, and was passionate, to be human and to have those relations associated with humanity. The monster is essentially a newborn baby with a fully developed brain. As he watches the family, he is watching with an innocent mind; he hasn’t been corrupted by the standards of society. The monster explains to Victor that the “trait of kindness moved [him] sensibly,” and that he thought “it might be in [his] power to restore happiness to [the] deserving people” (97, 100).
He pulls at the heartstrings of Victor’s emotions, but Victor can see the true evil that is within him. “But it is true that I am a wretch. I have murdered the lovely and helpless; I have strangled the innocent as they slept and grasped to death his throat who never injured me or any other living being,” had mentioned the monster after Victor’s death (197). The monster claims that he was unloved, and he was right in that regard, but that does not form evil. Evil forms by the weakness of one’s mind, not neglect.
The creature wants to take revenge on Victor for abandoning him and causes Victor grief by killing the people he cares about. When the creature kills, Victor feels responsible and guilty of the murders. He continually breaks down with each death by “his” hands, which makes him go mad. The task of creating a monster turned Victor into a monster
The fact that Victor sees the creature as such a vile thing shows us that Victor doesn’t have any respect whatsoever for it. The creature states that he was ‘dependent on none and related to none’ which also
Mary Shelley shows the endless amount of revenge and that it is driven by pure hatred and rage. The monster was not created to be vengeful, he was kind hearted but when he was poorly treated by Victor and then by the Delacey family, he turned cold. In her novel Frankenstein, Mary Shelley displays the immorality and destructive effects that revenge can have through Frankenstein and his pursuit of the creature. Immediately after the monster had awoken, hatred thickened and would drive the plot to be all about revenge. The creature illustrates this hatred as he says to Victor, “Everything is related in them which bears reference to my accursed origin; the whole detail of that series of disgusting circumstances which produced it is set in view;
In the novel Frankenstein by Mary Shelley, Victor Frankenstein's scientific mind helped him to create a living creature by sewing together and reanimating parts of previously dead human, But because of how the creature looked he rejected it when he succeeded at bringing it to life. The creature grew up without any parental affection or guidance. Growing up like this can cause major emotional complications later in life. Through the actions of murdering Victor’s family and loved ones the creature shows his desire for revenge against Victor for abandoning him. At the end of the book the creature has come face to face the death of his creator, instead of feeling rejoice for the death of the man he tortured and hunted down, he feels sorrow and
The monster tells Victor of his feelings when he states, “You can blast my other passions, but revenge remains…I may die, but first you, my tyrant and tormentor, shall curse the sun that gazes on your misery.” (153) After months and months of the monster trying to connect with the world, he eventually realizes that the efforts are worthless and vows to do to his creator what his creator did to him. To make Victor isolated would give him the same curse the monster has suffered through for its entire new life. Later, the creature asks himself, “Why, in that instant, did I not extinguish the spark of existence which you had so wantonly bestowed?” The creature easily could kill Victor if that was his desire but its real desire was to make Victor suffer as the monster did.
Isolation and abandonment can cause many different reactions from people. In the words of William A. Sadler Jr., a sociology professor, “We often do not know how to cope. It can make us confused, distraught, depressed, frightened, and even outraged” (Sadler 105). In Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, several of these effects are presented in Victor Frankenstein and his creation. They both suffer from being isolated from their creator, society, and family units.