Religious Parallels in Frankenstein Victor Frankenstein’s pursuit of knowledge and personal glory drives him to create a new human being. He suffers from a god complex as he is completely unaware of the moral ramifications for creating life out of an inanimate body. Mary Shelley creates a dark parody between God and Adam, and Victor and his monster. In the creation of Adam we see God, the creator reach his hand out to Adam, his creation. We see a parallel of this in Shelley’s novel after Victor’s creature is complete.
The biblical allusion would be how Victor is like God because he is the one creating life. The monster would be like Adam because Adam was a creation of God. Adam then committed a sin by disobeying God, and the monster ended up killing Victor 's friends and family, which would make them both evil. Shelley could be mocking the concept of a god, and Christianity itself. 11.
In the novel, Frankenstein, written by Mary Shelley, Victor and the Creature are the main references when it comes to the issues of morality. Several themes such as good versus evil, prejudice, and ambition & fallibility, the importance of friendship along with references to other famous texts like the Christian bible are manifested through the use of Victor and the Creature as they interact with each other allowing readers to construe examples of morality. Many debaters may argue the Creature is “evil” since a majority of his actions harm others while Victor is good because he was the victim and seeks to destroy his creation. However, one may counter this argument if they accentuate Victor is evil since he was the Creature’s creator,
In the novel, Frankenstein, by Mary Shelley, the two main characters, Victor Frankenstein and his creature, both display a sense of moral ambiguity. Each character has committed both good and evil alike, and neither knew the consequences of what they had done. However, Victor Frankenstein is generally the morally ambiguous character by his treatment of his creation and his own imperious personality. He wanted to be able to help science by recreating life or bringing it back, but at the same time, he did not want to consider the consequences of doing so. Victor tries to prove himself as a good moral character in the relationship between his creation and himself.
His guilt made him flee from his family and separate himself from society. While on his expedition he ran into his creation which made him seem more monster than human. Frankenstein’s creation is represented as Victor’s more human side towards society and Victor himself.
Firstly, The Creature embodies all of Frankenstein’s rash thinking because in all of his months toiling over its every detail, he never considered what society’s perception of The Creature would be and how this would affect The Creature in return. Irving Malin, author of New American Gothic, describes the quintessential gothic character as one who loves others in an attempt to strengthen his own self-concept, and who consequentially demands those he loves to mirror his passions and musings. In all-consuming narcissism, this character uses love as a crutch for success and an opportunity to “create order out of chaos [and] strength out of weakness,” unwilling or unable to see the actual consequences of his actions (Malin, 5). So Frankenstein does with the creation of The Creature, as he describes the physical experience of awakening his being with all of the candor of a young God. In an emotional frenzy, he curses the weakness of decomposing men and attempts to create a stronger version that can withstand the undeniable compulsion of nature’s hourglass.
When reading through the novel some might question who's the real monster? Throughout Frankenstein Mary Shelley uses the concepts of Science and knowledge, social rejection and true evil. Victor is a lonely guy who takes on a “God like” role for his personal satisfaction. Victor creates the monster out of his greed and ambitions which led to many of the horrible events throughout the story. He was portrayed as the victim at the beginning of the story because of how secluded he was and his mother died. Victor was a lonely guy and all he wanted was a friend so he took science to the extreme. All throughout Mary Shelley's novel she tells a story about how Victor the creator is clearly the real monster and his creation is the victim.
Throughout Frankenstein, Shelley uses Victor to warn the reader of the dangers of aspiring to godliness, and the consequences one faces in the aftermath doing so, even going as far as to compare Victor to Satan, tempting the crew of Walton’s ship, in the book’s final pages. The Victor Shelley creates is very similar to the Satan created by Milton in his book, Paradise Lost, which explores the biblical tale of Adam and Eve. In Frankenstein, Victor speaks of his desire to create the Creature, saying, “I deemed it criminal to throw away in useless grief those talents that might be useful to my fellow-creatures.” (152). Shelley’s diction choices, such as the word “useless” exemplify Victor’s excessive hubris, portraying him as a man who creates his Creature for, in his mind, the good of society.
Have you ever judged a person by how they look? Or Ran away from your problem but they seem to come back and haunt you? Well in the book Gris Grimly 's Frankenstein, Victor Frankenstein had created a creature so horrible looking that he ran away from it. Everyone believed that he wasn’t a human being, but I believe that everything he 's done was the most humane thing he could have done. The creature was a kind and "benevolent soul" that cared for everyone until he would be turned away from humanity all because he looked different. The creature learned what "bitter indignation" was and how to be "cruel" based on the way the villagers and his own creator treated him.
At the end, however, God banished both of them from Heaven. In relation to Frankenstein, this means Frankenstein judged his monster, to which he was the blame, for deeds he did not do, regardless of the fact he himself was probably for the blame of most of them. Also, this means Frankenstein’s monster will adore Frankenstein no matter what happens, as he owes him his creation. The monster will always be the product of
Something you also may not know is that Victor and his monster are both the same in their actions. Because in two different ways, they both play god. So how do these two characters play god? Well as Victor Frankenstein makes life, his monster takes life. This can even show deeper similarities between the two because not only do they both play god and do things they should not, but in the end they both even find guilt and emotional harm in their actions.
Is Victor the Ruling God? One does not simply “play God” in this world, that role is more than just a dress up and act thing. Many people say that Victor in the novel Frankenstein tries to “play God” which is absolutely true. As the novel progresses the characteristics of the creator “playing God” become more obvious to the eye of the reader. Victor “plays the Lord” when he creates the creature, when he decides what to do with the orders of the creature, and when the monster creates the connection when reading the book Paradise Lost.
The presence of biblical ideas can be seen throughout the Mary Shelley's novel Frankenstein. Whether it be Victor Frankenstein acting as god as he creates life or the comparison of the creature to the fallen angel or devil, the bible has a strong partnership in the novel. In chapter nine of volume two, there is once again an allusion to The Bible as the creature embodies Adam, from the creation of man in genesis two. The creature can be seen asking Frankenstein for “a creature of another sex”(170) to “free [him] from the misery”(170) he feels from being so lonely. This request the creature is asking for from Frankenstein mirrors the same desire Adam had in the second story of creation in Genesis two.