We all like to think that evil is not born within us, but rather nurtured into us; while this may be true for some, others have evil born directly into them. When man toys with the powers reserved for only God, God strikes back with a wicked evil to show man the power that they truly lack. Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein contains a prime example of a being born of unnatural causes and thus having these evil urges that they cannot control. Frankenstein’s monster is a highly intelligent being, and hence he is very manipulative. 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 monster being born from death symbolizes an inherent evil. Death is one often viewed as an evil, even though death is inevitable. By bringing his monster to life, Victor brought Death to the world of the mortals, as opposed to the underworld, both symbolically and literally. The harbinger of Death is now a live entity that can do as he pleases; as opposed to being an entity of carrying out destiny it is a creature of forging destiny. Death is
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,
Victor denied the monster it’s power by not allowing it to have what it asked for. This refusal caused the monster declare it’s dominance through threatening Victor to do as it says or he will be punished. After Victor refuses to allow his creation to take control, it goes mayhem and reacts with hatred. The creature tried to gain it’s power by deteriorating Victor’s life killing many of the friends and loved ones close to Victor. This pulls the final straw for Victor, he attempted to hunt the monster down and destroy it before it could hurt anyone else.
The actions of an individual defines the boundary between sympathy and wickedness. Their behaviors and thoughts change the plot of the story and character identity. Mary Shelley uses moral ambiguity to overlook the unrealistic nature of her story. In Frankenstein, this concept incorporates itself into Mary Shelley’s characters. Ambiguity invokes an attachment between the figures and readers.
The novel “Frankenstein,” by Mary Shelley tells the story of a man named Victor Frankenstein, who decides to go against the laws of nature by bringing to life a being constructed with decaying body parts. Victor believes in natural philosophy and science, which leads him to the idea of creating this Creature. Although this novel can be interpreted in many ways, I believe that Mary Shelley is shining a light on the harmful and dangerous impacts that prejudice and assumptions can have on people who are considered different. Shelley may be suggesting that humanity is the true 'monster ' due to its socialized ideologies that make ambition, self-greed and rage fulfilling. Even to this day society is known to shun those who we do not see as equals.
Frankenstein: From Benevolent to Feind “I was benevolent and good; misery made me a fiend.” (Shelley 69) Said by Frankenstein’s monster, this quote truly defines him: initially an affectionate, love-seeking creature, he transformed into an enraged killer, angry at humanity for the undeservedly poor way he was treated. Victor Frankenstein is an unique, complex individual who encounters a similar change of nature for similar reasons. The quote—though spoken by the monster—encapsulates the evolution of Victor Frankenstein’s personality; misery—a product of isolation and loneliness—aroused a deterioration of temperament from an initially benevolent Frankenstein.
The Creature shows the theme, because he represents passion himself; all of the creature’s actions were incredibly passion driven and all lead to some sort of destruction. Victor was the most self destructive character because his passion for knowledge and later his passion to destroy the creature lead to the destruction of himself. The creature’s and Victor’s want to destroy each other was fueled by their mutual hatred, in the end they both had the same destructive fait. The theme of passion leads to destruction can be seen in Frankenstein and also real life, one may see the destructive powers happen to people around them in
The moment Victor Frankenstein successfully infuses life into his creation he is overcome with horror and disgust. Without further examination he is certain to have created a monster, not a human being (Shelley 35-36). However, despite his grotesque appearance, Frankenstein’s creature was not born malicious. During the first stages of his existence, unbeknownst to Frankenstein himself, his acts are motivated by innocence and virtue, which even earns him the title “good spirit” (79). Frankenstein did not create a monster.
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 monster’s soul, designed to be human-like, corrupts as his acts of kindness are treated with hate and malice. In Mary Shelley’s novel Frankenstein, the monster causes suffering and harm to others due to the injustice and harm inflicted upon the monster’s well intentioned actions. Since the monster’s creation, he isn’t guided through what is right or wrong, and his appearances prevent him from establishing rapport with other humans. When the monster tells Victor about his first feelings upon being created, he states “I saw, felt, heard, and smelt at the same time; and it was, indeed, a long time before I learned to distinguish between the operations of my various senses” (Shelley 70). The monster is similar to a child since
The Real Villain Experiences, they mold your personality. They dictate what kind of person you are going to be. Victor Frankenstein clearly did not understand this when he created his “monster”. He left his creation alone in the world to figure things out by itself. In doing so, Frankenstein left the creation to terrible experience that cause him to become murderer.
There are billions of people in the world. They all start as small infants, then grow up. But not everyone turns out the same as the next. Some turn out to be truly evil beings. The truth is, many humans have done acts of evil, but no one is born evil.
Have you ever been held responsible for the tragedies caused to others? For most the answer is no, however, for some, their actions have led to the misfortune of guiltless lives. In the novel, Frankenstein by Mary Shelley, because of the absence of attention and teaching, the reanimated creation Frankenstein is unstable; Victor Frankenstein is who to blame. Two events that he should be accountable for are not training his creation to know right from wrong and abounding the monster which led to the murder of innocent people. Firstly, Shelley uses conflict of “human” versus nature to demonstrate the major idea that Victor Frankenstein is responsible for the loss of innocent lives.
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.
Beauty and ugliness is often used to justify the reaction of others in the novel, Frankenstein; in which the relation between external appearance and internal desires are shown to be related. The theme of how appearance affects judgement is often demonstrated through the characters response to the monster’s physical being. Shelley depicts this situation through Dr. Victor Frankenstein, the Delacey family, and through the monster himself. The use of appearance to determine judgement is shown to be a negative habit. By automatically associating ugliness with evil, and beauty with innocence, society unintentionally develops a negative being in those considered ugly, while at the same creating an illusion of innocence over beautiful individuals.
Throughout the novel, the main character Frankenstein, made many poor decisions that I would consider to be morally wrong and unethical. Frankenstein’s research and discoveries are ethically wrong because he was taking dead bodies from cemeteries, cutting off their limbs, and body parts to create a human like creature. He did not have anyone's consent to do this study causing it to be unethical, and he also should not be able to do this because he is playing the role of god. In the beginning of the book, Victor Frankenstein described to Walton that he had created a monster using body parts from a graveyard.