Analysis of Mary Shelley´s Frankenstein

The Creature’s narrative in “Frankenstein”, by Mary Shelly, reveals an array of information about the Creature as a character, and his true intentions. This narrative gives us an in-depth view of the Creature’s life and experiences up and until this point in the novel. The Creature’s desire for a companion reveals and conveys a variety of romantic characteristics. His request for a companion is not only justified, but is also Victor’s responsibility to him. Victor’s abandonment of the Creature forced him to live a confused and lonely life as an outcast, and because of this it is Victor’s duty to right his wrongs.

Mary Shelley’s novel, Frankenstein, contains two different, but remarkably similar characters. Victor Frankenstein was a man who desired family and knowledge. He adored science so profoundly that he created a creature out of parts that he gathered from charnel houses and graveyards. The creature and Victor both share the same desires and other similarities. As the novel goes on, the two show just how similar they truly are.

Shelley addresses romantic conventions in Victor to convey his loss of identity. Victor is impatient and restless when constructing the creation, so much, that he does not think about it’s future repercussions. One of the great paradoxes that Shelley’s novel depicts is giving the monster more human attributes than to it’s creator [p. 6 - Interpretations]. This is true as the monster seeks an emotional bond, but Victor is terrified of it’s existence. The monster later reveals, “I, the miserable and the abandoned, am an abortion, to be spurred at and kicked and trampled on [Shelley, p. 224].” Victor’s lack of compassion is rooted from the inability to cope with his reality. He distances himself from others and is induced with fainting spells [Shelley, p. 59]. From this, the nameless creature exemplifies Victor’s attempt to abandon his creation to escape his responsibilities. His creation is described as, ‘wretched devil’ and ‘abhorred monster,’ eliciting that the unobtainable, pitied identity [Shelley, p. 102]. The act of not naming the creature reveals Victor as hateful, and unnaturally disconnected to his own created victim.

Mary Shelley 's Frankenstein is a riveting story that not only succeeded in captivating the reader 's attention, but also comments on societal views on “Good” and “Evil”. The story draws a parallel between the main character Victor Frankenstein and his creation The Crauter. The novel undoubtedly contains evil and acts of evil yet it is not apparent who is the true “Monster”; the creator or the creation. Victor Frankenstein is a selfish man who, out of a surplus in ego, created something that should have never lived. That creation, the creature, went on to commit murder and bring a real sense of hell on Earth to those whom he surrounded himself with. So, the question is asked “who is more evil, Frankenstein or his creation?” The crux of

John Locke is one of the most influential Enlightenment thinkers and is famously known for asserting that all humans have natural rights. He also believed that humans are born with clean slates, and that the environment humans grow in, especially at a young age, has massive influences on aspects of their personalities, ideals, and motivations. Shelley was most definitely influenced by this claim when writing Frankenstein. As the reader, we can see the monster that Victor Frankenstein creates grow up alone, without guidance, and be formed by the experiences it is put through while trying to survive. Its emotions and beliefs throughout the book were merely a result of its experiences as it encounters the harsh reality of the world. Mary

In Frankenstein, written by Mary Shelley, the creation, made from scraps of corpses, was built by Victor Frankenstein, a man fascinated and obsessed with the knowledge of life. Following the creation’s rouse, Victor immediately abandons him with no desire on keeping or teaching his new being. Because of his lack of nourishment and direction “growing up”, the creation goes through a process of self-deception. He endures a period of deceit by believing that he is a normal human being like everyone around him. But as time progresses, he learns to accept how he is alone in this world and disconnected with everyone. Because of the creation’s lack of guidance and isolation, he grows up feeling unwanted.

Beauty is often the most lethal poison. It intoxicates both the beholder and the beheld. Humans are raised into a society that instills certain standards of elegance and beauty. In Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, the woes and misery of the monster is brought to the readers’ attention as humans constantly berate and abuse the creature for it’s hideous body. Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein discusses the advantages and the detriments that an alluring versus unappealing body provides a person, and how that person is affected due to the pressures and assumptions of society placed upon their shoulders. Mary Shelley may have been amongst the first to examine the concept of beauty and the advantages it provides. She insinuates that the conformity of the ideals of beauty place shackles, and struggles upon those who do not fit into such standards.

The definition of success often varies from person to person. To Victor Frankenstein, his version of success entails to earning widespread recognition and praise from achieving something that no one else prior has accomplished; the act of bestowing life into an inanimate object. Mary Shelley’s classic story of Frankenstein commendably demonstrates the idea that, in trying to rise above others, those who dream of glory can easily turn a blind eye to the consequences. This is seen in Frankenstein’s obsession with completing his initial goal, his unpreparedness in dealing with the monster, and in his inability to take responsibility for the consequences afterwards.

The creature looks into the cottage as he has done so many times before and ponders on his discoveries. He says to himself again and again What am I? Why don’t I have any friends, a family, or any human interaction? He longed for a father that watched him in his infant days and a mother that blessed him with smiles and caresses. The creature is forced to be exiled by humans and lives in the world alone. He learns about life and language by watching from afar as a result of Victor Frankenstein abandoning him immediately after giving him life. On first impression of the character Frankenstein in the novel Frankenstein, by Mary Shelley, she paints him to have lived a happy childhood that sets him up for a promising fulfilled future. However,

Victor Frankenstein goes all throughout the book to busy doing things for him and no one else as if he had the power of God to choose all the right things for him but wrong for other people. God in a lot of religions acts as someone who will be by your side and always with you but Frankenstein creates Creature and then abandons him and never worries about him. Creature gets judged so frequently and feels so unwanted that it takes a blind man to actually show Creature what love is. Also Victor could create Creature but refuses to create a companion for Creature and why does he have the right to choose to create life or not? Frankenstein has the chance to save a few lives if he would have told the truth but he does not and that shows why he fails at portraying a good form of God. Victor will fail at trying to act like God and it will all come back to him.

Shelley 's narrative is seen to symbolize romantic fears, offering a tale of certain demise, one that gives technology negative connotations in the form of the creature whom is represented as an outcast of society. To emphasise this, the sublime settings in the text, provide a space where the marginalised can be heard, however, for in contrast to the power of beauty which works to contain and maintain social distinctions, the sublime in Frankenstein opens the way for the excluded to challenge the dominant discourse and this appears to be one of many things the creature substantially appears to represent.1

The women in Frankenstein were pure, lifeless and innocent. Elizabeth stands up for Justine’s innocence but cannot prevent her execution. For both Victor and the monster, woman were the last thing they would ask for help, providing comfort and acceptance. For Victor, Elizabeth takes away his guilty conscience. The monster choses female of his kind to feel his awful existence. Both end up destroying the other’s love interest, making woman’s status from object of desire to object of revenge, which does not give women the opportunity to act on their own.

In the early 1800s Mary Shelley set pen to a paper and started to develop a novel that little to her knowledge would become world renowned. In 1818 she finished and published the novel to sell to the European public. The novel caught the world off guard in the way that a female was able to write about such harsh, dark, and evil things in a European society whose authors like John Locke and Charles Montesquieu preached enlightenment, self exploration, and individualism all in an optimistic enabling manner. Her defiance of these worldly themes quickly set her apart from the other writers of her generation and allowed quickly for her work to become internationally celebrated. However, in a way Mary Shelley did adhere to the writing structures

Introduction: Mary Shelley’s “Frankenstein” is a book with a deep message that touches to the very heart. This message implies that the reader will not see the story only from the perspective of the narrator but also reveal numerous hidden opinions and form a personal interpretation of the novel. One of its primary statements is that no one is born a monster and a “monster” is created throughout socialization, and the process of socialization starts from the contact with the “creator”. It is Victor Frankenstein that could not take the responsibility for his creature and was not able to take care of his “child”. Pride and vanity were the qualities that directed Victor Frankenstein to his discovery of life: “...So much has been done, exclaimed the soul of Frankenstein-more, far more, will I achieve: treading in the steps already marked, I will pioneer a new way, explore unknown powers, and unfold to the world the deepest mysteries of creation”[p.47]. He could not cope with this discovery and simply ignored it. The tragedy of Victor Frankenstein and the tragedy of his creature is the same – it is the tragedy of loneliness and confronting the world, trying to find a place in it and deserve someone’s love. The creature would have never become a monster if it got the love it strived for. Victor Frankenstein would have never converted his creature into a monster if he knew how to love and take responsibility for the ones we bring to this world.