The 2015 film Victor Frankenstein written by Max Landis and produced by John Davis completely changes, removes the humanity from, and almost obliterates Victor's relationship with his monster, from Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, causing Shelley's original story to be lost through this adaptation. In Victor Frankenstein the story of Victor's monster is not conveyed until the very end of the film because the movie is narrated from the point of view of Igor, as opposed to Victor, which changes the portrayal of the monster and Victor's relationship. Shelley's frame narrative brings the reader's attention to the fact that Victor will be telling his own story. This is evidenced when Walton states in his letter to his sister that, “He [Victor] then …show more content…
(Shelley 220). The monster’s statement informs Victor of a desire of his, showing that he is in fact human-like. Conversely, in Victor Frankenstein, the monster is illiterate; he does not form a sentence at all in the film, he simply grunts and near screams. The monster looks as if he will say something to Victor when he is first seen alive but the words never come. As Victor is trying to speak to his monster, a detective, who has been following Victor and Igor for their misdeeds, opens fire on the monster causing him to become animalistic and destructive. This incitement causes the monster to go into a killing frenzy and attack anyone around him, including Victor. With the monster being portrayed in such a feral way, the well developed, intellectual, human relationship that Shelley crafted gets obliterated from this retelling and is instead interpreted with no emotional, human connection between creator and creation. Victor Frankenstein also takes Victor's motive for creating the monster and adds reasons that make the expectation for the success of the monster even more …show more content…
I revolved these circumstances in my mind and determined thenceforth to apply myself more particularly to those branches of natural philosophy which relate to physiology”. (Shelley 94). Victor decided to create his monster for the purpose of finding out if one could bring life to the dead. Victor Frankenstein, however, changes and adds to Victor's motives for creating his monster. When the viewer first sees Victor working on bringing back life after death, Victor is working on animating an animal version of his monster. He succeeds in bringing life to the animal version and demonstrates this at his college in hopes someone will support him in his studies. One man does, and so Victor proceeds to make a human monster. The added reasoning as to why Victor so badly wants to bring life back after death is because he feels that he has taken away a life and now it is his duty to bring one back. Victor is portrayed to have a brother, Henry, with whom, as children, he convinced to go out on a cold winter night and
His description of her cheerful disposition relies on the parallels he finds with her beauty, suggesting that Victor does not believe that one can exist without the other. Also, Frankenstein initially hates his monster on the sole basis of his repulsive appearance. The moment the monster opens his eyes, Frankenstein feels “unable to endure the aspect of the being [he] [has] created,” despite his exposure to the monster’s presence in the months before he awoke (36). Victor’s disgust only begins the moment the monster gains life, suggesting that the only difference is the person that fills the formerly empty shell. It follows that Victor hates the monster’s psyche, but since the monster has just awakened, the only basis for Victor’s hatred is the monster’s appearance.
Mary Shelley makes us question who really the “monster” is. Is it the creature or Victor? While the creature does commit murder, he does not understand the consequences of his actions. He is like an infant who is unfortunately left to learn about the workings of society, and his place in it, on his own. He has no companions and feels a great sense of loneliness and abandonment. The creature voices his frustration and anger and seems to try to project his feelings of guilt onto Victor, as if to show him that he is the ultimate cause of the creature’s misery while he is simply the victim of Victor’s manic impulse. Shelley utilizes words, phrases, and specific tones when the creature vents his misery to Victor and this evokes, amongst the
The monster that was created by Victor Frankenstein could have come to be as a result of many different things. Perhaps it is because he wants to one day revive his deceased mother. Or, maybe Victor hopes to better humanity by ending death as mankind knows it. While these factors could have possibly played a miniscule role in his building of the creature, there is one primary, underlying reason as to why Victor created such a hideous beast: greed. Victor materializes a wretched monstrosity all in the name of self-glory, and generally keeps his gaze astray from the betterment of humanity as a whole.
Victor changes over the sequence of the novel from an innocent kid fascinated by science into a disillusioned, guilty man determined to destroy the creation of his arrogant scientific struggle. Whether as a result of his desire to attain the godlike power of creating new life. After the monster rose to life, Frankenstein was horrified at his creation, and left it. Plain and simple. He get out of dodge, ran back home, and hoped that his perceived disaster would somehow remedy itself.
The reader can immediately see this because the Monster says, “I am malicious because I am miserable. Am I not shunned and hated by all mankind?” (Shelley 124). He begins to murder members of Victor’s close friends and family. His first victim is William Frankenstein. The Monster has no intentions to kill William, but he says, “Cursed, cursed creator! Why did I live? Why, in that instant, did I not extinguish the spark of existence which you had so wantonly bestowed” (Shelley 116). The Monster shows his frustration with Victor creating him in this way and for making him into an outcast. After Victor breaks his promise of creating a female monster, the Monster murders Henry Clerval. The Monster’s anger continues to build up over time and he believes the only way to face it is by taking the lives of those who have a close relationship with Victor. The Monster kills Elizabeth Lavenza on her wedding night. He takes the lives of the people who are in a close relationship with Victor due to the anger he feels toward him. The violence the Monster uses is his way to try and seek revenge on Victor because he feels that he set him up to fail, to be an outcast, and to be unacceptable to
But there is also a plethora of differences and alterations in the movie than in the original written version. The book focuses on the many complex thoughts of the main character, Victor Frankenstein. We know exactly how he feels whenever he speaks. In the movie, we are only shown that he has dedicated his life to his experiment; we never really know his inside thoughts, though. The book shines the creature in a completely different light than the film. He is shown as an intelligent being full of of human emotions: love, hate, revenge, remorse, etc. He is very articulate and has much common sense and awareness. During his first verbal altercation with Victor he says, “Be calm! I entreat you to hear me before you give vent to your hatred on my devoted head. Have I not suffered enough, that you seek to increase my misery?” (Shelley 86). We learn what he encounters in life, what has shaped him into the “human” he was created to be, and what compels him to kill. The creature in the movie is more like an animal than anything else. He is unable to speak, communicate, or comprehend what is going on around him. He only kills because he has the brain of a murderer and he wanders aimlessly not knowing what is happening. We never see his character ever develop or change at any point; we are only shown that he is an ignorant, killing
Frankenstein’s creation was lost in the world with no one who could have understood him . It felt sorrowful and unfulfilled emotions as seen in this quote. Betrayal by Victor leaves a large impact the monster carried, which, turned into a monster full of hate and dissatisfaction. Victor’s creation was not a monster , but new born baby in a grown horrific body that was not to be called his own . It becomes a monster both mentally and physically, who will be feared by all . Victor not giving him the love he needed gets the monster enraged, which leads the monster to cause series of events that affects Victor unforgivably. .
you belong to my enemy - to him towards whom I have sworn eternal revenge; you shall be my first victim.” (Shelley 62) Here The Creature is not just an innocent childish creature anymore, here we find The Creature having hold of a random person at first but when he finds out this is Frankenstein blood; he instantly becomes a murderer. After the incident, The Creature becomes demanding to Victor he later asks for one last wish from his dreadful maker. Shelley writes, “You must create a female for me with whom I can live in the interchange of those sympathies necessary for my being” (Shelley 63). Instantly, Frankenstein denies and while The Creature is able to persuade the mad scientist for some time; Frankenstein goes to and fro from being an advocate to outright denying The Creatures request. After much arguing and dealing around, Victor gives in. However after heading back to Geneva Victor is unable to get himself to work and create this new being, and he is scared out of his mind since Victor understands the severity of what The Creature can do to him. Ultimately, as the course of events in Shelley’s “Frankenstein” it is clear to see that the creature lives a life that is cruel and a life that no one can truly understand. As well as living a life and having his pure and unknowing innocence stripped away by the hardships of
Once he’s brought the monster to life, Victor is terrified by what he’s made with his own hands, causing him to abandon the monster, hoping that it will die on it’s own. Later in the book, the reader as well as Victor learn that the monster wasn’t a vile creature at all, but rather a man who needed love. If victor had thought logically creating the monster, thought about how a thing that has been freshly made most likely didn’t have a monstrous bone in its body, the tragedy that followed after the monster was made, could have been avoided. Towards the end of the book, the monster reappears in Frankenstein’s life, threatening to kill all whom he loves if he does not make the monster a life companion. Victor refuses, and in response Frankenstein kills those that he loves, before he disappears himself, presumably off to kill
This experiment places him out of society and in isolation for months, showing his obsession with creating something that is his own. In addition, Frankenstein knows he has the ability to create the monster where he "[emphasizes] the necessary deference to nature that empirical science lacked, [Shelley] found her portrayal of Victor's artificial human complicated by the materialism of his genesis" (Willis 2). Victor's arrogance in knowledge led him to create the monster only because he knew he could. The monster is purely experimental and Victor creates the monster because his knowledge overcame his decision between morals and achievements.
During Frankenstein Victor’s mental state was altered after witnessing the power of nature firsthand when he saw lightning destroy a tree near his home in Geneva.This observation leads him to study philosophy at the University of Ingolstadt where he became obsessed with anatomy. Victor takes God’s power into his own hands, “When I found so astonishing a power placed within my hands, I hesitated a long time concerning the manner in which I should employ it.” (Shelly 32) He has the gruesome idea to create his own human from the remains of the dead. Victor sneaks into charnel-houses, digs into graves to collect limbs, disturbing the resting corpses, and studies uses them to find the answer how to make life come from death. During the process of creating his monster, Victor
Victor feels that his relentless search for more knowledge is the cause for all of his suffering. It is true that his knowledge is what created the creature, but what made things worse is that he never gave the creature what he needed, so the neglected creature set out to find it himself. Victor’s tragic fate was not the result of his knowledge but because he did not take care of his creature. 6. Foreshadowing is seen multiple times such as the night when Victor sees lightning strike down a tree and Victor is fascinated with how much power the lighting has. The monster also foreshadows his own death when saying, “But soon I shall die.. I shall ascend my funeral pile triumphantly and exult in the agony of the torturing flames..” 7. By not giving his creation a name, Victor didn’t give his creature an identity or a place in society. In society, a person’s name is who they are, people make their own judgment of people right away. The creature didn’t have a name and people judged him right away and identified him as monster and only that, rather than an actual being. 8. During the period in which Frankenstein was written, science was growing and it was seen as anything could be possible with the new research and
The novel Frankenstein was written by Mary Shelley in 1818. This gothic romance novel tells the story of a philosopher who discovered how to create life, without the full knowledge that his actions could cause grave consequences. Universal Studios made the film version of this novel in 1931. Unfortunately, the film version of Frankenstein has more differences than similarities to the novel. In the novel, Victor’s mental obsession seems to be more severe than in the film. The character of Victor Frankenstein was portrayed in both the novel and the film as a veriphobe, or one who is afraid of the truth, in this case, the truth of his actions. He
Throughout the novel Frankenstein written by Mary Shelley, the creature is subjected to countless acts of violence and rejection. For a monster to develop, one must have been formerly exploited either by an individual or their society. The creature is not only a physical product of science, but his atrocious behavior is also an explicit result of Victor’s actions toward him. The creature was not born a monster, but slowly morphed into one as he experiences violence and rejection from his society.
The monster 's appearance causes his creator to abandon him and prevents him from normal human interaction. He is forced to learn about the world on his own and spends most of his time watching others. Frankenstein is not the only one negatively affected by his existence. In the process of bringing the monster to life, Victor had deprived himself of rest and health, causing him to fall ill for several months. Shortly after his recovery, Victor learns his younger brother has been murdered. Frankenstein has killed his creator’s brother and framed an innocent girl to get back at Victor for abandoning him. After the girl is executed, Victor becomes consumed with guilt knowing he is responsible for two of his family members deaths. The monster does not stop there, he goes on to kill Victor’s friend Henry and fiance, Elizabeth. Because of his creation, Victor is haunted by depression and guilt for most of his life and died a lonely death hunting Frankenstein.