How Does Shelley Create Sympathy In Frankenstein

This novel reflects Shelley’s own childhood, which consisted of her feeling obligated to rebel against her own father’s wishes and his choice for her marriage. Frankenstein is a way for Shelley to tell her own experiences with parental conflict and how she feels she was affected by her demanding father and the environment she grew up in, by comparing herself to Victor’s monster. Shelley analyzed her own characteristics, and the characteristics of her father, and placed them within Victor and the

to make the elixir of life in order to create life. He tries to play

Appeals are present in the novel. Throughout the novel, there are many characters but the main important characters are victor Frankenstein, the creature. Victor Frankenstein is a scientist who knows everything about scientific field, who wants to prove that he is a great scientist. Then, tries to create life but instead created a monster. Later on the monster started killing people. The monster killed victor brother because the monster wanted someone to love him. Then, he killed victor’s wife, and left him alone with misery. Once, victor died the monster end up being alone again. Mary Shelly uses imagery, metaphor, and personification to prove that loneliness could lead to tragedy in life but in the novel it also proves that satisfaction is not found by revenge, and beauty and appearance allows more acceptance in the society.

For the De Lacey family, Agatha, the sister, plays the womanly role here. Felix her brother always takes care of her and tries to make life as easiest as possible even though they have gone through many hardships. The problems that this family faces are numerous indeed. Their father is blind and cannot help them in any way. Besides this fact, the De Lacey family was expelled from their native land and forced to live in poverty in a foreign place. "He did not succeed. They remained confined for five months before the trial took place; the result of which deprived them of their fortune and condemned them to a perpetual exile from their native county" (122). During the time of the exile, Felix was unable to see his loved one, just like while Victor was away studying, they both could not see the one they cared for. The monster at this time learns of emotion and compassion. He can sympathize with his "benefactors" and he also wants to help them, but he can't because of his appearance. The missing family member of the De Lacey's is directly correlated with the missing family member of the Frankenstein's. The existence of the De Lace's in the novel proves that Mary Shelly wanted to include the importance of a family and how being close in a family can make everyone happy. This happiness that Victor is trying so hard to pursue by creating the monster.

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

has had a very good start to his life and he has been spoilt beyond

Sympathy in Mary Shelley's Frankenstein Frankenstein for many people is a huge fiendish monster, a brainless oaf with a couple of neck bolts, who is a horrible murderer. This image has been created by Boris Karloff and other television/film images. I also thought like that, believing Frankenstein to be a monstrous murderer, so when I was met with the text I was surprised to find as a mad scientist who creates a monster. This changed my opinion greatly at first.

To be able to feel sympathy, humans first must be able to read into and understand another’s emotions. Mary Shelley uses this human aspect in her novel Frankenstein, as readers’ emotions are played. Set in the early 1900s, the novel is a recount of Victor Frankenstein’s life as he tells it to Robert Walter, a man leading an exploration to the North Pole. Frankenstein starts his narrative explaining how he was a very curious child, and eventually went off to college and conducted an experiment on his own. Frankenstein ended up creating a monster, which changed Frankenstein’s life for the worse. In Mary Shelley’s novel, Frankenstein’s monster earns the reader’s sympathy and pity because after being rejected by his creator he is forced to

Essentially at this point Frankenstein is not a monster, it is his experience within human society which determines his future evil behaviours. We perceive Frankenstein burning himself on a fire: ‘I found a fire which had been left by some wandering beggars...in my joy I thrust my hand into the live embers, but quickly drew it out again with a cry of pain.’ In this instance Shelley conveys the fundamentals of conditioning. Frankenstein learns that putting his hand into the fire results in pain, which reinforces the notion that Shelley presents behaviourism as a dominant force. More importantly, the influence of the social environment upon Frankenstein is explicitly conveyed with his experience with the De Lacey’s. Frankenstein seemingly exemplifies operant conditioning as he begins to learn language, understand human relationships and develop feelings of empathy through observation. Again, this reinforces the notion that it is behaviourism, not the biological approach, which fundamentally shapes Frankenstein’s personality. It is within Frankenstein’s experience of humans that his personality significantly shifts from neutral to evil because ‘the creature learns from sensations and examples’.7 Essentially Frankenstein is treated with contempt by his creator, violence for doing a noble deed and violence from the De Lacey’s who he admires. These experiences fundamentally shapes his personality and transforms him to ‘eternal hatred

In Frankenstein, by Mary Shelley, Victor Frankenstein creates a creature, stronger and better than humans in every way except his looks. After Frankenstein abandons him, the Creature meets the De Lacey’s, a nice little family that indirectly teach him how to read and write. In truth, the Creature only becomes a monster after the hatred that Felix, one of the De Lacey’s, shows him. Before, he had done nothing wrong, but afterwards, all he did was fall down a slippery slope.

Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein has several literary devices- such as structure, imagery, and many intricate details. She perfectly places words and puts them in such a way that the passage has a dual tone. Shelley begins with establishing the monster’s nature as being peaceful, because he wanted to reason with Victor. Him wanting to reason shows the importance of his decision to meet with Victor and shows that even though he has been through a great deal, he is still respectable to others. The audience gets to see the creature’s humble nature and makes the audience feel sympathetic towards him. This creates a peaceful tone to the passage. The monster wants to be loved by “any being and if they showed benevolence to me, I would return them hundred an hundred fold” (Shelley 148). The creature’s begging makes it sound like Victor will answer his plea. Using a broad term like “being”, demonstrates the monster’s need to be loved, putting him in a position with the audience again feeling empathetic towards him. Eventually, Victor’s compassion begins to fluctuate. The desperation the creature has looks like the desperation a human might have. This only gives the readers another reason to relate to him which leads to the other tone, impossible. Victor’s unreasonableness heightens this shared discontent as not only has the build up of the creature’s wistful nature made him an utmost identifiable character, but our views are adjusted in such as way that Frankenstein is seen

Frankenstein by Mary Shelley has a simple origin, compared to other stories. While stories such as It by Stephen king started a several year process of creation, Frankenstein began simply as a campfire story Mary Shelley shared with her writer friends one evening. Although the origins of this novel are fairly simple, it provides an in depth psychological perspective on the darker side of human psyche through the shifting first person perspective. Usually these darker aspects are associated with the character’s personal struggles, but one specific theme in all the characters. The theme of obsession has been consistent and the central focus of the three main characters Victor, the creature, and Robert. With this central theme in mind the author, Mary Shelley shows that obsession leads to the characters suffering negative psychological and physical effects, as well as impair their decision making. This is depicted through the decline of physical and mental health through Victor’s struggles with his obsessions with knowledge and justice.

Men lead intellectually satisfying lives with little emotion while women lived the opposite. They had emotionally exciting lives with little intellectual fulfillment. Victor excelled in the public sphere but could not perform in the private sphere because according to Mellor the “sexual division of labor” does not allow women or men to have both. Mellor then points out the absence of a strong willed female character. The De Lacey family was seen as an alternative to the Frankenstein family, but even they, a family based on “justice, gender equality, and mutual affection” lack a mother figure. The monster goes to Victor longing for this strong female companion but it does not exist. Mellor also explores the idea that Victor’s most passionate relationships are with men. He saw Clerval as “his former self” and Mellor describes Walton’s responses to Victor as “homoerotic.” Finally Mellor claims that Victor “rapes” nature in the destruction of an equal companion for Frankenstein and is punished “with the very electricity he has stolen.” Also with the death of Elizabeth taking away Victors ability to reproduce Mellor claims that Marry Shelley’s novel portrays the “penalty of raping

The first manifestations of his erratic truths are seen when he proclaims to Frankenstein “For the first time the feelings of revenge and hatred filled my bosom, and I did not strive to control them, but allowing myself to be borne away by the stream, I bent my mind towards injury and death.” (118) and sets the cottage of his former “friends” on fire. The monster did not have much contact with humans, and therefore, had very little experience with the emotions he felt for the De Laceys. Their refusal hurt him, so he cultivated a loathing for the family and acted maliciously. This can also be seen as the beginning of the monster’s transformation - as his experiences make him more resentful, his ideals, goals and actions become more monstrous. The conflagration is what frees the monster from the vice of his first wish for emotional fulfillment. His inability to satisfy his needs combined with the satisfaction he gains from cruel behaviour causes the monster to believe that he is a wretched beast. The truth he saw in his own nature - the kind, innocent being - is blended together with the hideous and terrifying fiend others see him as, so a new sort of fabrication is created. By using this element, Shelley depicts how an individual is forced to alter the truth that they associated with their own life when they realize the imperfect nature of their ideals. This may cause an individual to indulge in unkind behavior in an attempt to reconcile the relation between their ideals and worldview. Without the family’s denial, the monster’s idea of perfection would have remained stagnant. After that experience, he starts to believe that the prejudiced view of the humans who fear him and the abandonment he faced is enough reason to retaliate against mankind. This