The Monster In Mary Shelley's Frankenstein

Victor Frankenstein’s creation, the nameless creature in Mary Shelley’s novel, Frankenstein, displays countless characteristics of physical monstrosity; he is described as “ugly”, “demonical” and a “hideous… wretch” (Shelley 36). However, the creature expresses that his only desires are acceptance and love, but he is seen as a monster regardless of his true intentions. When the creature is abandoned by Frankenstein, he is forced to find acceptance on his own and eventually comes across a cottage in the woods. As an attempt to gain approval, he waits to approach the home until the only character home is a blind man, to whom he explains his desire for friendship. The creature says that he is afraid to become “an

In Frankenstein, the monster interacts with the family in a manner that suggests how he understands aspects such as isolation, loneliness, compassion, and family. An assessment of the monster 's character reveals that it has a sensibility to expand and grow its understanding towards a family 's social significance. The monster has a sense of solitude and otherness from the way he seeks to interact for a specific reason. The interaction with family has a major influence towards the welfare of the monster because it develops a feeling of compassion. According to the accounts that take place in the narrative, it is evident that the cottage is situated in a location away from the village, as the monster decided to seek refuge in

The monster starts off attempting to save a little girl from drowning but is falsely accused that he is trying to kill her instead so he is shot in the shoulder. This is the first step to the monsters rage and anger. He then goes off and kills Henry, Frankenstein’s best friend, after Frankenstein refuses to make a female monster. He then kills William, Frankenstein's younger brother, which at this point in the story seems to be the time where all innocence is lost and the monster has all of the power and cannot be stopped by anyone. The monster then kills the most important or influential to Frankenstein, Elizabeth his wife who was an orphan and adopted by the family at a young age. Elizabeth and Frankenstein go to a hotel for their honeymoon, the monster breaks into their room and strangles her. “She left me, and I continued some time walking up and down the passages of the house and inspecting every corner that might afford a retreat to my adversary. when suddenly I heard a shrill and dreadful scream.” He is overcome with grief and vows to return to Geneva to make sure his family is

Like a baby, Frankenstein’s creature was born innocent and inexperience of how society works. Neglected by his creator, the creature had no one to teach him, this caused him to become isolated. While wandering in the wilderness the creature came upon the De Lacey family. He does not approach them, instead he studies them and becomes accustom to their doings. He uses his isolation to educate himself and gain courage to meet the family. Aghast by the creature’s monstrous appearance, the De Lacey family fled away leaving the

The monster notices that humans are afraid of him because of his appearance, he feels embarrassed of himself, as humans do when they don’t seem to be accepted. He admires the De Lacey Family that lives in the cottage, he also learns from them, and hopes to have companion as they do. The monster is like humans, as mentioned, in the way that he wants someone to listen and care about him. He is discovering the world and his capacities, he seeks knowledge and understand plenty aspects of life by learning how to speak and read. “The gentle manners and beauty of the cottagers greatly endeared them to me; when they were unhappy, I felt depressed; when they rejoiced, I sympathized in their joys” (Shelley 47). The monster developed feelings and emotions as humans. The creature is different from humans also, since he never got to grow up as a normal human, and

However, later in the novel, Shelley reveals how Frankenstein’s monster actually had benevolent attributes, where he wished to help others. Frankenstein describes how he stopped stealing on the villagers and sustained himself on berries, nuts and roots after discovering the De Lacey’s poverty and how he “inflicts pain on the cottagers” by stealing from them(111). Additionally, the monster also showed how he only wanted to help others, where he benevolently “spent a great part of each day in collecting wood for the family fire,” demonstrating empathy and care for others instead of being evil as everyone else thought that he was. However, Frankenstein never has an opportunity to show his benevolence to the people around him, since his appearance is so off-putting to the people around him. As a result, despite the fact that he wished to help those around him, Frankenstein’s monster is endlessly shunned, where he never receives a chance to demonstrate his good

In chapter twelve of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, Frankenstein’s monster sees his reflection for the first time and is horrified by his own appearance, accepting that he is a monster. I was appalled when I read this because his demeanor in the previous chapters exemplified benevolence and curiosity, but never hostility or maliciousness. He is only deemed a monster based on his outward appearance when in reality, his knowledge is equivalent to that of a child. It is only when he accepts that he is a monster, when he is attacked in the woods, that he truly becomes a monster. Mary Shelley uses the treatment of Frankenstein’s monster to represent how society can have a big impact on how people see themselves.

He is beaten and utterly rejected by the family which he loves and wishes to be a part of, his only connection to human society. Filled with “feelings of revenge and hatred” and “a kind of insanity…that burst all bounds of reason and reflection” for the first time, the monster burns the cottage, signaling a turn from the kind and loving character he once was (Shelley 127, 128). Moreover, when he saves a little girl from drowning and then approaches her and the man accompanying her, perhaps trying to connect with them, the man shoots him. His act of kindness is unappreciated, and his attempt to be accepted by mankind fails again. The monster swears to revenge himself against all human beings in order to “compensate for the outrages and anguish I had endured” (Shelley 130). At this point, the monster still has hope, as shown by him approaching William, assuming that he is “unprejudiced and had lived too short a time to have imbibed a horror of deformity” (Shelley 131). Unfortunately, he is rejected again, and this failure shatters his last hope to connect with human society. Learning that William is a part of Frankenstein’s family, he murders William and frames Justine as the murderer, carrying out the first step of his revenge against mankind, Victor in particular. When he finally

Frankenstein uses his aggression to demonstrate his masculinity when threatening the much larger and stronger monster. Frankenstein responds with aggression when he feels like his masculinity is threatened, similarly to how his monster acts in violence as way to deal with his problems. In search of a friend, the monster travels the streets of Geneva until he finds a young boy. After learning that the child, William, hails from the Frankenstein family, the monster “grasps [William’s] throat to silence him” until “he lay dead at [his] feet” (100). Filled with anger and sadness due to his creator abandoning him, the monster aggressively attacks the young William Frankenstein. Masculine men typically act impulsively and aggressively instead of dealing with their feelings, as seen when the monster kills a young child because of his personal issues with his family. Lastly, Felix’s reaction to seeing the monster in the cottage further supports the idea that masculine men respond aggressively and in turn cause more chaos. When he perceives his family to be in danger, “Felix dart[s] forward, and with supernatural force [tears the monster] from his father”

The topic of appearance and judgment is greatly exemplified in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein as it becomes apparent that

In her book Frankenstein, Mary Shelley highlights the fact that society relies more on looks than personality. She shows this by contrasting her characters C and Victor throughout the novel. When Victor Frankenstein built C, he selected C’s “features as beautiful”— but when C actually comes to life, Victor is horrified (47). The man runs to his bedroom, somehow falls asleep, and awakens to find C standing over his bed with an attempted smile on his face. Although Victor’s point of view interprets C’s actions as a threat, which is why he runs, there is more evidence to the fact that C was simply trying to be affectionate to his creator.

Savannah Reitz Mrs. Schroder English III 7 December 2016 Beauty vs. Ugliness In the story of Frankenstein the author Mark Shelley illustrates the dichotomy of beauty vs. ugliness. Beauty is more than just looks beauty is about the inside of a person who they are. In society, very many people base beauty from looks instead of seeing beauty of who someone or something is deeper down inside. In Frankenstein, the author illustrates the monster’s actions as a reflection of how people’s ignorance view others by not seeing the beauty from someone on the inside but instead by just looks on the outside.

When the creature got to know the cottagers, he found something out. He found out he was thinking wrong the whole time. The cottagers were living through the struggle. Frankenstein used to steal from their stores. He stopped after he found out their felling and the struggle they went through.

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.

The novel Frankenstein by Mary Shelley, is a story about how important having a family is to some, but also judging someone based on their appearance. Victor Frankenstein starts the novel by describing his childhood with his loving and supportive family. Family is very important to him because he did not have many friends growing up. While Frankenstein is away at school he starts to become very depressed and you see his attitude towards his family and his life change. Being away at school, he creates a “monster” by using different pieces of corpses and that becomes the only thing that matters to him until he sees how hideous it is. He immediately hates his creation just because of how he looks. Frankenstein begins to abandon everyone and thing in his life because of his obsession with the idea of glory and science, causing the novel to go from Romanticism to Gothic. The “monster” finds a family living in a cottage, by watching all winter he learns how a family should love and accept others. By seeing this, Frankenstein’s creations understand what was taken from him, and will do whatever he has to do to have a family of his own.