Analysis Of Mary Shelley 's ' Frankenstein '

Mary Shelley’s, gotchic novel, Frankenstein, is a story of a mans adventure out of self pity and disappointment in search for total control and ultimate power, as he wishes to escape from the realities of his past life. In this story, Victor Frankenstein’s use of Ethos, Pathos, and Logos creates many moods and repsonses from Victor, himself, and the Creature he has created, which conveys emotional repsonses, persuasive actions, and appeals to logic that created this twisted and wretchedly staggering novel. Victor Frankenstein uses Pathos to effectively create an emotional response. After being reprimanded by Victor, the creature expresses how he thought Victor would respond, because, “All men hate the wretched; how then must I be hated, who

Quote: He stated “I was seized by remorse and the sense of guilt, which hurried me away to a hell of intense tortures such as no language can describe…..I shunned the face of man; all sound of joy or complacency was torture to me; solitude was my only consolation–deep, dark, deathlike solitude.”(Page 88).

In the novel Frankenstein by Mary Shelley, Victor Frankenstein puts the monster in a predicament that victimizes the monster. Victor creates the monster to be an “ugly wretch”(Shelley 141) therefore causing the monster grief for his entire life. The monster experiences severe loneliness for being an outcast. The monster is the greatest victim in this novel because of his creation, his loneliness, and everyone’s general fear or lack of concern for him.

   Mary Shelley's novel, Frankenstein, sheds light on the importance of appearance through the tale of an unwanted creation that is never given a chance by society. Ironically, the supposed beast was initially much more compassionate and thoughtful than his creator, until his romantic and innocent view of the human race was diminished by the cruelty and injustice he unduly bore. Not only does the creature suffer the prejudice of an appearance-based society, but other situations and characters in the novel force the reader to reflect their own hasty judgment. The semi- gothic novel includes several instances of societal prejudice that include the isolation and outcast of Frankenstein's creation,

"A Hermit is simply a person to whom society has failed to adjust itself." (Will Cuppy). In the gothic novel Frankenstein by Mary Shelley we follow the life of Victor Frankenstein in 18th century Germany. Shelley displays a recurring theme of isolation and how it drives once good people to do terrible things. If civilization does not adjust itself to a creature of any kind they will be forced into isolation and ultimately self destruction.

Every work is a product of its time. Indeed, we see that in Frankenstein, like in the world which produced its author, race, or the outward appearances on which that construct is based, determines much of the treatment received by those at all levels of its hierarchy. Within the work, Mary Shelley, its author, not only presents a racialized view of its characters, but further establishes and enforces the racial hierarchy present and known to her in her own world. For the few non-European characters, their appearance, and thus their standing in its related hierarchy, defines their entrances into the narrative. For the Creature, this occurs on the ices of the Artic, when, “atop a low carriage, fixed on a sledge and drawn by dogs, pass on towards the north, at the distance of half a mile;” Walton and his men perceived, “a being which had the shape of a man, but apparently of gigantic stature.” (Shelley 13) Shelley clarifies, even this early in her novel, the race of its principal Other as soon after the intrepid adventurers rescue its namesake, Victor Frankenstein, who, Shelley clarifies, “was not, as the other traveller seemed to be, a savage inhabitant of some undiscovered island, but an European.” (Shelley 14) Later, closer examination of the Creature reveals a visage and figure of near unimaginable disfigurement, with a “shrivelled complexion,” and yellow skin which “scarcely covered the work of muscles and arteries beneath.” (Shelley 35) This could be contrasted directly

Alienation is a product of society’s inherently discriminatory bias, catalyzed by our fear of the unknown in the realm of interpersonal conduct. Mary Shelley, in her novel, Frankenstein, dissects society’s unmerited demonization of individuals who defy—voluntarily or involuntarily—conventional norms. Furthermore, through her detailed parallel development of Frankenstein and his monster, Shelley personifies the tendency to alienate on the basis of physical deformity, thereby illustrating the role of the visual in the obfuscation of morality.

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.

Although Frankenstein is a fictional story, I think in many ways it is representative of Mary Shelley personal views in her everyday life. Mary Shelley was raised by her father after her mother passed and because of that they always had a rocky relationship even after her father remarried. Mary fell in love with one of her father’s political followers, Percy Shelley and they got married although her father did not approve of their relationship because of the age difference. Throughout their relationship, they faced many obstacles that made it hard for their relationship to work, but it did. This aspect of her relationship is show through Elizabeth in the novel because it shows how hard women will work to make a relationship work even when

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.

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

Woven throughout Mary Shelley’s renowned novel Frankenstein, are threads of regret, lonesomeness, and rejection. Throughout the story, similarities and diversities are exemplified between Frankenstein and his creature. Both Victor and his creature suffered greatly, but their responses to their suffering is where the differences lie. Victor rejected his creature. The creature had to cope with the rejection. Rejection, demands, similarities, and differences are all portrayed throughout the book.

After creating the creature, Victor comes down with a “nervous fever which confine[s] [him] for several months” (Shelley 63). The reader sympathizes with Victor because his near death shows how he regrets his mistakes. Upon discovering that his creature has killed Henry, “[Victor] was a mere skeleton, and fever night and day preyed upon [his] wasted frame” (198). Here Shelley uses the fact that humans are inclined to want to help those that are sick and in need so that they sympathize for Victor. When Elizabeth is murdered he begin to cry when he realizes that the creature had “snatched from [Victor] every hope of future happiness; [and that] no creature had ever been so miserable as [he] (214). Shelley further earns the reader’s sympathy for Victor by saying that the creature has deprived it of any future

Mary Shelley shows the creature being judge by his creator and by everybody he meets. This leads to the creature to grow angry inside wanting revenge on his creator for making the creature live a life of misery. Shelley putting this question in her novel tries to express the creature’s feelings by stating a

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.