Isolation and Neglect in Frankenstein

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Mother Teresa once said, "The most terrible poverty is loneliness, and the feeling of being unloved." Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein touches on some key issues surrounding loneliness and abandonment. Society is harsh. If you don’t fit the mold of someone normal, you are cast away brutally and forgotten. Factors like this still stay true today. This just shows how powerful societal scorn and rejection has an effect on a person. Robert Walton, Victor Frankenstein, and The Monster all have something in common. They all end up being absent from society one way or another, and because of this, nearly all aspects of who they are as a person is changed. Captain Robert Walton, an “arctic seafarer”, left society and into near desolation effecting him emotionally. As an aspiring poet, he pursued his passion to write with dreams of becoming as well-known as Homer and Shakespeare. By the end of a year full of criticism and hatred, “Walton’s education was neglected” (Shmoop). by his peers, and eventually by him. This neglect is surprisingly similar to Victor’s educational abandonment. Both Walton and Victor had dreams of being something greater, but society’s judgmental rejection forced them into an abyss of loneliness. In his year as a poet, “he lived in a Paradise of [his] own creation” (gradesaver). but that paradise quickly turned into an unpleasant trip to isolation. He became a captain to a ship set course to the Arctic. The arctic being a dead wasteland with nearly no life or vegetation due to a freezing climate.
 As Walton and his crew partake on this trip, he has trouble relating with the men onboard with him. Walton is lonely, he "desires the company of a man who could sympathize with [him]” and “whose eyes would reply to [his]” (Shelley 7). Emotionally, Walton felt distant and alone. Running out of food, the crew begins a feeling of unrest, and Walton fears mutiny. They

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