In the beginning of the book, right after the creation of the monster, Victor fled his home to get away from the creature, only to return and find that it had escaped. While in the mountains Victor is approached by the monster who begs for understanding from Victor, that it's killing of Victor's younger brother William Frankenstein was out of confusion and it was only intending to hurt Victor, as he saw him as his cruel creator. The monster then asks Victor to create him a female monster, equally grotesque to be his soul mate. If Victor was so passionate about his work you would think he'd keep his monster locked up or under some kind of control, but since victor left his monster free to roam, it left Victor not knowing any better. It is Frankenstein’s responsibility to teach the monster and see it as a friend.
He is nervous yet scared and disgusted at the out come of his long toil. The author shows this with the quote “with an anxiety that almost amounted to agony”, again this really brings out the gothic image using pain and suffering to make sure the reader realises the full extent of the horror that Frankenstein has unleashed on the quite country around him. When the creature is finally brought to life Frankenstein’s
‘Frankenstein’ or the ‘Modern Prometheus’ written by Mary Shelley was the product of a range of historical, cultural and philosophical ideologies of the time. The book was written in England during the Enlightenment Era and thus, embraces ideas relevant to the period as well. Victor Frankenstein was a scientist who in an attempt of experimentation creates a monstrous and grotesque creature using his scientific abilities. The story is about the downfall of Victor Frankenstein after the creation of this creature whom he abandons. The creature is born 8ft tall and ugly to look at, but with the mind of a new born child.
Victor Frankenstein was an arrogant and ambitious scientist that wanted to play with the powers beyond human understanding and answer the ‘secret of life,’ with his “human endeavour to mock the stupendous mechanisms of the Creator of the world.” Frankenstein effectively achieved this by “bestowing animation on a lifeless matter.” Shelley throughout the fourth chapter expresses the excited and ambitious scientist during the process of seeking his answers, he thought he was about to create “a new species [that] will bless [him] as its creator and source.” However this is juxtaposed with the decline of the individual which is revealed in the next chapter, “Now that [he had] finished” he realised “the beauty of the dream had vanished and breathless horror and disgust filled [his] heart.” By answering the ‘secret of life,’ Frankenstein is forced to accept the consequences from releasing the ‘monster’ on the world. Shelley uses techniques of imagery to describe the unnamed monster “I had gazed on him while unfinished; he was ugly then, but when those muscles and joints were rendered capable of motion, it became a thing such as even Dante could not have conceived.” Shelley makes constant references to the physical and emotion price paid as a result of the individual, Victor
Frankenstein wanted to recreate his mother, but instead he made a creature comprised of the socially repressed elements of Frankenstein (the monster) and his wish for his mother. Frankenstein's creature comprises all of the unacceptable traits of humans, those we usually suppress. These traits may actually be a representation of those traits that Frankenstein wishes he had. Mary Shelley tries to humanize the position of the impossible monster to imagine what it would be like for a monster to sustain personhood when everybody around him treats him as an utterly outcast to society. Shelley is trying to show that the creature is not inherently monstrous, but
Theresa James English 121 Professor Jesse Stommel Frankenstein Is a Gothic Novel Frankenstein; or the Modern Prometheus, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (1797 – 1851), a classic occult fiction, was first published in London in 1818 in three volumes. It tells a story of how Dr. Victor Frankenstein creates an artificial man out of fragments of bodies from churchyards, and dissecting rooms – a human form without a soul. The monster longs for love and sympathy but inspires only horror and loathing and becomes a powerful force for evil. It seeks revenge against its creator, murdering his family and friends, also, and bringing death to Victor himself. In the most important aspects of Frankenstein; Frankenstein is compelling in and of itself.
What was I? Whence did I come? What was my destination? These questions continually recurred but I was unable to solve them.” Readers may also find it easy to sympathise with The Monster as Shelley is very critical of Frankenstein. For example, in Chapter 15 when the Monster is talking about Frankenstein’s journal that documented his creation, the Monster says ““Everything is related in them which bares reference to my accursed origin; the whole detail of that series of disgusting circumstances which produced it is set in view; the minutest description of my odious and loathsome person is given, in language which painted your own horrors and rendered mine indelible.
Frankenstein was not a good creator, he was actually trying desperately to kill his monster he made. Frankenstein said, “I devote myself, either in my life or death, to his destruction” (Shelley 191). In a movie version of this story, the monster asks, “Did you ever consider the consequences of your actions? You made me, and you left me to die” (Frankenstein). Here the creature shows his feelings about his creator.
He tells him ‘do your duty towards me and I will do mine towards you,’ and if Frankenstein refused, he threatened him by saying he would ‘glut the maw of death’. This shows how the Creature’s abandonment and lack of nurture leads him to become a murderer. Further proof of this is when, during the Creature’s tale he tell Frankenstein ‘I could not conceive how one man could go fourth and murder his fellow’ showing that he was ‘benevolent and good’ and had Frankenstein full filled his duty he may have remained so. The Creature admits to Frankenstein ‘misery made me a fiend’ implying that Frankenstein’s actions, or lack of action, lead to this misery. Primarily it is not Frankenstein who has to suffer the consequences of his creating life, it is the Creature.
Chen 1 Shanye Chen Dr. Melinda Luisa de Jesús SSHIS 200-03: The Monsters We Make October 24th. 2013 Frankenstein and Prometheus, Knowledge and Wisdom Frankenstein,a novel written by Mary Shelley in the nineteenth century, is about Victor Frankenstein, a scientist, who creates a humanlike creature and abandons the creature immediately. The creature studies by himself and tries to find his identity, but he is not accepted by society because he’s ugly and horrible looking. Then the creature kills all the people, who Victor loves, for revenge. Frankenstein was the first science fiction and Gothic novel, a remarkable work showing a profoundness and criticism of science, which still has influence today.