In the late 1810’s, a group of young adults decided to have a ghost story writing contest. This was a fun, silly activity that no one predicted to have a great impact on the world. However, it did. Mary Shelley, one of the contestants, wrote a wonderful short story for her friends; and with encouragement from her husband, she turned it into a full novel, Frankenstein. Since being published in 1818, the book has never gone out of print. It has inspired many spin-offs, parodies, and adaptations leading up to this day. Why is it such a popular novel? It is so well-known and has survived the test of time because of all the emotions that it makes the reader feel. Frankenstein is an effective gothic novel filled with suspense, violence, and psychological …show more content…
From the beginning, readers are intrigued when Victor Frankenstein tells Robert Walton, “You seek for knowledge and wisdom, as I once did; and I ardently hope that the gratification of your wishes may not be a serpent to sting you, as mine has been” (14). These words indicate that the ending is not so pleasant for Victor and make readers want to find out what wishes came true and how they stung him as a serpent. As Victor tells his tale, Shelley continues to foreshadow what will happen. When Victor refuses to create a second creature of the opposite sex, the original warns Victor, “On you it rests, whether I quit forever the neighborhood of man and lead a harmless life, or become the scourge of your fellow creatures and the author of your speedy ruin,” leaving readers guessing what he means by those haunting words and which of these two events will occur (83). Later in the novel when Victor ponders the creature’s warning of being with him on his wedding night, he mentions, “But, as if possessed of magic powers, the monster had blinded me to his real intentions; and when I thought I had prepared only my own death, I hastened that of a far dearer victim,” and leaves readers confused, anxious, and fearful to find out who the creature kills instead of Victor (169). Mary Shelley provides hints to the readers throughout the novel of the events yet to come, leaving them in suspense, wanting …show more content…
When the creature describes killing William, he explains, “I grasped his throat to silence him, and in a moment he lay dead at my feet. I gazed on my victim, and my heart swelled with exultation and hellish triumph; clapping my hands,” (122). This leaves readers feeling disturbed, sympathizing for poor little William, and hating the creature for his brutality. The reader experiences similar emotions when the magistrate describes Henry Clerval’s body to Victor, “He had apparently been strangled, for there was no sign of any violence except the black mark of fingers on his neck” (153). It is alarming for readers to imagine the pain and fear that Henry experienced; in contrast to the joy that the creature must have felt. Unfortunately, these lives are not the only ones taken by the monster. On his wedding night, Victor leaves Elizabeth alone to confront the creature, believing that this monster will kill him, “when suddenly [he] heard a shrill and dreadful scream. It came from the room into which Elizabeth had retired” (173). The scream implies the shock that Elizabeth was in when seeing this demon and makes the reader sympathize for the poor girl. As Shelley describes Elizabeth’s limp body, the reader learns that the creature had strangled her and left black marks on her throat. Again and again Mary Shelley portrays violence in her novel as the creature lets
In the book, Mary Shelley the writer, talks about many ideas and warnings, which are relevant to modern day audiences, this essay will explain these. Mary Shelley was only 19 years old when she wrote the book on summer 1816. She was married to Percy Shelley, who was
The life of the monster can be related to the motherless life led by Shelley. Shelley’s mother too left her as soon as she was born, and as a result, she had quite an arduous life. Combined with her father’s financial woes, her tumultuous relationship with her stepmother meant that Shelley did not have an ideal childhood, which would have had a serious impact on her personality. She had to put up with a lot of miseries when she grew up, and was subjected to lifelong condemnation from the society because of her affair with the married Shelley.
The reader can immediately see this because the Monster says, “I am malicious because I am miserable. Am I not shunned and hated by all mankind?” (Shelley 124). He begins to murder members of Victor’s close friends and family. His first victim is William Frankenstein. The Monster has no intentions to kill William, but he says, “Cursed, cursed creator! Why did I live? Why, in that instant, did I not extinguish the spark of existence which you had so wantonly bestowed” (Shelley 116). The Monster shows his frustration with Victor creating him in this way and for making him into an outcast. After Victor breaks his promise of creating a female monster, the Monster murders Henry Clerval. The Monster’s anger continues to build up over time and he believes the only way to face it is by taking the lives of those who have a close relationship with Victor. The Monster kills Elizabeth Lavenza on her wedding night. He takes the lives of the people who are in a close relationship with Victor due to the anger he feels toward him. The violence the Monster uses is his way to try and seek revenge on Victor because he feels that he set him up to fail, to be an outcast, and to be unacceptable to
Mary Shelley’s view of human connections is portrayed through the monster’s actions. The monster is abandoned by his creator and isolated from the rest of society due to his appearance. The
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
Mary Shelly wrote Frankenstein in 1816 when she was just 20 years old. Even at a young age, she was able to craft what is considered the first science fiction novel. At this time of her writing, a scientific revolution was occurring and with it came advances in topics like radiation and atomic theory. With this rapid change in science and human understanding, Shelly chose to write a story as plea against unorthodox scientific experiments. She portrays this idea with the use of the characters Victor Frankenstein and the monster he created. Through her use of these characters, as well as her use of allusions from religious texts and other literary works, she is able further her argument against untraditional science.
In the novel, the readers learn that the main antagonist, Victor Frankenstein, is trying to reanimate life and create a “new generation” of advanced humans. Despite being successful in creating the monster, Victor would abandon his creation which forces it to have and conceive different identities and creates conflicting perspectives for the readers. This technique of giving the monster different identities is used by Shelley to portray the monster as a complex being. In the book, Victor abandons his creation because he is horribly terrified as he sees his creation is dreadful looking and says, “I beheld the wretch
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
Though the conclusions arrived at here are of the same theoretical place as the philosophical minds had deliberated before, the explanations had by Burke and Shaw circumvented parallel processes of thought, to more rely upon their similar conclusions, both rooted in historical precedent. With Frankenstein, however, Shelley stays committed to its endgame in practicing metaphorical weight and symbolic meaning, not only for setting the classical arguments incorporated here, in definite terms. This isn’t even in creating some microcosm of a singularized case in which man had sought to defy the natural barriers, and replicate the things he saw, and experienced. Instead, interactions between characters and unfolding conflicts set upon them, are to represent both these spheres converging. They are depicted less as staunch absolutes, but more so met with being altered, and changing the perceptions drawn up all along. Conferred later in an accounted byproduct of a more recent mindset, this nonetheless stands for lessons at the underpinnings of how we have grown as a society in general, which Shelley would seem to remind us of. As opposed to some alleged “Modern Prometheus,” Victor’s pursuit comes up barely mythicized, and as Bate says, “is a healthy disorientation… to realize that the Western man may not after all be the master of all things” (Bate 480). Likewise, the creature takes on a role within the self-fulfilling prophecy, subject to the maltreatment of human benefactors, and,
Shelley uses the structure of the novel to explore human nature, clouding the reader’s perceptions of good and evil, right and wrong, man and monster. By creating multiple unreliable narrators, she establishes that nothing is certain, positioning the readers to question their own ideas about who is really in the wrong throughout the novel. Frankenstein and the creature are seen as opposites on a scale of good and evil, master and slave, god and devil, however these positions change throughout the novel. Frankenstein wants the readers to see the creature as a monster, but through the characters narratives and reflections, we see that Frankenstein did not actually create a monster. Frankenstein made a man and turned him into a monster, and the
Frankenstein’s loved ones, his wife Elizabeth Lavenza and his son Wolf, soon die one by one by the monster’s hands as the monster seeks revenge for the mere creation of his life, and even Victor dies himself soon after. These are the occurrences that shaped the tragedy of the story because of the monster’s fooling coexistence in silence among human beings that, however, was not so peaceful in reality as Victor suspected it would be when he let the monster flee prior to its creation, giving no importance to any possible outcomes of his creation. The monster feels abandoned, even casted out in a way because no other person sees a living being within him that deserves compassion and respect due to his appearance. Walton’s final letter describes the monster’s words as Victor lays on his death bed with the monster gazing by his side, “I, the miserable and the abandoned, am an abortion, to be spurned at, and kicked, and trampled on.” (Ch.24).
(Shelley 178). This exemplifies the idea that retribution upon his creature is Frankenstein’s new ambition in life and just as he was dedicated to his studies, he is now completely indulged in this new endeavor even if kills him. In a similar light, the Creature’s new motive of life becomes evident when he says, “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” (Shelley 123). In other words, the
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.
Then his creation all suddenly turns on Victor killing everything he is dear too in the name of vengeance. The monster eventually murders three people in cold blood as well as one indirectly. First Williams’s brother who is accidently strangled to death. With the death of William the monster framed the servant Justine by placing a picture of William in her pocket. Justin was then executed for the unjust murder of William. Sadly Elizabeth, Frankenstein’s cousin and new wife on the wedding night. He also kills a good friend of Frankenstein’s Henry Clerval. The deaths of these innocent people were a result of the monsters revenge on Victor. The monster is seeking this revenge on the doctor because he did not want to be brought into this world especially looking like he did. Another key point that this book beings forth is why human beings should not try to play God and artificially create a being in a laboratory. When Victor creates a bride for the monster he decides to kill her before the monster can have a companion. Victor can’t give the monster what he wants not after what the monster did to his family.
Victor feels that his relentless search for more knowledge is the cause for all of his suffering. It is true that his knowledge is what created the creature, but what made things worse is that he never gave the creature what he needed, so the neglected creature set out to find it himself. Victor’s tragic fate was not the result of his knowledge but because he did not take care of his creature. 6. Foreshadowing is seen multiple times such as the night when Victor sees lightning strike down a tree and Victor is fascinated with how much power the lighting has. The monster also foreshadows his own death when saying, “But soon I shall die.. I shall ascend my funeral pile triumphantly and exult in the agony of the torturing flames..” 7. By not giving his creation a name, Victor didn’t give his creature an identity or a place in society. In society, a person’s name is who they are, people make their own judgment of people right away. The creature didn’t have a name and people judged him right away and identified him as monster and only that, rather than an actual being. 8. During the period in which Frankenstein was written, science was growing and it was seen as anything could be possible with the new research and