In Mary Shelley’s novel Frankenstein (The Modern Prometheus), there is a creature that gains life after its creator, Victor Frankenstein, creates him with the purpose to gain fame by discovering the secrets of life and death. Horrified by the looks of his creation, Victor would abandon his project leaving the creature susceptible to the threats of the world. The creature becomes victim to society’s belief in physiognomy, belief in which a person’s character traits are determined by one’s physical appearance. These quick criticisms by society including its own creator would leave the creature abandoned, attacked, and neglected from happiness. During the creation of the creature, Victor deprives himself of rest and health in an attempt to contribute …show more content…
Due to its physical appearance, the creature would suffer various attacks from society in which he encounters during his trek. While on its journey to search for his creator that abandoned him, the creature recollects, “I had hardly placed my foot within the door, before the children shrieked, and one of the women fainted. The whole village was roused; some fled, some attacked me, until, grievously bruised by stones…miserable from the barbarity of man.” (Shelley 90). After receiving an unreasonable attack from the community, the creature felt “miserable from the barbarity of man” (Shelley 90) when it had meant no harm and just wanted to scavenge for food to please its hunger. Continuing his search for his creator, the victim would encounter a woman who had fallen into a river quick to follow his good willed heart, he would jump into the river and attempt to restore life to the woman that lost conscious. During his attempt to bring animate the woman back to life he would be interrupted by a man who had followed right behind, and the man only judging the creature by its superficial appearance would pull out a gun and shoot the kind hearted creature. With great pain the creature states that “This was then the reward of my benevolence! I had saved a human being from destruction, and, as a recompense, I now writhed under the miserable pain of a wounds, which shattered the flesh and bone.” (Shelley 121). People are quick to judge based on appearance and do not give him the opportunity to introduce himself or explain his intentions. Once again, victim of being mistreatment and rejection only because of his ugly
The Creature is left with emotional, and sometimes physical, scars after being spurned by society as he declares to his creator “‘if I cannot inspire love, I will cause fear, and chiefly towards you…because my creator, do I swear inextinguishable hatred’” (Shelley 175). The Creature's comprehension of why society rejects him and the fact that he cannot "inspire love" is indicative of his awareness of how society functions. He demonstrates a propensity to injure and instill terror in order to exact revenge on Victor. He exhibits his higher perception of the laws and his disdain for them as he completely adopts a destructive and vindictive attitude.
He hyper focuses on his studies in an attempt to suppress his emotions, and as a result, goes further and further down a lonely path, completely isolated and trapped with his ideas and thoughts. Victor doesn’t feel quite right, but continues to work on his project, but when it is completed, and the creature comes to life, “the beauty of the dream vanished, and breathless horror and disgust filled [his] heart,” (Shelley 58). Victor completely neglects everything except his creation, due to his prolonged grief, but his devotion blinds him to the monstrosity he has been creating. After Victor abandons his creation, he suffers through a deep depression, unable to reconcile his guilt, grief, and other painful emotions. He struggles to find joy in his life, constantly stricken by the weight of his decisions, unable to forgive himself or take any steps toward stabilizing his mental health.
This is most evident in the afttermath of the burning of the DeLacey cottage. The Creature had a shred of compassion and saved a drowning girl. "This was then the reward of my benevolence! I had saved a human being from destruction, and as a recompense I now writhed under the miserable pain of a wound which shattered the flesh and bone. The feelings of kindness and gentleness which I had entertained but a few moments before gave place to hellish rage and gnashing of teeth.
The creature is wondering why they would attack him as he was kind and shown it through helping the cottagers and not killing Felix even though he could have. The creature's experiences with society show that it did not matter if the person is kind to society, what matters was being like society and in the creature’s case it is his appearance that gets him outcasted even though he did many kind deeds to the
Have you ever judged a person by how they look? Or Ran away from your problem but they seem to come back and haunt you? Well in the book Gris Grimly 's Frankenstein, Victor Frankenstein had created a creature so horrible looking that he ran away from it. Everyone believed that he wasn’t a human being, but I believe that everything he 's done was the most humane thing he could have done. The creature was a kind and "benevolent soul" that cared for everyone until he would be turned away from humanity all because he looked different.
Victor first begins creating the monster, working tirelessly for selfish reasons. His body suffers tremendously and he drags himself along treating his body like a slave. He states: “My cheeks have grown pale with study, and my person had become emaciated with confinement.” (Shelly 33)
In Mary Shelley's Novel Frankenstein, the main character Victor Frankenstein was very interested of life and death, but one day Victor's desire of finding the truth about life was too much so he created a creature. While Victor was working on the creature he went to get the right parts in graveyards to give a man look on the creature. Victor worked hard every day to prove himself that he can give a thing animation. But then when the creature woke up victor was terrified of what he made but also surprised himself of how the skin and hair looked human. Then Victor ran away from the creature abandoning everything even though the creature would live a lonely life in a new world he was brought into.
Victor was unsympathetic to his creation from the moment he was created, showing little concern for its well-being or the suffering it experienced. He left the creature as soon as it came to life, leaving it alone and confused in a world that rejected it. The creation justly begged for a companion, but Victor ditched the request, claiming he "would never create another like [the creation], equal in deformity and wickedness" (Shelley 157). Despite the creature's efforts to connect with Victor and plead for compassion, Victor remained cold and indifferent, driven only by his fear and disgust.
The creature, “followed speedily, [he] hardly knew why…” He saw the man, “aim[ed] a gun, which he carried, at my body and fired” (Shelly 151). The creature did an act that even some humans would not do and saved someone. He saved someone just to get hurt repeatedly. Knowing what could happen, the creature still saved the girl.
The creature becomes defensive. "Life...is dear to me, and I will defend it" (Shelley 96), this is ironic because not only does the creature kill others showing his selfishness, which he is mirroring Victor 's earlier selfish intentions for creating the creature, but earlier he was suicidal. Now the creature has to ask permission for a better life from a person that doesn 't even seem to value it. The creature also reminds
Victor would stop at nothing to finish his project and became so obsessed that he was isolated from his family and friends. His way of collecting lifeless matter for his creation is unethical and morally wrong. Eventually, he is punished for his actions: “I had worked hard for nearly two years, for the sole purpose of infusing life into an inanimate body.” (pg.56) Additionally, extreme devotion to the building of his creation caused Victor mental distress due to the fact that he neglected his own needs in order to work exclusively on the creature: “I had deprived myself of rest and health.”
After the creature is finished explaining its story to Victor, there is a turning point in the novel. Victor realizes that he needs to take on some responsibility for his creation: “did I not as his maker, owe him all the portion of happiness that it was in my power to bestow?”(Shelley 148). Victor also thinks, “…the justice due both to him and my fellow creatures demanded of me that I should comply with his request. ”(Shelley 150). Victor is finally understanding that he needs to take on some responsibility for this creature.
From the moment Victor decided to create the Creature, he begins his assertion of dominance over the Creature. By creating a “monster” solely for his own
The first event that angered the creature is when he was holding the girl in his arms, he is confronted by a man who grabs the girl out of his arms. This led to rage and he chases after the man who turns around and shot him. As you can image, the feeling of range and anger overtakes his thoughts saying “This was the reward for my benevolence! I saved a human being from destruction and as recompense I was now writhed under the miserable pain of a wound which shattered flesh and bone. The feelings of kindness and gentleness, which I had entertained but for a mere few moments before, gave place to hellish rage and gnashing of teeth.
The novel Frankenstein by Mary Shelley is a science fiction story about a creature created from non-living matter, by a young scientist, Victor Frankenstein. The conflict between society and Frankenstein’s creature is largely perpetuated by a split between those considered attractive, and those who are not. The conflict and language use in Frankenstein demonstrate that most of society judges others based on their physical appearance, which leads to excluding those who fall outside the accepted definition of beauty and sometimes life-threatening consequences for both groups. Frankenstein and his parents demonstrate that they also fall victim to the habit of judging others initially based off of their appearance. The Frankenstein parents first