Society In Frankenstein

Improved Essays
The world has many different types of people who exist differently in their own unique ways. Society does not always welcome differences, but over time society slowly began accepting and encouraging all kinds of differences. However, for many centuries people that looked or acted differently got rejected by society. “Frankenstein or the Modern Prometheus” written by Mary Shelley takes place during the 1700’s where the reader learns about this injustice when Victor Frankenstein brings a person who he built back to life. In this story, not only does society reject the creature but Victor himself rejects his own creation because of how ugly and different he appears compared to everyone else. Due to this discrimination, the creature grows angry …show more content…
The creature’s actions then cause Victor to grow furious, therefore Victor hunts down the creature to obtain revenge. Victor’s initial intentions with his creature included experimentations in science and studies with the process of reanimation, not raise a monster. However, once Victor saw his creation and how different it looked from other living things he got scared and chose to desert the creature instead of caring for him. Victor could have prevented all the deaths and chaos in this story if he would have shown love and interest in his creature, but instead, Victor showed disgust and horror which caused the creature to turn reckless and dangerous.
Victor pushed the creature away and made the creature feel unwanted and ugly. Shelley portrays Victor as an intelligent, curious, and ambitious character. Victor had good intentions and just wanted to learn more, and the tragedies in his life makes Victor appear as the victim. However, Victor’s own characteristics led to his destruction and the destruction of the creature, making Victor the real villain. Victor’s intelligence led him to grow an
…show more content…
However, Victor’s ambition led to his own destruction while the creature’s differences could not conform to society and his creator to handle thus the creature fell towards revenge. Shelley shows that because society focuses on the exterior of a person society “abandons with cruelty regardless of what [someone] does for them” (Lancaster 136). The creature experienced a similar abandonment like Victor, which makes the creature the victim and Victor the villain. Through this story Shelley spread awareness of how society judges based on exteriority and not interiority, and how people’s experiences can help other people in their

Related Documents

  • Improved Essays

    The creature is so full of hope and love for the companion already. Because of Victors actions, the creature is not able to control his rage. Something Victor or anybody has not taught him to do. After Victors decision to hunt down his creation in revenge, resulting in Victors death, the creature returns and shows his true colors. “[The creature] hung over the coffin...…

    • 852 Words
    • 4 Pages
    • 1 Works Cited
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Changing Sides Frankenstein was written in the early 1800’s by Mary W. Shelley. Frankenstein is a book about a struggle of repentance for what at first seemed to be a prodigious scientific discovery, but actually became an ironic tragedy for both creator and creature. It can be argued that the book’s main character is the creator of the creature, Victor Frankenstein. Throughout the novel, Victor experiences many life changing events. Not only does Victor grow in age, he matures and grows emotionally.…

    • 1022 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The fact that Victor is unable to realize the severity of the sin he has committed until the creature is breathing, much like himself, further symbolizes Shelley's central theme on the laws of existentialism. Through creating this monster, Victor sentences a living being to a life of blatant suffering and isolation (due to Frankenstein's relinquishment of his own creation). By abandoning his creation of life, Victor forgoes more and more of his humanity and exhibits his akin to the monster. In castigating his unnatural child to a life of unimaginable torment and isolationism, Victor pays the ultimate price for a knowledge that causes his own…

    • 576 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Victor’s creature is not a monster. He is a being that has been misguided and rejected by society. The creature is not a real monster; it is a victim. The creature did not begin its life as a monster but became one after Victor Frankenstein rejected it and refused to realize that he must take care of this creature from now and forever and be responsible. The creature was born defenseless in this world.…

    • 1440 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    In the words of Mitch Albom, “All parents damage their children. It cannot be helped. Youth, like pristine glass, absorbs the prints of its handlers.” Parenting, much like cruelty, leaves an irrevocable mark. In Mary Shelley’s novel Frankenstein, Shelley uses cruelty to expose the contrast between the perpetrator and victim-…

    • 708 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Great Essays

    We see that even at a young age, Victor’s powerful and unwavering perseverance will lead to his downfall. Shelley uses all encompassing drives as extremes. Victor does not simply toil away diligently in his pursuit to create life. He does so without bounds, journeying deeper and deeper into his own isolation. Victor’s determination to maintain the secret of his accomplishment leads to the deaths of many friends and family.…

    • 1445 Words
    • 6 Pages
    • 3 Works Cited
    Great Essays
  • Superior Essays

    In works of literature, authors will use a foil character of the protagonist to illuminate differences and similarities between the two and elucidate the protagonist’s true character. In Frankenstein, Or The Modern Prometheus, the creature is the best known foil character of Victor Frankenstein because the two contrast yet resemble each other in several aspects. The divergent characteristics of the two allow the reader to harvest important flaws in each. With the creature and Victor having contradicting personalities and histories, the reader can easily distinguish specific accented qualities of each. The creature is a more potent foil for Victor Frankenstein because of his success in highlighting their differences and similarities through their origins, personalities, and appearances.…

    • 1061 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Superior Essays

    Could you imagine being a child that is eight foot tall? Childhood and adolescence are two factors that affect the rest of one’s life. Each and every child goes through a different childhood. One might grow up in times of innocence and a sense of wonder, and another might grow up in times of tribulation and terror. The contrast between Victor’s idyllic childhood and the Creature’s isolated upbringing affects their development throughout the novel.…

    • 1318 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Superior Essays

    Victor only wanted to contribute to science and the Creature only wanted to be accepted and loved. But these two innocent souls became lost in the battles of life, fighting for understanding. It can only be said that these characters developed into monstrous beings through hate and revengeful actions. Due to Victors lack of responsibility, he allowed a lost man to become a hellish ghoul, which ultimately resulted in the death of several innocent people who were close to Victor, therefor dissolving any chance for Victor to be happy. His own creation became a his every destruction - a terrible…

    • 1104 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    What makes us human? Some would say it is our appearance and how we look, but others say it is what is on the inside that makes us human, for example our morals, beliefs, and they way we interact with others. In the book, Frankenstein, Victor and his creation are contrasted of who is more human. The creature is more of a human than Victor because he shows more compassion, his longing for a companionship, and he is selfless.…

    • 905 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The “birth” scene of the creature demonstrates that the creature was not always the monster that everyone thought he was, and that it was due to people’s attitude (including Victor’s) and bias towards him that made him into the monster that he is at the end of the book. The description of the weather in the birth scene foretold the horror feeling that Victor would have towards the creature that he has created. The birth scene started “on a dreary night in November” (pg. 83), with “rain pattered dismally against the panes, and my candle was nearly burnt out” (pg. 83). From the first paragraph of the birth scene readers can tell that the creature that he has made would not be of his likings, because the environment around him is dull and sad,…

    • 906 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    (Shelley 129). After asking Victor to create someone like himself, Victor denied his request. The monster tells Victor why he is in pain which led to his act of murder. Reader can see that the monster has no innate to harm anyone. His constant rejection from society and lack of companionship led him to respond violently to other.…

    • 1728 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Superior Essays

    Unnaturally created, the monster lacks the beauty and, as the reader late finds out, also lacks the empathy of a human being. In the article, Frankenstein: A Feminist Critique of Science by Anne K. Mellor, the author emphasizes that Victor’s creation of the monster without the female counterpart of human reproduction destined the monster to be socially ostracized and miserable, “In trying to have a baby…

    • 2374 Words
    • 10 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    In Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, Victor Frankenstein and his creation represent a relationship between creator and the created while also forming a doppelganger relationship. It is difficult to interpret which side, either Victor or the creature, represents good and which represents evil. The more Victor pursues his dream of creating a Being; he slowly slips from being a brilliant scientist to being an insane mad man looking to play God. His thirst for knowledge before the existence of his creation, is described, “It was the secrets of heaven and earth that I desired to learn; and whether it was the outward substance of things or the inner spirit of nature and the mysterious soul of man that occupied me, still my inquiries were directed to the…

    • 765 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    In Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, the Creature is an outcast of society, which is a person who is not accepted by society’s standards because people feel as if they “need” to be “normal”. Today’s outcasts of society are considered prisoners, a PTSD strickened veteran, or sociopaths. The outcasts of society are the most interesting people in the world because they are not what people in society call “normal”. These special people are the outcome of societal action directed towards those individuals. Victor Frankenstein would be one of the outcasts of society in the novel because after he creates the monster or creature he starts becoming more distant from his closest friends and family.…

    • 530 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays