Frankenstein By Mary Shelley: Relation Between Individual And Society

Improved Essays
Ryan Hartwich 12 / 03 / 2017

Essay 4: Comment on the statement “We are what society makes us”

In their scientific paper “Relation between Individual and Society” M. Anayet Hossain and Md. Korban Ali of the Department of Philosophy of University of Chittagong in Chittagong, Bangladesh, state that “Man depends on society. It is in the society that an individual is surrounded and encompassed by culture, as a societal force. It is in the society again that he has to conform to the norms, occupy statuses and become members of groups.” Because every human being is confronted and surrounded by society continuously,
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In the novel, a young scientist called Frankenstein created a monster from dead body parts. As soon as it was alive, Frankenstein was terrified by the monster’s outer appearance and left it alone. As the monster then leaves Frankenstein and travels through its surrounding world makes many experiences with society, and not a single good one. First of all, in the beginning everyone he encounters either runs a away or throws stones at him. Later, he rescues a little child from drowning, and because of his looks and his huge hideous appearance, the father shoots him because he thinks the monster wants to harm the child. In that point of the narrative the monster also sees his own outer appearance in the reflection of the water. That’s why it now secretly lives in a secluded shack of a apart from society living family. There also was an old blind man, and one day, as the rest of this family was away, the monster took initiative and talked to the old blind man. As the people returned and saw the huge monster in front of the old man, they violently banished it. At that point of narrative, the creature accepted that it wasn’t part of society and asked its creator to create a female counterpart for him as a companion. If Frankenstein did so, it would stay away from any society. When Frankenstein destroyed the unfinished female monster a little later, while …show more content…
We are all born into this system and raised to obey it. And because it is so widespread in our society, it might be difficult to change it in near future. But still, we should try to retrieve the folk belief that every human being is an individual and actually implement it in our existing society. Because it is important that people do not only go with the main stream, but only make their own decisions, they’d might be or might be not better off with. But that isn’t a matter, because that is exactly how people grow. Not through peer pressure from all the people around one, but from mistakes you do throughout your whole life. In today’s society, that’s nearly impossible. Because we all flow with the main stream, all the decisions we make are based on this stream. Therefore, also every mistake we do is based on the same. We do grow on mistakes we do, but also right things. The only problem is, that we mostly don’t make the decisions that lead to this output anymore. Although, this again is a proof for the truthfulness of the statement “We are what society makes us”, it needed to be said again, to motivate to actually make a change. And this change starts with you! Don’t be afraid to be excluded from society, try

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