Example Of Perseverance In Frankenstein

Remorse and Rebirth Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein is a novel that has had massive cultural and societal impact, in a variety of genres and aspects of our life. At its core, it acts as both a cautionary tale, warning against playing around with things beyond your understanding, as well as a story about responsibility and redemption. It stresses the importance of taking responsibility for your actions and taking ownership of your mistakes, and therein working to correct those. Many of the themes and morals presented in Frankenstein are also portrayed in a much more concise format in William Ernest Henley’s “Invictus”, a poem about perseverance and self-governance in the face of incredible hardship and agony. Both pieces show part …show more content…
Errors are made when someone has too much pride to admit that they made a mistake or that something they did was incorrect or suboptimal. Pride is good in moderation, pride in one’s self and pride in one’s abilities, but Victor’s excessive pride is what leads to his downfall and the death of all of his loved ones. Frankenstein’s hubris and his madness work in tangent with his monster, a thing whose sadness and rage were byproducts of another of Victor’s mistakes, to bring the brilliant man to his knees. He refuses to be content with the world that he has and the achievement he has already made, instead opting to try and create not only a thinking, functioning life, but a life inside of a hulking, horrific frame. His pride keeps him from telling anyone around him, because he cannot bare facing the horrible mistakes he feels he has made, but his unwillingness to share the details of his unnatural experiments leads to nothing but death and ruin, with those the monster kills being left unaware of the constant danger they lived in. Frankenstein is, at its core, a story about pride and warns against trying to control things beyond our powers and understanding. ”Invictus” is conversely about how having the right amount of pride can be very beneficial in the right situation and in the right dosage. The narrator is someone who has reached the end of a rather long and dark tunnel, a …show more content…
Where they differ greatly is in the response that people have to the circumstances that require them to persevere. The narrator of “Invictus” decides to look forward to what lies ahead, instead of being caught in the mire of the past. Victor Frankenstein cannot escape the horrible vortex of his errors, caught within the gravity of his own collapsing passions, acting like a dying star, not allowing even a single ray of light to escape from the dark, pitch black core. It reveals about human nature that our perspective can almost entirely dictate the outcome of the constant stream of struggles that life presents us, and with a positive mindset and a stalwart soul, there is nothing that we cannot