Why Is Knowledge Important In Frankenstein

Improved Essays
Knowledge is power. It has the potential to completely destroy which leads to having many severe consequences. Learning new things and finding interesting discoveries does not always end well especially when there is no one to share with. In Mary Shelley’s gothic novel, Frankenstein, knowledge helps the creature awaken to the circumstances of his alienation, developing a gradual internal rage causing his impulsive behavior towards others, displaying Shelley’s central idea of knowledge being a dark and powerful force, negatively impacting one’s self.
When the creature reads, “Sorrows of Werter”, it helps him grasp his sentimental emotions while emphasizing the love and care he is deprived of, exhibiting how as the growth of understanding rises, happiness within the creature decreases influencing hasty actions. The creature learns and gains a better understands new and different emotions
…show more content…
I sympathized with, and partly understood them, but I was unformed in mind; I was dependent on none, and related to none” (Shelley 107). In society, others have each other to lean on, unlike the creature. Being unaccepted by society and others causes damage to his mental health since he is desperate to have company to fulfill his loneliness. He craves the same attention and wants the opportunity to love and share with others, but the book teaches him that his appearance acts as a barrier in which he is unable to tear down. This creates confusion within the creature and is determined to find the reasonings. But, the more knowledge the creature gain, the further away he is getting from his answers, giving him the opposite effect of happiness. The creature was filled with “ecstasy” and “awe” as he read the books, but grief was dominant due to the realization that he does not have the potential to ever have a genuine friend or someone to love. Coming to this conclusion impacts him in a negative way, creating symptoms of depression. The creature continues

Related Documents

  • Decent Essays

    Mary Shelley cautioned that the risk that can come from hunting for knowledge is not solely from the subject of the information itself, but it is from the obsessive intentions of whoever is seeking it. Frankenstein and Walton began looking for knowledge as a way self enjoyment, however, in the end they developed a strong need for personal glory that had caused misfortune to be brought to them, and their friends, during the search of the knowledge which they had so eagerly…

    • 83 Words
    • 1 Pages
    Decent Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Also, the monster gains the sympathy of the audience by coupling pathos with his ethos since the audience could easily recognize the crippling agony which would accompany being shunned by all of mankind. The beginning of the creature’s tale made him seem more reliable since he experiences the “strange multiplicity of sensations” like a newborn would (Shelley 108). However the reader loses some faith in the credibility of the creature when he compares himself to literary characters such as the ones found in the Bible. For example, when the monster contrasts his situation with Adam’s by stating, “no Eve soothed my sorrows,” he demonstrates an exceptional knowledge of Biblical concepts which he would not have been able acquire just by reading Paradise Lost and listening to the family (Shelley…

    • 843 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    Frankenstein is an educational novel, one that is constantly analyzed by scholars and critics who attempt to unfold its abstract frame narrative into something concrete and understandable. It is used in high schools and universities around the globe, encouraging young thinkers to delve into its contents and to question the motives of its characters and the complexity of its structure. Although the novel’s primary purpose is to educate, perhaps its most interesting aspect is the education that occurs within its pages. Within its “frame narrative” is “frame teaching,” and this is so distinct in that it directly affects the reader. We are certainly subject to this education, just as the characters in the novel are, by observing how they learn…

    • 1052 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Superior Essays

    Ambition In Frankenstein

    • 1389 Words
    • 6 Pages

    Frankenstein, a novel written by Mary Shelley tells the story of a scientist, Victor Frankenstein and his creation of a monstrous creature. Throughout the novel we are able to witness the relationship between the monster and his creator while simultaneously following their individual paths as they cross one another. From each individual journey we see how appearance, ambition, lack of compassion, affection, grief and horror contribute to each story and play a leading effect in the perspective of monster and man. Victor, an ambitious scientist who dreams of making human kind better, creates a figure, later known as the creature, with intentions of helping to “banish disease from the human frame” (Shelley 23). He wants to save…

    • 1389 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Knowledge is like a drug, drugs come from knowledge. Without education, many vital things such as medical treatments, cars, 3-D printers, etc., would never exist. Many of these devices can be utilized efficiently for many different tasks. Although there are many great uses for the products, if people misuse them, there can be many dangerous consequences. Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein explores the struggles and consequences of acquiring too much knowledge.…

    • 550 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Driven by loneliness, the creature seeks a companion so as to finally feel accepted which would supposedly stop his hatred towards society and impulses of revenge. Possibly Frankenstein owes him this as most of the blame of this gloomy story can be placed on his shoulders. He did abandon his creation from his birth and did nothing to stop the creature from going out into the world alone. Untaught and abandoned, the creature did try to be good, but his creator could possibly be blamed for his rage against society. Regardless, that rage is still present in the creature and must not be forgotten.…

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

    One day while in the forest, the creature stumbles across three books in a suitcase, “I can hardly describe to you the effects of these books. They produced in me an infinity of new images and feelings, that sometimes raised me to ecstasy, but more frequently sunk me into the lowest dejection” (108). As the creature continues to pursue knowledge, these books form all kinds of emotions within him, and more often than not he was in a depressed state after reading them and learning of mankind 's sorrows and cruelty toward one another. Upon reading the books, the creature identified most closely with those in Paradise Lost, as he learned of a creator and his beings, “But Paradise Lost excited different and far deeper emotions. I read it as I had read the other volumes which had fallen into my hands, as a true history.…

    • 1127 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    The Creature takes the reader on an intimate journey from his birth, unfortunate abandonment, learning the basics of life from the DeLacey’s, and the eventual spurn (and familiarity) of rejection. This thought process is essential to…

    • 1184 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Romanticizing his need for knowledge and infamy, the protagonist, Victor Frankenstein, of Mary Shelley 's 1818 novel, Frankenstein, asserts, "No one can conceive the variety of feelings which bore me onwards, like a hurricane... Life and death appeared to me ideal bounds... I should... pour a torrent of light into our dark world" (Shelley 94). In the novel, Victor essentially recreates life, a task normally attributed to God, without fear of the moral consequences. In modern science, many scientists have commenced research that explores the possibility of creating life through the development of embryonic stem cells, but support for this possibly life-changing inquisition is constricted by the unethical qualities of the procedure.…

    • 1708 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    (p. 81) This extended isolation from humans in the early stages of his life make it more difficult for him to relate to humans later on. The creature undergoes a long period of isolation in which he is observing the cottagers. He is struck by how “gentle the manner of these people” is. The creature is “deeply affected by” seeing the cottagers unhappy.…

    • 1757 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    “I am alone, and miserable; man will not associate with me; but one as deformed and horrible as myself would not deny herself to me. My companion must be of the same species, and have the same defects.” (Shelley 104), the creature has no one, everyone runs away or harms him, he wants someone to be with. “You must create a female for me, with whom I can live in the interchange of those sympathies necessary for my being.” (Shelley 104).…

    • 905 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Education is a large concept discussed within Mary Shelley’s novel Frankenstein; or the Modern Prometheus. However, education within the novel is not discussed in a contemporary sense, insead using it to convey the concepts of irregular education, scientific discovery, and the importance of learning about one self. Throughout Frankenstein education is discussed in a variety of sense mainly in the forms of differing self learning and the use of self-learning to propel yourself forward. Self-learning is prevalent within the majority of the novel from the prefaces explorative and naval readings of Robert Walton, the learning of the Frankenstein family and the varying degrees of impact education has on the children especially Victor Frankenstein,…

    • 1343 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    Knowledge has brought the human race to many of its brightest moments, as well as many of its darkest: the discovery of the atomic bomb and chemical warfare, among others. This begs the question, how far would you go in the pursuit of knowledge? Mary Shelley investigates the concept of ¨too far¨ in her novel, Frankenstein. She chronicles the path of a scientist, from his initial thirst for knowledge, to his creation of an artificial creature, to his eventual death because of the Creature. Throughout the novel, that scientist, Victor Frankenstein, regrets his initial decision to create the Creature, and the consequences of his actions far outweigh any possible reward that he imagined before he even began; what he imagined was being applauded…

    • 1573 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Great Essays

    The creature pursuits his creator, thus leads to him settling down near a cottage. He observes a family, which resides inside the cottage. The creature was impressed by the cottagers and learned “views of social life which it developed” (Shelley 116) and to “admire their virtues and to deprecate the vices of mankind” (Shelley 116). The cottagers fill the creature’s void of not having a family. The creature learns vital values and morals from the family, as well as how to speak and understand the French language.…

    • 1489 Words
    • 6 Pages
    • 5 Works Cited
    Great Essays
  • Superior Essays

    Frankenstein as a Critique on Romanticism The Romantics focused on creating work that was truly original and spontaneous. In Frankenstein, Mary Shelley does not reject this desire to create, but she critique parts of it. She attacks the unrelenting obsession to create that drives Victor and Walton. This view of Romanticism reflects her own experience with the movement. She accepted many Romantic principles, but had seen her loved ones become obsessed with a desire to write something novel and lasting.…

    • 1701 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Superior Essays