Theme Of Love In Frankenstein

Robert Frost once said, “Love is the irresistible desire to be irresistibly desired.” This quote encapsulates a common human longing: to feel loved, to be understood by someone else. Everyone has experienced this feeling at some point, and this stays true for Mary Shelley’s novel Frankenstein; or the Modern Prometheus. The desire for love is found in many of her characters. Characters either search for, have, or lose love, and they act and feel differently based on which experience they have. Shelley uses a motif of love and compassion to argue that love is the most important and motivating factor of human consciousness. Shelley illustrates how important love is to her characters in several ways, specifically through the cottagers and the creature. The creature sees that the cottagers all appear to be miserable, and after learning more about them, he says …show more content…
However, Shelley also uses this motif in a negative way: to illustrate how to loss of this love can affect people. She creates a cycle of love and loss, of revenge and hatred leading to more loss to exemplify this idea. An example of this idea can be seen in the entire second half of the novel. The creature witnesses Victor “destroy the creature on whose future existence he depended for happiness” (165) and swears revenge on Victor. He fulfills this promise, killing all of Victor’s loved ones. This leads to Victor “awaken[ing] to revenge” (196), and he seeks out the creature. Victor eventually fails however, and dies. When this happens, Walton loses his chance of having a friend, and swears to kill the creature. When love is lost, it can only lead to negative emotions, which in turn causes negative actions, which breeds more loss, and the cycle continues. Shelley uses this cycle to show that while it is important to experience love, the emotions caused when love is lost or taken away are just as essential to the development of