Peter Cushing

Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein centers around the life of Victor Frankenstein and the monster he created. Victor’s life starts out quite well he had a happy childhood but it all goes downhill when he is introduced to a book regarding the sciences of Agrippa. The book leads him down the path of making his monster. The monster searches for love and affection from his creator but is denied when Victor runs away from him. The monster goes into human society instead find the love but regrets his intentions and goes to seek for revenge on his creator. As a he result Victor’s life becomes a living hell due to the monster. Jean Jacques Rousseau was a Swiss philosopher whose theories were based around the effects of society on people. He thought that society corrupted people’s wants and desires and as a remedy he wanted to make sure that children were taught from the outset that not everything was possible to attain. Rousseau’s ideas feature in the novel by showing the effects of society’s corruption on the monster and Frankenstein. According to Rousseau, in the beginning of their lives, people are naturally born good. Victor, reminiscing on his childhood feels this sentiment. “I feel exquisite pleasure in dwelling on the recollections of childhood, before misfortune had tainted my mind, and changed its bright visions of extensive usefulness into gloomy and narrow reflections upon self” (27). Victor finds his childhood “exquisitely pleasurable” subject because for him I was such a great…

As the creator of the creature, Dr. Frankenstein chooses to turn it away and destroys the female monster that is the last happiness the creature can have which lead the creature kills other people and his family. Before Dr. Frankenstein created the creature, he called himself father of it. Surprisingly, Dr. Frankenstein decides to abandon his “child” at the first sight of its ugly appearance. He appears to be relentless because he abandons a creature who has no ability to live alone. The…

When one is asked to think of their idea of a monster, they usually come up with something along the lines of no emotions, no remorse, and pure disgust. On the contrary, two prominent novels in literature, Grendel by John Gardner and Frankenstein by Mary Shelley, claim that monsters can indeed show emotions and the ability to reason as a normal human being. Both novels introduce a physically hideous monster on the outside, isolated from the rest of the world. These two creatures are shown to…

In Frankenstein, by Mary Shelley, cruelty is the emphasized theme in majority of the development of the plot. Victor Frankenstein, conducts a deceitful expedition to inherit satisfaction into creating a life, but over a course of time, Victor and his monstrous creation became dumbfounded by their own egocentric aspiration and aggrieved condemnation, in which it concluded into an appalling adversity for both Victor and his monstrous creation. Mary Shelley demonstrated to the audience that it is…

The Difficult Path to Finding a Place of Belonging. The tension between the creature created by Victor Frankenstein and the community was inevitable due to the creature being the other, the only one of his kind. However, the difference in appearance is not a valid reason to dehumanize an individual who is striving to be a part of the community. Prior to the creature becoming alive, in no way was he considered hideous in appearance to his creator. Victor stated, “I began the creation of a human…

‘Mad, bad and dangerous’, how accurate is this description of Gothic villains in the texts studied? The quote ‘mad, bad and dangerous to know’ was originally attributed to Lady Caroline Lamb in description of Lord Byron. The Romantic poet was infamous for his behaviour: excesses including huge debts, numerous affairs and aristocratic living. In the Gothic context, however, the concepts of ‘madness’, ‘evil’ and ‘danger’ take differing, more threatening forms. The role of the ‘villains’ in…

Frankenstein: The Result of Too Much Ambition The 1818 story of Frankenstein by Mary Shelley tells the story of Victor Frankenstein and his over desire to create life from death. After having a normal upbringing, Victor’s life turns upside down when his creature creates more problems than expected. It’s a story of caution, as that begins in the present and flashes back to see where Victor went wrong. The book has many themes, one of the biggest being ambition. It asks, when is too much ambition…

In 1818, Mary Shelley personified the shortcomings of society’s morality in the form of a destructive, ruthless, yet nearly human monster. During an era in which the Industrial Revolution saw the prosperity of the upper class directly lead to the death and poverty of the working class, Shelley wrote Frankenstein to challenge the presence of cultural inhumanity. Shelley’s novel chronicles the life of scientist Victor Frankenstein, whose studies and ambition lead to the creation of a living being…

Isolation in Frankenstein “Solitude was my only consolation – deep, dark, deathlike solitude.” In chapters 9 and 10 Victor Frankenstein isolates himself from his family and all the people that reminded him of the monster that he has created. We also see isolation in the creation of Frankenstein’s monster in chapters 11 and 12. Isolation is the state of being separated from other people. Victor Frankenstein and the monster isolated themselves from society, but for different reasons and it…

On its face, Frankenstein is the creation story of a man-made human, turned monster. In reality, this tale is not about the creation of human, but rather the monstrous quality of devaluing a human. In short, Victor makes a human by hand, labels it a monster. He spends the rest of the story becoming a monster himself because he refuses to acknowledge the humanity of his creation. Here, to dehumanize a person is a monstrous act. Dehumanization is a broad term for things like: marginalization,…