When Victor returned to his place of birth under strange circumstances involving the death of William Frankenstein, isolation is seen in his journey where he finds the monster he created almost six years before. As he strolls through the woods during a horrible storm everything is changed. “No one can conceive the anguish I suffered during the remainder of the night, which I spent, cold and wet, in the open air. But I did not feel the inconvenience of the weather; my imagination was busy in scenes of evil and despair.” (Page 50. Line 40) Referring back to that and statements involving rain, it can be inferred that the rainstorm taking place on a dark night is a symbol. Isolation involves an alone Victor Frankenstein left to reflect on his previous…
The novel opens as Victor Frankenstein recalls his curiosity and fascination with human life. Frankenstein quickly becomes obsessed with experimenting, and he attempts to create a living being out of dead body parts. He succeeds, but his creation turns into a living monster. Exclaimed by Frankenstein, “It was the secrets of heaven and earth that I desired to learn” (Shelley 33). Victor is extremely horrified by his grotesque looking creation and falls into a severe illness. While Victor is ill, the monster escapes to the woods where he watches a family and tries to befriend the humans. But once the monster makes his presence known, the family can’t accept Frankenstein’s ugly appearance. Because all humans he encountered reject him, the monster begins to hate people and believe that they are his enemies. Frustrated, the monster returns to his creator and demands that Frankenstein makes a female companion to cure his loneliness. The creature promises Victor that he will leave with his female companion, travel to South America, and never come in contact with humans again. However, two years beforehand, the creature spitefully murdered Victor 's brother William to get back at him. Holding a grudge against his monster creation for the death of William, Victor refuses to make a friend for the monster. In an effort to make Victor as miserable as himself,…
By questioning the attributes of a human being and how one becomes integrated into society, Shelley has explored the nature of humanity through the complex characters of Frankenstein. After Victor Frankenstein, a revolutionary scientist for his time, created life using an amalgamation of body parts he rejects his grotesque Creature who becomes scarred by experiences of rejection by society and suffers from estrangement and loneliness. The Creature challenges the Romantic values of Shelley’s time, as his tendency for violence is contrasted with his yearning for returned compassion. Writers in the Romantic period explored the qualities that defined the human experience, such as compassion. The juxtaposition of the Creature’s acts of extreme violence such as the murders of Elizabeth and Clerval (Frankenstein’s wife and good friend), with the acts of kindness he hoped would integrate him into society, such as the gathering of wood for the migrant family. By juxtaposing…
In her novel Frankenstein, Mary Shelley explores a wide range of themes concerning human nature through the thoughts and actions of two main characters and a host of others. Two themes are at the heart of the story, the most important being creation, but emphasis is also placed on alienation from society. These two themes are relevant even in today's society as technology brings us ever closer to Frankenstein's fictional achievement.…
Characters with an obsession tend to segregate themselves from those around them, both physically and mentally. Isolation as a result of obsession aggravates the fixation because it creates an escape from one's important life issues, encourages insanity, and furthers the feeling that the obsession is normal or even beneficial.…
Throughout the novel, emotion of all kinds of heights and depths are explored. Shelley writes “This discovery was so great and overwhelming” (Shelley, 52), to exemplify the exhilaration Frankenstein feels exploring his interests. Frankenstein claims that he “fell senseless on the ground” (Shelley, 212) to encapsulate what he felt when Elizabeth was taken from him and the monster says “To him towards whom I have sworn eternal revenge” (Shelley, 153) to show the extent of his hate for his creator. Frankenstein in its entirety shows the whole spectrum of human emotions. From Victor Frankenstein’s perspective, the childhood and even collegiate years have have no major trauma aside from his mother’s death. Frankenstein’s childhood depicts a very elated and passionate state as he mentions “I read and studied the fancies of these writers with delight” (Shelley, 38). At this point he’s very jovial and all those he holds dear including his mother, father, Elizabeth, and Henry Clerval are all close by. Before he enters Ingolstadt, there is a marked change in his life as his mother passes away. He narrates, “It is so long before the mind can persuade itself that she whom we saw everyday and whose very existence appeared a part of her own can have departed forever” (Shelley, 43). His mother’s death causes an emotional toll on Victor and even delays his journey to Ingolstadt. Although this stage of his narration is not as jolly as his childhood, it is less terrifying than the later portion of his story. Despite the tragedy of his mother’s death, Victor is still immersed in the studies that he is passionate about while at Ingolstadt. However, he still isolates himself and his health deteriorates, as his friend Henry Clerval notes that Frankenstein looks “so thin and pale” (Shelley, 62). Frankenstein’s life makes a turn for the worse once he reaches fruition of his…
Emotional and physical isolation in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein are the most pertinent and prevailing themes throughout the novel. These themes are so important because everything the monster, Victor, and Robert Walton do or feel directly relates to their poignant seclusion. The effects of this terrible burden have progressively damaging results upon the three.…
Throughout the novel Frankenstein, many people view the creation as the monster, which on the surface is what we are seeing by reading this text. However, as pointed out by writer Josh Traynelis, by reading into the text and digging out the small details provided in the reading, people begin to believe that maybe the creator is in fact the one that deserves to be called the monster. As pointed out in “Who’s the Real Monster?” by Traynelis, “Instead it was the extreme misconceptions of humans, resulting in extreme isolation of the creature, that caused him to become a monster,” where the isolation of the creature mainly draws back to the rejection of the creator and mankind (Traynelis, 1). The creator seemed to be disappointed with his creation,…
Mary Shelley’s novel, Frankenstein, deals with two very distinct individuals: the young-but-foolish Victor Frankenstein and his creation, the “Monster”. Victor is the main focus of the novel for the beginning chapters, while the rest of the work focuses more on the development and actions of the Monster. The characters of Victor and the Monster are first brought together during the Monster’s creation in Chapter 4 (34). It was Victor’s isolation from both his family and his peers that ultimately lead to his creation of the Monster, and it was the Monster’s feelings of isolation and resentment towards Victor that lead to his violent episodes. While these feelings are evident in both characters’ actions throughout the majority of the novel, it was during the Monster’s statements to Captain Robert Walton towards the end of the story that drives home the fact that the Monster’s actions were products of his repeated rejections when he attempted to be accepted by society and as such are not indicative of his inherent nature. It was these feelings of loneliness and resentment that drove both Victor and the Monster to their actions, and it is safe to assume that some of Shelley’s personal feelings of abandonment and resentment towards her mother bled through into her characters. These feelings are made evident by way of the diction of the characters, both elements of and deviations from the Gothic stereotype, the development of the characters throughout the story and the lack of any definite closure to the text.…
All the tragedy, murder, and despair in Frankenstein occurs because of a lack of connection to either family or people in general. The true evil in Frankenstein is not Victor or FM, but isolation and solitude. When Victor becomes lost in his studies he removes himself from human society, and therefore loses sight of his responsibilities and the consequences of his actions. FM becomes vengeful not because he’s evil, but because his isolation creates overwhelming hate and anger towards Victor. It becomes clear that both FM and Victor see isolation from family and society as a worst possible outcome, and the cause of hatred, violence, and revenge. Mary Shelley demonstrates how through the themes of solitude and friendship, solitude corrupts and friendship rejuvenates, but, ultimately, nature drives all beings into solitude.…
Cultural, religious and scientific influences are deeply intertwined in Frankenstein. The novel’s cultural aspect is introduced at the beginning of the novel when Victor’s drive for knowledge is introduced, which leads to the introduction of the science aspect, in which Victor animates lifeless matter. The birth of his monster establishes the religious aspect the nature of evil becomes questionable. In this essay, Shelley’s manipulation of the religion, scientific, and cultural aspects of the novel will be analyzed. Throughout the novel Frankenstein, Shelley manipulates…
Isolation is the seperation from others whether it is emotionally or physically. Throughout Frankenstein this became a issue where they tried to destroy each other. Frankenstein creation is the most obvious victim who suffers alienation, but Victor himself suffer isolation, yet the creature suffer from defection of society due to being rejected and not accepted by others. However, isolation led to Victor and the creatures self destruction.…
To demonstrate this theory in Frankenstein, Shelley focuses on Victor Frankenstein’s attempt to create life, which results in a horrid monster or “child”. Victor chooses to create a monster out of his own selfish reasons and leaves him behind in a cruel, unforgiving world. Unlike the monster, Victor had a comfortable childhood. Born to parents who loved him and a wealth of people who supported him, Victor receives excessive attention, allowing him to adjust easily. Frankenstein’s mother died while he was young. She was the only character to die peacefully: “She died calmly, and her countenance expressed affection even in death (Shelley, 33).” He saw his mother with compassion and her death infuriated him; he referred to death as evil and fully intended on fixing that. When Frankenstein went away to study in college, his life drastically took a turn of events without the presence of his parents.…
Isolation and loneliness can do great injustices to the human brain. People are programed to function in cohabitation with others of their kind, to form relationships with them. So, when these relationships fail or seem to be absent from one’s life, the aloneness can ache. In Frankenstein by Mary Shelley, the reader sees the developing isolation of Victor Frankenstein, which can be attributed to his personality and upbringing, as well as his unwavering obsession with his scientific success.…
In Frankenstein, the author Mary Shelley portrays the creature created by Dr. Frankenstein as a figure who is rejected from society which causes his isolation, becoming an outsider to the world and everyone around him. The characters which lead to the isolation of this creature are the creature himself, Dr. Frankenstein, and basically everyone else who encounters Frankenstein other than the blind man. The main ideas which surround this novel as a whole include the subjects of prejudice, nature, revenge, family, and society. All of these themes play an important role in the creation of this novel, swaying the characters into doing things they might not originally do, such as create life from the dead or committing murder because of someone else’s actions. Society is very much at blame during nearly this entire novel because they eventually lead to the isolation of another human being, just because of their prejudices. In Frankenstein, the creature is not at fault for his actions and isolation; he only needed to work with what he was given from when he was created. I think that society is fully at fault for any isolation or damage springs from the creature, and everything else which might relate to the creature.…