Preview

Victor's Inhumanity In Frankenstein Research Paper

Satisfactory Essays
Open Document
Open Document
906 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
Victor's Inhumanity In Frankenstein Research Paper
Samantha Fuller
Dr. Ted Billy
ENLT 109W
24 February 2015
The Creature’s Humanity and Victor’s Inhumanity
Who is the real monster in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein? It seems obvious to many that the real monster would be the creature forged by Victor Frankenstein. Victor Frankenstein is a scientist with the extreme goal to reanimate the deceased. He is passionate in his work. So passionate that he distances himself from the ones he loves. Fully enveloped in his quest, Victor successfully brings a creature into being. In the process of creating the creature, Victor Frankenstein himself becomes the monster.
When the creature is first awakened, he has no concepts of good and evil. He knows nothing. The creature can be likened to a newly born baby,
…show more content…
Seeking out love and attention, the creature is ultimately denied by everyone. The creature is lonely. The creature learns how to read and talk during his time spent in the woods. The creature learns speech by observing the De Lacey family from their window. He becomes intelligent. When the creature decides that he wants finally meet the family, they are repulsed by him and shoo him away. The creature shows compassion when he rescues a young woman from drowning, but he is not in any way rewarded with kindness for his good deeds. After reading the notes left by Frankenstein in his pocket, the creature sets off in search of his creator. The creature vows war on …show more content…
He then becomes ill from the thought of creating such a hideous thing. “But I was in reality very ill; and surely nothing but the unbounded and unremitting attentions of my friend could have restored me to life. The form of the monster on whom I had bestowed existence was forever before my eyes, and I raved incessantly concerning him” (39). Frankenstein worries so much about his monster, which he was proud of, before it came to life, that he falls very ill. Frankenstein falls so ill on the search for his monster that he eventually dies. Not only does Frankenstein die in pursuit of the creature, but his friends and family are

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Good Essays

    Victor Frankenstein and the Creature appear to be completely different people. But their personalities it stands out that they are a mirror image of each other. The creature and Victor both share a strong love of knowledge but they can’t control their obsession with it so it often results in tragedy. Victor became obsessed with the science and creation of life. The Creature on the other hand became obsessed with humans. The creature observed a poor family that lived in a cottage and became obsessed with learning about them. The creature approaches the family trying to make friends and gets ran off for his looks and he learns that humans are quick to judge. The creature begins to grow a hate for humans because he realizes that he will never…

    • 370 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    As ironic as it seems, and for the many differences shown between Victor and the Monster in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, there are also various similarities between these two characters. The way they want to learn, they way they used to love but now hate the world, and the great sense of remorse they feel at the end. Both, Victor and the Monster, had a great desire for learning. For Victor it was more about studying and becoming fully educated in the sciences. As for the monster however: he was more interested in learning about human life, “but how was this possible when [the monster] did not even understand the sounds for which they stood as signs?” (p. 98) He learned to speak from listening and learning from humans talk. For Victor “natural philosophy, and particularly chemistry… became nearly his sole occupation.” They are both extremely fast learners and were able to learn the things they studied very quickly.…

    • 482 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The text finally uses the interaction between Victor and the Monster to display the similarities of their misfortunes, but then completely contrasts the two characters, leading readers to create a larger conclusion about the text. At the end of the Monster’s life story he demands a companion emphasizing Victor’s role in his misfortunes: “Instead of threatening, I am contest to reason with you. I am malicious because I am miserable. Am I not shunned and hated by all mankind? You, my creator, would tear me to pieces, and triumph… and would not call it murder” (104). The texts ironically portrays the Monster as the responsible figure attempting to change his future contrasting him to the human who refuses to participate in a self-determined change of fate. Due to the fact that the Monster is dependent on a human creator, no decision he makes can ultimately change the fate of his misfortune. Victor on the other hand not only has the choice of the Monster’s happiness in his hands, but also his own fate. By displaying the Monsters inability to change his destiny, the text emphasizes the…

    • 368 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    He is abandoned by Frankenstein after he is created. “It was dark when I awoke; I felt cold also, and half frightened, as it were instinctively, finding myself so desolate.” The creature is frightened because he is lonely and doesn’t know what to do because no one had spoken to him since he had been created. In Branagh’s film interpretation, the creature is compared to a baby: He is created in amniotic fluid and can’t walk properly. That makes you have even more sympathy for the creature because it is like Frankenstein is abandoning a baby. The creature isn’t accepted by anyone just because of his looks. “…I had hardly placed my foot within the door, before the children shrieked, and one of the women fainted. The whole village was roused; some fled, some attacked me, until, grievously bruised by stones and many other missile weapons, I escaped to the open country…” You feel sympathy for the creature because he can’t go anywhere where there are people without being attacked as the people assume that he is a bad person based on his looks. As no one accepts him, the creature is always lonely. The creature is seen to be kind, especially at the cottage. “This trait of kindness moved me sensibly. I had been accustomed, during the night, to steal a part of their store for my own consumption; but when I found that in doing this I inflicted pain on the cottagers, I abstained, and satisfied myself with berries,…

    • 3235 Words
    • 13 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    Victor’s rejection and abandonment of the creature and many other people’s subsequent rejection of the creature, based on appearance, reminds the reader of how society (both in Shelley’s era and in the modern day), can and do reject those who are different and Shelley cultivates more sympathy from the reader this way. Frankenstein has had love and support from family all his life, by showing us Frankenstein’s childhood and then showing us his acts toward the creature readers are positioned to think of how callous, selfish and awful Frankenstein is as he rejects the creature and does not deem him worthy. Frankenstein tells the readers of his charmed childhood and because of this the reader thinks he’s a decent man, you also admire how he loves…

    • 463 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    In Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, Victor Frankenstein and the monster that he creates are very similar. Frankenstein being a great man had his wants and needs even though he studied things that people thought to be ungodly and just wrong. Frankenstein creates the monster to be like himself although the monster has super human strength and is almost eight feet tall. Victor worked very hard trying to create the monster not noticing that he was creating the monster in his image.…

    • 998 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    He gathers wood, cleans snow and performs other tasks without requesting anything in exchange. When he realizes he has been stealing food from a poor family he feels guilt and stops from taking more. The creature is naturally good. The turning point of the creature's characteristics is when he discovers the journal of his creator, Victor. In the journal the gruesome details of his creation are written in great detail and the creature realizes, "everything is related in them which bears reference to my accursed origin; the whole detail of the series of disgusting circumstances which produced it is set in view; the minutest descriptions of my odious and loathsome person is given"(Shelley 118). The creature realizes that the person that should have loved him unconditionally is the one that abandoned him in disgust. However, his heart still carries shreds of hope and he tries one final time to join human society by seeking help from the elder De Lacey. This fails, unfortunately, as Felix enters the cottage and beats the creature away, thinking it was attacking his…

    • 845 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    It became apparent that the creature inherited these traits from Frankenstein following the creature’s artificial birth. Just like Frankenstein, the creature had a yearning to become intelligent and absorb knowledge. In the meantime the creature begun to understand the ways of a poor family he came across, the Delacys who lived in the same woods like himself. The creature began a relationship with the family by stealing their food unknowing of his actions eventually proving wrong and initiated harm towards humans, but from then on the creature stops stealing from the Delacy’s and begun to help better their lives instead by providing them with firewood at night. It became evident that the creature gained knowledge from the Delacy’s when he contemplates the family's way of speech sequentially allowing him to understand the English language articulately. In the meantime Frankenstein and his creation meet again long after he made his creation and the creature explains how he first felt when he came to life saying, “A strange multiplicity of sensations seized me, and I saw, felt, heard, and…

    • 788 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Three events led to the creature’s turning point at which he started doing evil things. He was completely rejected by society when the DeLaceys chased him away, when [they] shot him after he saved a girl from downing, and when he discovered Victor Frankenstein’s papers describing his disgust in his creation. These overwhelmingly negative experiences led the creature to commit evil deeds. He was angered that he was forced to live an isolated life, even by his own creator. The creature was driven to murder Victor Frankenstein’s closest family and friends because of his immense…

    • 851 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    It is here where the creature tells of his true nature. He is a being only wanting sympathy and compassion not unlike the wanting of most men. When he first meets people in a village he is immediately hated. He does not yet understand why and wishes only for the friendship and understanding. His next attempt is with a family living in a small cottage near the woodlands of which the monster resides. Learning from his previous encounter with the village people he waits months to attempt speaking to the cottagers. When he does he is only accepted by the blind father, but this joy is short lived by the creature for the son of the man immediately upon his return to the cottage throws the being out in an attempt to “save” their father from the retched beast. It is here after that the beast learns that the only being he can gain sympathy from would be one of his own species, however, only his creator can make him a companion. Frankenstein firstly agrees to the task only to realize what this would mean to the world and destroys his work before it is finished. This is the final blow the monster and he becomes ever more so blood…

    • 551 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The Creature could not bare to be alone, so he sought out Victor and asked to make him a girlfriend and said that he would leave and live in the forest with her and not harm anyone, but Victor denied his request and the creature snapped. That was something that the Creature cared about and Victor took that away from him, and the creature decided to take away the things he cared about starting with his little brother William Frankenstein. On Victor’s Honeymoon night the Creature snuck in and Strangled his new wife Elizabeth Lavenza, Victor’s hatred for the creature was indescribable he was so repulsed that he could have created something that terrible.…

    • 724 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    From his birth, the creation wishes to find companionship. While searching for food in the forest, he comes upon a village, the people inside either fear, attack, or throw stones at him. This reaction happening very early in the creature’s life shaped his perceptions of humans throughout the novel. He fears interacting with humans, yet yearns for their company. The humans have a power over him and his actions around them. Another instance of the power when the creature attempts to connect with DeLacey, knowing that since he is blind he will not react in fear or prejudice, while the conversation starts off friendly, when the rest of the family come home and see the creature Agatha faints, Safie runs out of the cottage, and Felix attacks him. This breaks the creature’s heart because the idealized expectations he had of the family crumbled the moment they saw him when he had dreamed that they would be the ones to finally accept him. This rejection spurs his revenge on…

    • 736 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    In the story, Frankenstein begins the fabrication of the Creature at the University of Ingolstadt in Ingolstadt. He openly admits isolating himself from friends and family for two years due to his obsession with bringing the creature to life. Victor Frankenstein says, “I pursued nature to her hiding-places...which made me the neglect the scenes around me caused me also to forget those friends...whom I had not seen for long time.” (33). This isolation only seems to get worse when the Creature comes to life and fear…

    • 648 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Ambiguity In Frankenstein

    • 1567 Words
    • 7 Pages

    For example, he understands that he only wanted revenge on Victor and he wishes that he had not been created. This can be seen when the creature says, “CURSED, CURSED creator! Why did I live? Why in that instant, did I not extinguish the spark of existence… despair had not yet taken possession of me; my feelings were of those of rage and have revenge. I could with pleasure have destroyed the cottage and its inhabitants…” (97). Therefore, showing that even though he knew that he could have killed the cottagers for rejecting him he realized that it would only be out of revenge and he asks why Victor had not killed him before. Moreover, at the end of the novel the creature's rage and hatred is gone after finding out that Victor has died. The creature tells Walton that he never meant to hurt anyone, he says, “Oh, Frankenstein! generous and self-devoted being! what does it avail that I now ask thee to pardon me? I, who irretrievably destroyed thee by destroying all thou lovedst.” (163). The creatures asks Victor to forgive him for all the evil he has caused and the torture that he put him through because he feels guilty for all that he has done. This reveals that the creature was a good person even though he had committed murders, because he was able to realize that what he was doing was bad and he went to ask for forgiveness because of the guilt he…

    • 1567 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Frankenstein

    • 1524 Words
    • 7 Pages

    An innocent woman, Justine, is sentenced to death for the murder. Frankenstein believes he is helpless to stop this. The “monster” seeks out Frankenstein, who treats him badly, but is reminded by the “monster” that he “Is thy creation, I ought to be thy Adam.” The “monster” tells him, “I was benevolent and good; misery made me a friend. Make me happy and I shall again be virtuous.” Frankenstein agrees to listen to the monster’s story. The monster describes his life, living as an animal in the woods.…

    • 1524 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Powerful Essays