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Good and Evil in Frankenstein
Mary Shelley's Frankenstein tells the story of Victor Frankenstein, who bored with his mundane life, decides to attempt to create a new life out of deceased human remains. Dr. Frankenstein's ignorance of the responsibility necessary to take care of the life that he has brought into this world leads him to abandon his creation; this abandonment leads to the Frankenstein's Monster to react violently as he attempts to find his way in the world. As a result of both Frankenstein's actions and behavior, it can be argued that the Monster's concept of and the distinction between good and evil has been blurred.
In Frankenstein, an argument can be made that there are two monsters within the narrative, Frankenstein and his creation. Frankenstein's monstrosity arises from his desire to have God-like control over the both the creation and the destruction of life. Frankenstein expressed this desire in a sonorous description; Frankenstein states that "[a]fter days and nights of incredible labour and fatigue, [he] succeeded in discovering the cause of generation and life; nay, more, [he]...
Upon realizing what he had done, and unwilling to accept the reality of the situation or take responsibility for his actions, Frankenstein abandons the Monster. It can therefore be argued that though Frankenstein's intentions to understand the relationship between life and death were good and driven by morbid curiosity, his subsequent actions and behavior could be deemed as evil.
It is through the creation and education of the Monster that the argument can be made that the Monster had the potential to be a good creation, but because he was left to fend for himself, without any sort of moral compass, the actions that he took could be considered to be evil. The Monster is forced to teach himself about human nature and behavior through anthropological observations and inquiries. Because the Monster did not have the proper guidance and upbringing, and was left to fend for himself, his concept of good and evil is distorted. For instance, when he observes the De Lacey family, he finds them to be of a good nature and admits that "What…
Works Cited:
Shelley, Mary. Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus. Project Gutenberg. Web. Retrieved
from http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/84.
Frankenstein's creation of the monster is rendered as a kind of horrific pregnancy; for example, where a pregnant woman expands with the child she is bearing and usually eats more, Frankenstein wastes away during his work, depriving himself "of rest and health" (Shelley 43). Rather than expressing any kind of paternal (or maternal) love for his creation, Frankenstein recoils, as "breathless horror and disgust filled [his] heart" (Shelley 43).
If you reanimate dead flesh then how do you kill it? Victor, on his death bed, intones to his new friend the Captain of the discovery vessel that ambition in science should be kept in check, even if that means death in anonymity. He first intones that he regrets that he is dying while the beast still lives and then warns the captain to keep his ambition in check. That he
What Victor is saying is that in order to create a living being from the dead, he must haunt the graveyards like a human ghoul and experiment on live animals to "animate" "lifeless clay," being the deceased remains of human beings. From this admission, it is abundantly obvious that Victor, like Prometheus, sees "clay" as the foundation for creation, a substance which is part of the earth itself and
My attention was fixed upon every object the most insupportable to the delicacy of the human feelings. (Shelley, 1961, p. 44) Frankenstein challenges the values of man that are based on fear and thus goes forward to create a beast that even Dante could not have conceived of. (Shelley, 1961, p. 50) He then chases the beast to his own death. The Beast on the other hand exemplifies a helpless child
It is through Shelley's doubling between Frankenstein and the Monster, and herself and Frankenstein and the Monster, that Freud's uncanny and psychological concepts of the id, ego, and superego can be analyzed. Shelley demonstrates how an individual's outward appearance is not necessarily representative of their character and at the same time is able to come to terms with the psychological traumas that plagued her -- from losing her own mother
Mary Shelley & Emily Dickinson Women's Roles Then and Now: A Dialogue between Mary Shelley and Emily Dickinson Mary and Emily are having an afternoon tea at Emily's Homestead garden. In the midst of enjoying the different flowering plants that Emily had planted in the garden, the women talked about and compared their lives way back in 19th century Western society and in the present time. MARY: I know I should not be