Frankenstein Offers a Great Analysis

¶ … Frankenstein" offers a great analysis of two characters who one would think have absolutely nothing in common, while providing a glimpse into how similar they really are to each other. However, it is Victor who turns out to be the greater monster in this story. Victor created the Monster who ends up murdering Victor's loved ones, and Victor shaped the Monster's personality. Even though it can be argued that the Monster who killed was the bigger villain, it was indeed Victor who started everything in the first place.

Victor and the Monster were both victims of this entire situation. Victor's high intellect and extreme curiosity lead him to create the Monster, whom he saw as being the ultimate creation. However, because of the Monster's appearance, one that Victor had full control over, the Monster was shunned, "Oh! No mortal could support the horror of that countenance. A mummy again endued with animation could not be so hideous as that wretch." Victor on the other hand, did not have to deal with the act of being discriminated against because of his physical appearance. He could not relate, nor understand the neglect that the Monster felt over being seen as just that, a monster. In having no empathy for his creation, Victor is the bigger monster.

The Monster was in the wrong when he committed the crimes against Victor's loved ones, however, the Monster did not hide away from his actions the way that Victor did. Victor was unable to confront the fact that he had created the Monster. He was ashamed of being the one who came up with such a thing, and instead of accepting responsibility for his actions, he instead hides away, making himself disappear from society and the outside world. Victor also refuses to accept that it was him who had caused the Monster so much pain. It was Victor who had created an incomplete project when masterminding the Monster because he did not thoroughly think through what the next step would be after the Monster came to life. Once again, proving Victor's characteristic monstrosity.

The way that both these respective characters treated others and one another, provides a more in depth view into how each Victor and the Monster truly were. From the beginning Victor was an ambitious, well educated, and well-informed individual. His ideas were big at the time, and he wanted to do anything possible to get ahead in his scientific career. Without thinking about his creation's feelings, Victor made the Monster with the intent of creating life. He had no intention of ever caring what would happen to the Monster, nor was he concerned about how others felt about his creation. The Monster on the other hand, had a desperate need to be loved and wanted. He would do anything in order to be accepted by his society, but that did not happen. Even when the Monster saved the young girl from drowning, he was not celebrated as being a hero. His physical appearance always overrode any act of kindness, and he was still treated like a Monster. The Monster resented his creator, Victor, for this; he never forgot it.

In the end, both Victor and the Monster were one in the same. They were both individuals who ended up alone. All either one of them ever wanted was to be loved, cared, and respected, however, neither one of them received that. Even though they hated each other, they were still the only thing the other had. When Victor died, the Monster's true feelings came out, "I, the miserable and the abandoned, am an abortion, to be spurned at, and kicked, and trampled on." It was at this point that a glimpse into the Monster's pain was apparent. The Monster who had always been an unwanted life, had to bear the rejection from not only society, but his own creator. The Monster's suffering was the root of all his murders, and Victor the cause of all his pain. It was at this point that the monstrosity of Victor's character is understood better, making Victor the greater monster in the story.

2.)

The poem "Lines Composed a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey" encompasses everything that the Romantic period had to offer. The physical aspect that the poem can portray, and the feeling that reading invokes makes this one of great substance and significance. The deep connection with Nature, is one that makes this poem a part of the Romantic Era's history, encapsulating a part of history in its lines.

The poem provides very rich description that invokes feeling; that is what the Romantic Period is all about. "Here, under this dark sycamore, and view / These plots of cottage ground, these orchard tufts, / Which at this season, with their unripe fruits, / Are clad in one green hue, and lose themselves / 'Mid groves and copses..." Providing the readers with a picture of his surroundings, the readers connect more with how the character is feeling and the readers themselves start to feel that feeling. Romanticism is all about providing a rich substance that allows one to feel and emphasize. This poem did just that.

The character in this poem compares himself with his surroundings, forming a connection that ties them as one. His appreciation for the growth of nature, as it has changed from his childhood is portrayed. He has also changed since the last time he was at that location. "These beauteous forms, / Through a long absence, have not been to me / as is a landscape to a blind man's eye." The connection formed between man and nature encapsulates what Romanticism stands for. It relates how an individual could feel, and demonstrates the childhood connection that every individual makes with nature.

As in most Romantic Era literature, the sense of lost is also portrayed in this poem. The lines "look on nature, not as in the hour / of thoughtfulness youth; but hearing oftentimes / the still, sad music of humanity," give off a sense of regretting losing that childhood feeling. He could no longer foolishly run among nature as he once did, he nows stands afar regretting his lack of appreciation for it and his inability to value it beauty before. Not being able to value something at the time of occurrence is a feeling that is portrayed in this poem. The narrator makes the connection between how the character is feeling at the moment, with how he felt in the past, and how he should have felt in the past. Making this point clear, he demonstrates his vivid recollection, making the readers more involved in the poem.