The Main Theme Of Frankenstein Essay Research — страница 2

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advising him of what to do with what he had created. His entire venture was done in secret, in self-imposed isolation. Through his obsession he isolated himself from any form of community. While bringing his child into the world he was himself alienated from society. Parenting had become for him an issue of possession, ownership and self-aggrandizement. One could say that Victor lived for and through his child or what that child promised until that child became a separate being from him. Victor in essence experienced the burden of loneliness in parenting and didn’t have the character to cope with it. One wonders if Mary Shelley gleaned this theme from her own experience. She had a mother who disappeared immediately upon birth and a father who was left to carry out the

responsibility of child rearing on his own. One of his self-expressed reasons for a quick remarriage was the need to have someone other than himself care for his children. In the aftermath of her mother dying, did Mary think, as many children do, that she was the cause of her death? Did Mary feel the same as her sister Fanny, that her existence was a life-extracting burden on those who loved her? Fanny’s last words included this self-evaluation: “…whose life has only been a series of pain to those persons who have hurt their health in endeavoring to promote her welfare.” Although it is by no means certain that this is the motive for Mary highlighting the experience of loneliness, one has to consider it entirely possible. If we can empathize with the pain of the parent we

must be even more touched by the plight of the child, a creature brought into the world and immediately abandoned who because of his hideousness could not expect a surrogate. Telling the tale of his progress to Frankenstein, the Creature recounts his first encounter with civilization. Carroll 4 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 kinds of missile weapons, I escaped to the open country, and fearfully took refuge in a low hovel, quite bare, and making a wretched appearance after the palaces I had beheld in the village. This ugly child is not without his endearing qualities. He, like all living beings,

stands in awe and reverence toward the universe. As the moon moves through the sky he gazes in wonder. This monster appreciates the love of the DeLacey family and is moved by higher culture as he develops. Sadly he is even rejected by the family that inadvertently modeled what love was. The beauty of their love only mocked his lonely existence and increased his pain. But where were my friends and relations? No father had watched my infant days, no mother had blessed me with smiles and caresses; or if they had, all my past life was now a blot, a blind vacancy in which I distinguished nothing. From my earliest remembrance I had been as I then was in height and proportion. I had never yet seen a being resembling me, or who claimed any intercourse with me. What was I? The question

again recurred, to be answered only with groans. Upon reading the journal of his creator, the Monster finally attributes blame to Victor Frankenstein: I sickened as I read. “Hateful day when I received life!” I exclaimed in agony. “Accursed creator! Why did you form a monster so hideous that even you turned from me in disgust? God, in pity, made man beautiful and alluring, after his own image; but my form is a filthy type of yours, more horrid even from the very resemblance. Satan had his companions, fellow-devils, to admire and encourage him; but I am solitary and abhorred.” The abandoned Creature finally set the terms of a truce with his Creator in an effort to establish Carroll 5 justice. He will either be recompensed for his suffering existence through the creation of

a mate or he will wreck his wrath on his Creator. Yet you, my creator, detest and spurn me, thy creature, to whom thou art bound by ties only dissoluble by the annihilation of one of us. You purpose to kill me. How dare you sport thus with life? Do your duty towards me, and I will do mine towards you and the rest of mankind. If you will comply with my conditions, I will leave them and you at peace; but if you refuse, I will glut the maw of death, until it be satiated with the blood of your remaining friends. Mary Shelley’s father, William Godwin, was convinced that the isolated individual would become vicious. His belief was obviously shared by Mary his daughter. Mary, however, had something to add to Godwin’s proposition and that was that viciousness is the product of