Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
Frankenstein by Mary Shelley is a narrative that brilliantly illustrates life, death, desolation, vengeance, ignorance, and the fundamental human sin of behaving like God. The primary purpose of Shelley’s writing of this narrative is to demonstrate how futile it is for humans to play God, no matter how hard they try. The narrative weaves together the themes mentioned above and builds to a climax in which both the creator and the creation, an inanimate creature composed of rotting corpses, cease to exist. In essence, Victor Frankenstein, a young scientist seeking to discover the mystery of life, is killed by nature. At the same time, his creation, an eight-foot-tall walking corpse, commits suicide due to profound melancholy and loneliness. This paper examines the themes of knowledge and family in a comprehensive and interpretive manner to illustrate how the narrative of Frankenstein relates to the nineteenth century.
Theme of Family
Frankenstein shows that family is the most crucial thing in life. Many families in the book, like the Frankensteins and the DeLaceys, are stable and perfect and they are almost too good to be true. Most of the horror and pain in the book, on the other hand, comes from characters losing touch with their families or never having them. Frankenstein says that his wrong choice to make the Monster was because he was away from his family. “If the study to which you apply yourself tends to weaken your affections and to destroy your taste for those simple pleasures in which no alloy can mix, then that study is certainly unlawful, that is to say, not befitting the human mind,” he says. (Shelley ch.4). The Monster also says that not having a family is to blame for his pain: “I was dependent on no one and related to no one.” As a means of pleading with Frankenstein, the Monster claims that the fact that he has no family is what has made him a murderer. On the other hand, Frankenstein is the Monster’s father, so he does have a family. Frankenstein says to himself before making the Monster, “No father could claim the gratitude of his child as completely as I should deserve.” Instead, throughout the book, Frankenstein and the creature try to kill each other. Frankenstein shows that family is an essential thing in life.
As the narrative progresses, it concentrates mainly on the concept of losing touch with the realities of family and love in the search for knowledge. This is instantly apparent in the letters Walton sends to his sibling Margaret Saville at the beginning of the novel. In this instance, Walton, in quest of a passage to the Pacific, disregards his sister’s feelings and risks his life. Walton soon becomes stranded on the ice, jeopardizing his primary purpose of finding the passage and his connections with his family, notably his sister. Similar to Walton, Victor discovers his fascination with the natural world. This fixation, or obsession, is the beginning of Victor’s demise, as it causes him to become estranged from his loved ones.
Furthermore, Mary Shelley constantly discusses the significance of family in maintaining a person’s sanity and the negative ramifications of ignoring or being ignored by family. When Victor Frankenstein begins to narrate his narrative, he remarks that “no youth could have passed more joyfully than his” (Baumann, p.71). His parents were in love with him, and a loving group of friends encircled him. As a youngster, he had the freedom to do what he wanted with his life and pursue his dreams, unlike other children. Once he departed for college and began his studies, he became so engrossed in his work that he stopped communicating with the people who had adored him for so many years which significantly impacted his development.
This eventually led to his end since the project he was so dedicated to ended up directly or indirectly murdering most of the people he loved. This may have been Mary Shelley’s method of advising the reader to prioritize family time before it is too late. Frankenstein was finally reunited with his family after completing his creation. However, their happy days were short-lived as they began to die at the creature’s hands, and Frankenstein constantly grew ill. Suppose Victor had kept in contact with his family throughout his time at Ingolstadt. In that case, he may have grasped the degree to which his project would be destructive and attempted to retain the same quality and enjoyment in his life while away at school.
In contrast to his creator, the Monster that Frankenstein made did not grow up in a joyful, nutritious environment. As a result of being rejected from the start, he cried to Victor, “You, my creator, despise and avoid me, thy creation, to whom thou art tied by links that the extinction of one of us can only sever” (Davison et al., p.68). After months of silent observation, the creature even tried to form a family with people who were not his creator by joining the family that had been watching him. The Monster could not find a family that would embrace him as a member because of his appearance.
There is a parallel between the circumstances of the Monster and that of Frankenstein, notwithstanding their differences. They did not suffer similarly, but the lack of someone with whom to open up about their problems caused them some discomfort. Victor’s disregard for his family to focus on his work made him very fragile and sick. The embarrassment he felt for making the Monster impacted his physical health. On the other side, the creature’s lack of companionship and inability to connect to others prompted him to act aggressively in response to his rage.
Theme of Knowledge
The theme of knowledge is evident in Frankenstein’s book in various ways. Frankenstein is centered on the quest for knowledge, as Victor seeks to surpass acknowledged human boundaries and discover the mystery of life. Similarly, Robert Walton endeavors to exceed past human adventures by reaching the North Pole. In the end, Victor’s act of creation results in the death of everyone he cares about, and Walton is trapped in an ice sheet that threatens to crush him to death (Shelley, p.456). On the other hand, Walton learns from Victor’s example that the hunger for knowledge may be lethal, and he abandons his risky search for knowledge. At the beginning of the narrative, Victor describes his enthusiasm and ambition to create a human, which has never been done before. He believes he must create this Monster to fulfill his responsibilities to humanity. Victor’s statement, “A new species would bless me as its creator and source” (Shelley, p.55), reveals his first thought about the creation of the Monster. Shelley used the terms “bless” and “creator” to demonstrate how Frankenstein’s creature would worship him as a human deity.
As a result of the information he was acquiring, Frankenstein was unaware of how it may affect others. After creating the Monster, Frankenstein gets a letter from his father informing him that William, his younger brother, has been killed. Victor then travels to Geneva and learns that the creature slew his brother. He suspects this murder was committed by the creature he sees lurking near where Williams’ corpse was discovered. Shelley guides us through this time and portrays Frankenstein’s uncertainty. He regrets that he “had unleashed into the world a vile creature who delighted in violence and sorrow” ( Shelley 78). Victor tries to make life and find out how to live forever, but all he ends up doing is making a monster that kills his loved ones. TS- Lastly, Frankenstein shows that people are what make us happy. Looking at the Monster, you can tell he is sad because he does not have anyone else to talk to. When he talks to his creator, the Monster says, “Give me a creature of the opposite sex who is just as ugly as I am. Oh, my creator, make me happy” (Shelley p. 175). This theme lets the reader know that characters who do not have friends or family are unhappy and that characters who lose their friends or family will also lose their happiness. To be clear, the themes in Frankenstein help us understand what the book is about and what it means.
Works Cited
Baumann, Rebecca. Frankenstein 200: the birth, life, and resurrection of Mary Shelley’s monster. Indiana University Press, 2018. Web.
Davison, Carol Margaret, and Marie Mulvey-Roberts, eds. Global Frankenstein. Springer, 2018. Web.
Shelley, Mary, and Gillie Bolton. “frankenstein.” Medicine and Literature. CRC Press, 2018. 35-52. Web.