Frankenstein Research Paper

Anastasia Shevchenko Professor Patricia Barker English 1302 15 November 2013 Frankenstein In Marry Shelleys Frankenstein, Victor and the monster share similar nature. Throughout the story, Victor Frankenstein and his creation share hatred towards one another. The two characters have the same objective that they are trying to achieve. They each not only value their learning through reading, but appreciate the natural world to help them cope, and have a craving for revenge when they feel it is necessary. While reading the story, the reader can see similarities between
Frankenstein and the monster’s eagerness for knowledge, gratefulness for nature, and devotion for revenge. As a young boy Frankenstein enjoyed learning new things. Victor’s determined character was what begins his disintegration. In Victor’s younger days, he enjoyed reading the books of Cornelius Agrippa. After reading these books, Victor had a different view of the world. Victor’s parents thought that he should attend the University of Ingolstadt to expand his cultural knowledge, although Victor at the time was attending the schools of Geneva. When I had attained the age of seventeen, my arents resolved that I should become a student at the University of Ingolstadt. I had hitherto attended the schools of Geneva; but my father thought it necessary, for the completion of my education, that I should be made acquainted with other customs than those of my native country’ (Shelley 25). This inspired the young Victor to attend the University of Ingolstadt to study science. “His mother’s death causes him to delay his departure by many months, but once at the university, Victor spends two years studying chemistry under the direction of M. Waldman and M. Krempe” (Guyer).
In addition, the monster himself enjoyed to learn new things. From the very first day of being created, the monster had a desire to understand the way the world worked. Just as Victor had once done, the monster came upon three books. The Sorrows of Werter, a volume of Plutarch’s Lives, and Paradise Lost were the three books that helped the monster open up his mind to the knowledge that these books had to offer him. “l learned from Werter’s imaginations despondency and gloom: but Plutarch taught me high thoughts; he elevated me above the wretched sphere of my own reflections, to admire and love the heroes of past ages…

But Paradise Lost excited ifferent and far deeper emotions” (89-90). These books shaped how the monster viewed the world around him. The monster did not only learn through reading but from the cottagers as well. “It impressed me deeply. I learned, from the views of social life which it developed, to admire their virtues, and to deprecate the vices of mankind” (88). Victor and his creation both had the passion for learning; this is what would eventually lead to their destruction. Similar to Victor, the monster appreciated nature.
They both enjoyed the views of nature; it had the effect to be able to calm them down in the awful situations. After he murder ot Victor’s son, William, Victor still tound peacetulness upon looking at the mountains. “Dear mountains! My own beautiful lake! how do you welcome your wanderer? Your summits are clear; the sky and lake are blue and placid. Is this to prognosticate peace, or to mock at my unhappiness? ” (55). “The call–a version of the lyric gesture of addressing the earth with the assumption that it can respond– establishes a relation of nativity and origination: Victor is the mountains’ as they are his.
He identifies the calm landscape as a response, but an enigmatic response that he is unable to interpret” (Guyer). Also, after gazing out the window for hours Victor “felt the silence, although I was hardly conscious of its extreme profundity’ (120). “The sublime mountainscape gives Victor a feeling of potential freedom and of mastery; however, in order to live that freedom he will have to free himself from the dead who haunt him, a freedom that may be possible only in death. Victor calls upon the dead and presents them with an alternative–give me happiness or death” (Guyer).
Victor’s creation always lived alone, and in that state of loneliness he found comfort in the natural environment he resided in. Soon after the creature was created he had a ifficult time remembering the original era of his being. All of a sudden “a strange multiplicity of sensations seized me, and I saw, felt, heard, and smelt, at the same time… ” (70). At first, the monster was surprised when spring came and he saw nature begin to bloom. His senses heightened and became revived. “It surprised me, that what before was desert and gloomy should now bloom with the most beautiful flowers and verdure.
My senses were gratified and refreshed by a thousand scents of delight, and a thousand sights of beauty’ (80). Victor and the creature shared a love for nature and the way it could soothe them. While loneliness filled their hearts and souls, Victor and the monster both turned to nature for refuge. As the reader gets deeper in to the story, one begins to notice that both Victor and his creation were filled with a voracious reprisal. After the monster found victor in his room he was filled with anger miou have destroyed the work which you began; what is it that you intend? ” (120).
In addition, the monster asked “endured incalculable fatigue, and cold, and hunger; do you dare destroy my hopes? ” (120). Subsequent to the monster braking in to Victor’s room and escaping in his own boat, Victor was filled with rage. The night passed away, and the sun rose from the ocean; my feelings became calmer, if it may be called calmness, when the violence of rage sinks into the depths of despair” (121). One main event that started the quench for the undying hatred and sorrow was the death of Victor’s son, William. The monster decided to give the humans one last chance.
When he stumbled upon a child, “suddenly, as I gazed on him, an idea seized me, that this little creature was unprejudiced, and had lived too short of a time to have imbibed a horror of deformity’ (100). Soon after his encounter with the child, the monster realized that the young boy was Just like veryone else he has met. “Hideous monster! Let me go; my papa is a Syndic-he is M. Frankenstein-he would punish you. You dare not keep me” (100). The creature also learned that the child he gave one last chance to was the son of Victor Frankenstein. “Frankenstein! ou belong then to my enemy-to him towards whom I have sworn eternal revenge; you shall be my first victim” (100). Soon after the creature strangled the child, he saw something on his chest, it was a picture of a beautiful woman “For a few moments I gazed with delight on her dark eyes, fringed by deep lashes, and her lovely lips; but presently my rage returned:” (100). This is when the monsters downfall began. “It is thus that, too often in society, those who are best qualified to be its benefactors and its ornaments, are branded by some accident with scorn, and changed, by neglect and solitude of heart, into a scourge and a curse” (Shelley).
The creation wanted revenge on Victor because he felt neglected and abandoned. “Frankenstein’s moral failure is his heedless pursuit to know all that he might about life without taking any responsibility for his acts. His “sin” is not solely in creating the monster, but in abandoning him to orphanhood at his birth” (Griffith). As a result, the ctions of the two characters in the course of the novel become very apparent to the reader that both Victor and his creation live for revenge.
After reading the literature the reader can effortlessly identify the similar characteristics between Victor Frankenstein and his creation. They both had the desire to expand their knowledge and learn new things. Each one of them read different books that changed the way they viewed the world. They were each mesmerized by the world’s natural beauty and what it could bring them. Victor and his creation both turned to nature that helped them during the most gloomy time. Even though they were able to see the beauty in the world, each one of them had a dark side.
Victor abandoned his creation right after he was created. The monster himself later killed a lot of people do to neglect. They both sought revenge. Victor wanted to kill the monster for destroying his family, the monster after being neglected by his creator and all the people he had met, decided he wasn’t going to give the human raise another chance after being rejected by the little boy who he thought was unprejudiced. With as many differences that Victor and the monster have, knowledge, nature, and revenge will always be common factors that they hare.