Explore the ways Mary Shelley presents the character of the monster in

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        Explore the ways Mary Shelley presents the character of the monster in “Frankenstein”

                                                               By Jack Nathan 4E1

                                                                           

 We are prepared for the arrival of the monster in many different ways, before he is created we know the monster is going to be a repulsive figure of a human being, but the reader is still intrigued into reading further, and because of Shelley’s descriptive language we already feel disgust towards victors creation, and in doing so, we our-selves become just as callous as those people in the book that neglect Frankenstein’s monster.

Also because the monster was created by Victor using parts dug up from graves and morgues, and we associate graveyards with horror and death, there is immediately something sinister about the monster and to a point, Victor.

The reader can already see the problems with creating artificial life in this way, and in the beginning of the novel, the reader is almost willing victor not to pursue his quest for knowledge, but victor is blinded by his own arrogance to stop and think carefully about what he is about to do. This is when Victor the man becomes separated from Frankenstein the scientist.

“I saw how the fine form of man was degraded and wasted”    Victor despises death, and his mind is occupied    incessantly with it, and after the demise of his mother, victor cannot escape it, and subconsciously he dedicates his life towards combating the process.

The instant Victor gives life to his monster, he feels a tremendous fit of loathing towards ‘his child’. When the monster awakes, so does Victor, he suddenly realises what he has done, and that he has not fully thought his actions through and consequently rejects his creation, instantly damming it, to a life of misery, Victor must have known this would have happened,  here Victor shows his child-like incapacity to take responsibility for his actions, when his monster he is laying in bed and the monster reaches out to him, in the way a new-born baby reaches out to it’s mother or father, victor reels back in shock, and instead of stopping to see what the monster wanted, he fled. But you have to ask the question, if you were there, what would you have done? This act of disregard would emotionally scar the monster, and remembers this for the rest of his short life, “No father had watched my infant days”. After this, the monster disappears into the wilderness, probably on a voyage of discovery. It’s in this part of the story Victor gets back in touch with his family while recovering from a serious illness, but during this period the Monster retires to the forest, the monster must be feeling extreme pain and anguish, being deserted the only person which can relate to a father figure. The reader feels great sympathy towards the monster at this point, as he starts to show some natural childish traits, for example discovering new things like, you shouldn’t play with fire “I thrust my hand into the live embers, but quickly drew it back with a cry of pain”

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Everything is new to the monster at this point; even blinking is new, which is something that is connected with a new-born baby. “…by opening my eyes…the light poured in upon me again”, and the monster still has no real sense of being “who was I? What was I?”

 The monster comes across a cottage in the forest, where a small family are in residence, the monster takes to watching them tend to the crops and cooking the dinner, and soon starts to learn small parts of speech, the monster begins to steal food from their supply, simply because he ...

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