How does Mary Shelley create sympathy for the creation?

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Gemma Chantler 11E

                           How does Mary Shelley create sympathy for the creation?

Mary Shelley’s novel ‘Frankenstein’ is a memorable gothic tale. A gothic novel focuses on the mysterious and the supernatural. In ‘Frankenstein’ Mary Shelley uses mysterious circumstances for Victor to create his monster. She uses the supernatural element of raising the dead and she researched into the science that was unknown to most readers. She causes us to question Victor’s use and treatment of the dead for his dream experiment. She uses a laboratory for Victor to create his monster. The average reader did not know about laboratories and scientific experiments, therefore this added an element of mystery and gloom to the story. This was relevant to the historical period when people were questioning the morality of experiments on humans. Victor is referred to as a modern Prometheus because he rebelled against the laws of nature by making an unnatural man for his own benefit.

Mary Shelley was inspired by a book she read whilst writing Frankenstein. She was reading ‘Emile’ by French philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau. He says

“ Men are made evil by society. Men become monsters by the way they are treated.”

In this essay I am going to be writing about how Mary Shelley creates sympathy for the creation. I will be discussing the way that Victor treats his own creation and the way the creation feels when he gets mistreated by his own creator and by society.

From his very first thoughts, Victor Frankenstein believes that he can create new life from death. He worked constantly at his dream of creation and started to get so obsessed with his work that he forgot all about his friends and family that he had left behind at home. He worked non-stop for two years hoping to make discoveries that no one else had made. He had dreams of positive things coming about through creating new life. Victor started collecting body parts and began putting together the new life form. When he brings his creation alive, all his hopes and dreams fade away and he was disappointed with what he had created. He describes his creation as a catastrophe and he starts to regret what he has done.

‘I beheld the wretch…the miserable monster whom I had created.’

This creates sympathy with the creation because the reader knows that the creation is not being given a chance and his own creator is abandoning him at birth.

From the creation’s story we see that he compares himself to Adam. He links himself to being like Adam, because like him the creation is like no other being on earth.

‘ Like Adam I was apparently united by no link to any other being in existence; but his state was far different from mine in every other aspect’

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Unlike Adam though who had ‘come forth from the hands of god a perfect creature’

Frankenstein’s creature is hideously formed.

        It is obvious from the birth of Victor’s creation that he is not happy with what he has created. He calls his own creation a ‘grotesque image’ and an ‘abhorred monster’

Through using this emotional language, Mary Shelley creates sympathy for the creation by the way she uses this emotional language when Victor is talking about his creation. Frankenstein describes his creation as a ‘devil’ and a ’vile insect.’ This makes the audience feel sympathy for the creation because Frankenstein doesn’t even ...

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