Most of the characters in the book are there to fulfill a purpose, Robert Walton is in the book so that Frankenstein can warn someone about the dangers of pursuing a dream and so he can tell the story “learn from me, if not by my precepts, then at least by my example, how dangerous is the acquirement of knowledge, and how much happier that man is who believes his native village to be the world, than he who aspires to become greater than his nature will allow”. The monster is in the book to be the result of an experiment as in the above analogy would be the killer bees who were designed to create more honey than ordinary bees who then escaped and have wiped out all other types of bees, like the monster who was intended to be the first of a new race “A new species would bless me as their creator” This quote shows that Victor ignorantly believed that his creation would become a new species and that it would be good. Most of the monsters actions can be explained by a large theory thought up by Mary Shelley’s own father it’s very relevant as we still have the exact same problem today, his theory was that how people turned out in life was a direct result of their upbringing. The monster was hated and repelled even by his own creator from the very beginning of his life, in contrast to this Elizabeth was treated with love and affection and she turned out to be perfect. Elizabeth is there to be innocent, to represent everything good in Victors’ life, “We called each other familiarly by the name of cousin. No word no expression could body forth the kind of relationship in which she stood to me – my more than sister, since till her death she was to be mine only”. At the point of her death it is the point in Victor’s life when he realizes that he has lost everything “Great God! Why then did I not expire! Why am I here to relate the destruction of the best hope and purest creature on Earth?”
. Clerval’s function is to represent the person who Victor would have been if he had not become a slave to science “But in Clerval I saw the image of my former self”. Frankenstein is in the book obviously to tell the story and to warn us, but also to represent scientists who act without considering the consequences of their actions, this is still an important message as for example the killer bees who were created in laboratories.
Frankenstein is written in the style of a gothic novel, it was originally told in a ghost story competition between Mary and Percy Shelley, Lord Byron and Dr John Polidori in Switzerland 1816. The language used is explicitly religious, as when he refers to his “guardian angel”. It is written also in the romantic tradition which means that the views of the author would have been very different to those of the rest of society as the “Romantics” lived on the very fringes of decent society and obeyed their hearts, much more like our times than theirs, and did as they liked. Her views are still correct in the 21st century as the general view is that it is wrong to create human beings artificially and there are laws preventing it from happening.
When Mary Shelley was writing peoples lives were based around religion many of the laws were based on religion so many people hoped that science was wrong as it disproves religion, but also they hoped that it was correct as it was helping to cure diseases. Today almost all people believe in science so our views have changed but many issues have not.
I believe that Frankenstein still has an important message for mankind as it tells us not to meddle in things that we have no business meddling with and that we should not create life without thinking about the consequences.
