Who do you feel more sympathy for- Frankenstein or the monster?

Authors Avatar

Frankenstein

Who do you feel more sympathy for- Frankenstein or the monster?

In the summer of 1816, Mary Shelley wrote one of the most famous science fiction/

horror novels of all time. She wrote it at Lake Geneva and based it on the myth of Prometheus. Meaning a god in a Greek myth who created people out of clay and stole fire from the gods and gave it to the humans. The other gods were outraged by this and chained him to a mountain and a hawk or crow came and ate his liver every day (it regenerated because he was a god). Prometheus eventually escaped with the help of Hercules. The modern Prometheus (Victor Frankenstein) creates a being, but instead of clay uses dead body parts and electricity. Instead of being chained to a mountain Frankenstein is punished by the creature/ Monster who kills his family. The reader feels more sympathy for Frankenstein’s monster as he faces hatred and oppression. The creature is oppressed because he is topped doing what he wants to do, which is interacting with people.

Mary Shelley wrote the novel because the people who stayed at Lake Geneva were told to write a horror story by Lord Byron. Those present were Mary Shelley, Lord Byron, her husband (Percy Shelley) and John Polidori. The scariest novel would win. Mary won the competition.  Her novel is about a scientist named Frankenstein who tries to create the perfect human but the creature is ugly and deformed so Frankenstein leaves him for dead. The monster lives and learns the ways of life on his own because when ever he makes contact with Human beings. He is ridiculed and/ or beaten. He realises that he is different and that every

one hates him. He turns his back on humanity and swears to get even with his creator.

 The book makes the reader feels empathy for Frankenstein as he gets chased by the monster across the world and when Victor explains what he was doing on the north pole (to Walton)

The passengers mock him. The story shows different views from three different people. This is called a Chinese Box narrative (a story inside a story etc)/ when Frankenstein meets with the monster the monster tells his story in turn. The first person to narrate in text is the sailor who picks up Frankenstein from around the North Pole after he sees the monster running across it at inhuman speed. Then Frankenstein tells Walton how he was the one responsible for the monsters existence. Finally, the creature tells Frankenstein about his disheartening and depressing life because of being rejected and abandoned. In the end, he only wants love. The novel Frankenstein has issues that today still remain a problem e.g. man playing God and creating life or cloning and even the supernatural.

Join now!

The film and the book are very different. They still have the same story but the film is sensationalist and all of the events happen one after the other whereas the text rearranges the narrative and describes the scenery in more gothic details, the book also lets the reader feel emotion for the character. Frankenstein; the modern Prometheus has many layers in the story like an onion, a first layer, or the framework of the novel giving the reader the basic knowledge of the novel, a second layer and a third layer getting deeper and answering questions that the ...

This is a preview of the whole essay