Frankenstein, by Mary Shelley | Alienation

In the story of Frankenstein, Victor, a scientific genius, created a monster known as Frankenstein. He abandons the monster as soon as he creates it. Frankenstein, the monster, experienced bad parenting growing up. No one ever taught him any manners at all. In this story, Victor and Frankenstein are both alienated by society for different reasons. The monster is rejected by society because of his terrifying physical appearance and his reactions towards people. Victor experienced alienation his entire life, when he was a child and family due to his scientific obsession. Therefore, in Frankenstein, Mary Shelley used the theme of alienation by having the two main characters, Victor and Frankenstein, alienated by society because people judged the monster based on his physical appearance and his reactions. While, Victor isolated himself from society due to his scientific experiments. Therefore, people alienated him because they thought of him as a very strange scientific maniac.

As I previously mentioned, the monster was judged based on his physical appearance. As soon as everyone saw him they would start screaming in horror or run away. The monster’s hideous appearance including his eight-foot long body caused people to react this way. This caused the monster to feel rage towards others. The monster would then groan in anger towards individuals. One day Frankenstein finally got to see himself in the mirror. And got surprised. Then he realized why people were so terrified by his physical appearance. This is all Victor fault because if Victor had not created him or messed up during his experiment the monster would of never have had to suffer because of this.

The monster’s reactions toward people also played a major role in why he was alienated. Whenever he saw how people reacted to him, he would go crazy. He would groan in a very frightening way. The monster reacted this way because of tow reason. First of all, he was rejected un fairly by society. Secondly, he felt very angry towards society. When the monster first came to life, he first saw Victor. Victor looked at him and got really scared. Then he decided to abandon the monster . The monster was raised with basically no parenting at all. He wasn’t taught how to be polite or even how to act towards people. This is why the creature had no social skills at all. If the monster would have been raised with good parenting he would have been more of a human because he would of at least known how to act when others were around.

The monster then began to feel confused because people didn’t want to be around him. What caused him to be confused was that he had no idea why people reacted this way. He wanted to be loved. Unlike his creator he did not isolate himself from society. The monster’s first experience with humans is when he meets the villagers. They threw stones at him, which aggravated him. The next experience the creature experienced was with the Dclacey family.

This was the first time the monster actually wanted to be part of a certain family. The creature decided to hide because of his previous experience with humans. He was well aware that humans disliked him. As the monster was hiding, he observed the language in which they communicated, he believed it was like “a godlike science”, which would help him become more a human because if he could communicate like one that was a head start.. The monster continued to observe everything this family did for some time. The monster tried his best to be liked by society but failed. This made the monster come to the conclusion that he would never be accepted by humans. The creature demanded Victor to create a female companion for him. As Victor was working on this he gave up. He decided that he was no longer going to create a companion for the monster. This got the monster very angry. He got revenge by killing Elizabeth, Victor’s wife.

As I have already stated, Victor Frankenstein also experienced alienation throughout this story. He experienced alienation from both his family and society. In Frankenstein, Victor is described as a man who’s in love with science. He spent much of his time creating a monster. However, he wasn’t aware of the consequences this would bring him. At the end of this story he spent much of his time trying to destroy this monster. As he tried to destroy the monster he isolated himself from society. He would always go to his lab and try to come up with other scientific creations. He regretted ever creating the monster because the monster caused him a lot of trouble. People then thought of him as some crazy scientific genius. Victor’s scientific views alienated him from all his surroundings. He had a very keen interest in since ever since he was a child. Him being so different from the rest of the family is what got them to alienate him. He just seemed so different and strange from the rest.

As Victor was growing up, he became even more obsessed with science. This is what caused him to come up with all his crazy experiments and ideas. He decided to isolate himself from society and spend most of his time at his libratory , where he would mix all different types of chemicals and try to create new inventions. He lived his entire life this way. He had no regrets about any of this until he had created Frankenstein. That was when he had finally realized that he should of stopped all of his scientific experiments and call it quits. The monster got him more frightened then what he had ever been.

As I previously mentioned, Victor refused to create a companion for Frankenstein. His reason for this was because he was afraid of making another huge mistake and having to face the consequences for his actions. However, the monster did not understand this and seeked revenge on his own creator by killing his wife Elizabeth. After the death of Elizabeth, Victor became even more scared of the monster because now he knew for a fact that the monster was capable of murdering others in order to get what he wants.

Through out this story, both the creature and the creator suffer a lot because of alienation. Victor isolated himself from society. While the monster was alienated by the rest.

The monster suffered more than Victor because he truly wanted to be loved. Victor just isolated himself due to obsession with scientific experimenting. The monster, on the other hand, tried his best to be part of society, but he failed and never was.

Work Cited

“Themes and Construction: Frankenstein” http://find.galegroup.com/

Shelly, Mary Frankenstein published by Lackington, Hughes on 1818

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