Frankenstein

Frankenstein

By Mary Shelley

Being a human and being isolated plays a huge role in Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. Victor Frankenstein finds himself asking the questions science fiction tends to ask. What is a human and how can he achieve the goal of making a human? He becomes obsessed in trying to figure this out and thus isolates himself from his family and friends.

The "Monster" is the result of Frankenstein's ambition to make a human. When Frankenstein sees what he has created, he finds that it is hideous. The monster wouldn't be considered a human because of the way society would look at what a person should look like. "Oh! No mortal could support the horror of that countenance" (P 57). Once seen in the outside world he will be rejected. The monster will be misunderstood due to his size and horrible appearance. When he sees people for the first time, he notices people running away, screaming, fainting, and throwing things at him. The monster wonders why such actions take place. Over the course of time he notices that he doesn't look similar to other people. He learns that people are cruel to those that appear to be different. He thus has to isolate himself and become an outcast.

As the story develops you notice that Frankenstein is similar to the monster. Both are feeling that their lives are miserable and both are isolated in society. "In a solitary chamber, or rather cell, at the top of the house, and separated from all the other apartments by a gallery and staircase, I kept my workshop of filthy creation...It was a most beautiful season; never did the fields bestow a more plentiful harvest or the vines yield a more luxuriant vintage, but my eyes were insensible to the charms of nature. And the same feelings which made me neglect the scenes around me caused me also to forget those friends who were so many miles absent, and whom I had not seen for so long a time" (P. 52). The creature gives up hope of finding acceptance and develops the need for revenge upon his creator, whom he sees as the creator of his misery.

Shelley shows that it is circumstances that force him to use his aggression against people. He cannot be expected to respect or to love people when they hate him. It is only then that he uses his strength to destroy the things around him. When the monster meets with Frankenstein he tells him how lonely and miserable he has felt. He wants Frankenstein to create him a companion so he doesn't live his life the way he is living it know. In the beginning he agreed to the monsters request because he felt sympathetic