Frankenstein: Life, Consciousness, Existence
"There is something at work in my soul, which I do not understand"
The monster tells Victor of his inner turmoil of being an abomination created and cast out to live alone. The strongest theme of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein is that our experiences are only part of our personalities, and that everyone has the essential parts of consciousness if living.Victor plays the role of a god so to speak, literally creating his monster by sewing body parts together. He is created from scratch, an entirely new person and personality, un-molded. Through this, she shows how the monster is at first innocent and harmless, but through how society had reacted to the monster, he became bitter, hateful, and evil. He wasn't created as an evil being, society shaped him that way.
In retrospect, all the harm towards Victor could have been avoided if he had embraced his creation and took it upon himself to guide it. I feel that it was Victor's moral obligation to take care of his own creation, being that it too has a consciousness. It is essentially Victor's blindness to realize that which seals the fate of himself and his monster. The monster even analyzes that it was his "destiny" to end up the way he is, this isn't necessarily a contradiction of ideas as the monster has become self taught and intelligent, realizing the ways of the world around him.
Truly the biggest "monster" of them all is Victor for acting on his absurd and selfish desires, and then avoiding the responsibilities of them. It is only right for the story to be recalled from a sailor who encounter the troubled Victor out in the Arctic, dealing with his creation and shortly after dying.
We all are conscious, merely existing is what defines that. Our personalities are up to our caretakers and those around us who we learn from. If only Victor was there for his monster, what he could have learned...
The monster tells Victor of his inner turmoil of being an abomination created and cast out to live alone. The strongest theme of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein is that our experiences are only part of our personalities, and that everyone has the essential parts of consciousness if living.Victor plays the role of a god so to speak, literally creating his monster by sewing body parts together. He is created from scratch, an entirely new person and personality, un-molded. Through this, she shows how the monster is at first innocent and harmless, but through how society had reacted to the monster, he became bitter, hateful, and evil. He wasn't created as an evil being, society shaped him that way.
In retrospect, all the harm towards Victor could have been avoided if he had embraced his creation and took it upon himself to guide it. I feel that it was Victor's moral obligation to take care of his own creation, being that it too has a consciousness. It is essentially Victor's blindness to realize that which seals the fate of himself and his monster. The monster even analyzes that it was his "destiny" to end up the way he is, this isn't necessarily a contradiction of ideas as the monster has become self taught and intelligent, realizing the ways of the world around him.
Truly the biggest "monster" of them all is Victor for acting on his absurd and selfish desires, and then avoiding the responsibilities of them. It is only right for the story to be recalled from a sailor who encounter the troubled Victor out in the Arctic, dealing with his creation and shortly after dying.
We all are conscious, merely existing is what defines that. Our personalities are up to our caretakers and those around us who we learn from. If only Victor was there for his monster, what he could have learned...
Comments
Post a Comment