The Portrayal of the Outsider in Frankenstein - Essay Example

Name: Institution: Course Name: Lecturer: Date of Submission: The portrayal of the Outsider in Frankenstein The Outsider Introduction Frankenstein is majorly a story of Victor, a scientist, and the monster that he ended up creating. Victor, in his creation, he loved what he was doing, but when he realised what he had fashioned, he abhorred it and even spend his life running away or after it so as to end what he had started. The novel introduces the reader to Victor travelling on a dog-pulled sledge, and due to cold, he is rescued by Captain Walton, whose ship has stumbled upon impenetrable ice. Victor then recounts the story of his construction to Captain Walton. He creates Frankenstein while studying at the University of Ingolstadt. He was motivated by the longing to unearth the undisclosed mystery of life, and after numerous hours of study, he created Frankenstein. He failed to come to terms with what he had created when it became a reality. The monster he had created escaped his room and went to Geneva where it murdered Victor’s brother, prompting Justine’s indictment and later execution for the murder. This paper takes an insight into how the aspect of the social outsider has been portrayed and how kinship relations throughout the novel have contributed to this portrayal. The portrayal of the outsider in Frankenstein When one discusses the concept of the outsider, the aspect of the other usually comes into play. When one is portrayed as the outsider, they are usually depicted as not fitting in to or being dissimilar in some deep-seated way to the group or faction in question. In many cases, the portrayal of one as an outsider often transforms into being an alien in the setting that they find themselves. The faction usually views itself as being the standard and any other as the outsider. Inadequacy in the characteristics of the faction often makes the other seem second-rate and thus subject to a treatment befitting their branded status. The creature that Victor creates finds itself an outsider in the human world because it was physically different from the human race. It found itself in a world that nothing else looked like it, a fact that prompted it to ask Victor to create a female companion for it so that it could have its own. The novel asserts that the creature was earthy unattractive for the human viewing and thus it could not be part of the normal human population. Its physical attributes were inharmonious thus placing the creature outside the human realm hence a branding of the other (Underson, pg.1). By creating the monstrous creature, Victor becomes an outsider in his own society because he alienates himself from the rest so as to come up with the creation. After the creation, both the creature and Victor are in a continuous effort to try and fit in the human society. Feeling that they have been set apart from the rest, they find themselves in a constant effort to try and be part of the human society. This is illustrated where the creature is in a constant search of love so as to feel a sense of belonging. It is this search for belonging that turns the creature into a monstrous beast because it fails to find the love and appreciation that it is searching for (Claridge, pg.1). In his search for self fulfilment, Victor alienates himself from the society by trying to find the undisclosed facts about life; he thus ends up creating the monstrous creature using the remains of dead individuals and any other living organisms. Though he insists that he grew up in a close knit family, he does not want to talk about it with Clerval, something that casts doubts on his insistence on family values. It could have been his silence and alienation from family that drove him to create the monster, something that would adore him, in order to fulfil his male ego. Feeling left out from his family, thus the outsider in the family, he wanted something that he would be closer to, something that he could own, thus the creation of the monster (Claridge, pg.3). Victor cannot stand his creation and thus runs away, subjecting the creature to the brand of being the outsider. This prompted the creature to feel left out because its creator’s reaction subjected it to the realm of the outsider in a human society. Because of the unfulfilling relationships that he had in his youthful days, in order to fill that void, Victor created the monster in order to fill his lonely state but he ended up subjecting the creature to the same treatment because he is never there for the creature although it really needed his friendship. This denial polarised the monster to the extent that it embarked on a killing streak in order to get back at its creator and thus satisfy people’s belief that it was the other (Hall, pg.1). Victor’s reaction makes the monster feel unwanted and thus hates its creator for bringing it into being and thus subjecting it to the inhuman treatment that it gets, for instance, from the blind man’s family, a family that the monster adored because of their relationships. The monster sets itself apart from the crowd because it feels that it is not like them and thus conceals itself in the icy mountains. Frightened by what people will think about it, the monster decides that seclusion is the best alternative because even its own creator has disowned it. Moreover, it cannot take in its destructive tendencies driven by the rage of rejection, and thus it decides to hide from itself for fear of what it might do. It is destroying anything that is precious to Victor because he created it and then ironically becomes the first to point an accusing finger at it. By creating a monster that is bent on seeing the destruction of his family, Victor becomes the outsider that has no power to put a halt to what is afflicting the family that he always claimed to love dearly. This feeling denies him the will power to put a stop to the continued atrocities of the monster. The monster has the urge of forging human associations, but this cannot be because any person who sees him runs or treats him badly, thus he becomes a stranger in a setting that he did not choose to be found but was unwillingly placed. People brand him the status of an outsider because of his physical attributes (Hall, pg.1). Although the monster takes after Frankenstein’s name, in reality it is nameless. In the human society, everything usually bears a name as a show of its existence. In the monster’s case, lacking a name relegates it to the realm of the unknown and thus the branding of the outsider. Due to this factor and its ugly physical appearance, the public criticises it, demonise it and even cuts it off because it is not like them. Victor’s motivation for creating the monster sets him apart from the society because his main aim was not to bestow life to already dead matter but to engrave his name in the list of notable individuals who had made out-of-this-world discoveries. His unwavering desire for fame drew him apart from his society because it led to the destruction of his family. Ironically, whatever he thought that was going to make him happy and celebrated ended up destroying him along with it. Though his father requests him to keep in touch regularly, Victor sets himself apart from his family and decides to pursue his own narcissistic wishes. These selfish wishes sets him apart from the society and when the monster informs him that it will be with him on his wedding night, he is so alienated that he only thinks of himself and not of the risks that his entire relations could be in ( Marklund, pg.4). With the feeling that human beings see him as being inferior, the monster learnt to read and write when he stumbled upon the family in the forest. He did this in a bid to be accepted by the human race and thus avoid the beatings that were once meted out on him. He even assisted the family with the taxing chores in the hope that one day the family would acknowledge his repugnant physical appearance and thus start a friendship. Though the monster is human, it is his physical appearance that sets him apart from the human society. The human society turned him into a monster because they distinguished him by his looks and not the deeds. The fact that the monster was born devoid of individuality set him apart from the human society. The monsters individuality was lost because Victor warped the natural mode of female conception by making himself a male giver of life (Marklund, pg.7). Troubled kinship relations The social portrayal of one as an outsider in the novel is as a result of the troubled kinship relations that are evident in the novel. Victor had a mammoth aspiration of attaining the wishes he had but lacked the moral responsibility that accompanied his wishes. He had the audacity of creating the monster but lacked the moral responsibility of fathering the monster as it was the responsibility of any parent. Since he was the creator of the creature, it was his moral obligation to administer to all the emotional needs of his creation, but he boycotted his responsibility and thought that running from it was the best alternative. The monster would not have been branded the tag of an outsider had its creator shown compassion and thus introduced it to the human civilization. Victor’s negligence turned the monster into the murderous creature that it became because he did not take time to initiate it to the human society (Smolka, pg.17). Victor’s blown up recounts of familial affections discloses the underlying insufficiency of family unit attachment because he is lacking the essential aspects of family hood that he claims were being impacted on him every now and then in his childhood. He asserts that he was the item of his parents love and not a partaker in it thus it was unbalanced. There was no real love in his family because his mother introduced Elizabeth to him as the surprise present she had promised him and thus she (Elizabeth) becomes his doll or toy, in a similar fashion that he had been to his parents. This could have been the same reason that he had created the monster for his own personal amusement, but when his creation turned out to be sour than he anticipated, he decided to run away because his object of amusement was no longer a spectacle of fascination but a gothic sight. Due to a failed family relationship, Victor could not start a family with the monster because he knew nothing about responsibility or family association. On the same, due to the troubling aspect of family relations, he could not keep up with his father’s wish of checking up on them every now and then because the foundation regarding family ties was not strong enough to make him value the concept of closely knit family ties (Claridge, pg.3). Though he maintains that he loves his family, it is evident that his claim is untrue because he fails to inform them of his continued illness and when his friend Clerval enquires about it, Victor is not happy with the subject but goes on the defensive by claiming that his family is always worthy of the affections he has for them. Parenthood is filled with irresponsibility in the novel thus contributing greatly to the otherness of some characters. Though Justine did not kill William, the priest corners her into a fake acknowledgment of culpability which led to her hanging although she was innocent of the accusation. This act by the priest made her an outsider although she had nothing to do with the crime. The priest, an individual who was expected to be accountable for his acts, forced a declaration of guilt out of her in order to have someone convicted for the murder. This direct lack of love relations within the society leads to the otherness that runs through the novel. The uncreative relationship of Alfonse and Caroline is echoed in Victor and Elizabeth’s association. In the family setting, women are expected to initiate the affections and in this regard, Caroline bestows Elizabeth to Victor so that she can submit to him for the paternal security (Hale, pg.1). Conclusion The concept of the outsider has been greatly influenced by the family ties that exist in the novel. From the novel, parents have absconded their duties and thus left their children to wallow blindly in darkness as they attempt to establish themselves, a situation that result in them making misinformed decisions which result in their becoming outsiders in their own backyards. Victor failed as a person because his father had failed in establishing a lasting relationship with him, but rather spent his time criticising his attempts at making something out for himself. Works Cited Claridge, Laura. Parent-Child Tensions in Frankenstein: The Search for Communion. 2000. Accessed 7th November, 2012, Available at: http://knarf.english.upenn.edu/Articles/claridge.html Hale, Jessica. “Constructing Connectedness: Gender, Sexuality and Race in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein.” T h e UC I Un d e r g r a d u a t e Re s e a r c h J o u r n a l. 2002. Accessed 7th November 2012, at: http://www.urop.uci.edu/journal/journal01/02_JessicaHale/Jessica_Hale.pdf Hall, Jean. Frankenstein: The Horrifying Otherness of Family. 2000. Essays in Literature. Accessed 7th November 2012, at: http://knarf.english.upenn.edu/Articles/hall.html Marklund, Sara. Good and Evil in Man: The Double Nature of Victor in Frankenstein. English Department Goteborg University. 2010. Accessed 7th November 2012, at: https://gupea.ub.gu.se/bitstream/2077/23793/2/gupea_2077_23793_2.pdf Smolka, Michal. An Echo of Social Alienation in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. Faculty of Education, Department of English Language and Literature, Masaryk University Brno. 2007. Accessed 7th November 2012, at: http://is.muni.cz/th/160448/pedf_b/bachelor_thesis.pdf Underson, Devon. Mary Shelley's Frankenstein: Creation, Frustration, Fragmentation, Abomination. 2010. Accessed 7th November 2012, at: http://www.victorianweb.org/previctorian/mshelley/anderson.html. Read More