Literary Analysis of Frankenstein by Mary Shelley - Essay Example

me time, Victor Frankenstein, the human doctor who created the monster, is easily accepted into society because of his humanness and his social status as a member of a respected family. However, he shuns society in his attempt to circumvent the ‘normal’ course of things and then proves himself monstrous in character as he sends his creation into the world defenseless and without the necessary tools for survival. Dr. Frankenstein receives warnings regarding the unnatural teachings of his early scientific teachers yet continues forward with his experiments until he progresses beyond the point of no return.

The monster he creates is given little chance at goodness as he is first rejected by his creator and then refused companionship by this same creator. This comparison begs the question what is monstrous in which the author provides no definitive answer. Victor Frankenstein, the main protagonist in the novel, takes the concept of new technology to its ultimate limit. His main goal in life is to find a way to re-animate lifeless matter, taking on the role of creator. While he was creating his creature, Frankenstein could only envision something beautiful and wonderful despite the fact that his instructors had warned him of the unnatural teachings of the ‘pseudo-scientists’ he had admired in his earlier years.

“The ancient teachers of this science,’ said he [Frankenstein’s first professor], ‘promised impossibilities, and performed nothing. The modern masters promise very little; they know that metals cannot be transmuted, and that the elixir of life is a chimera” (40). Frankenstein purposefully and intentionally turned his back on the natural world as a means of concentrating on discovering the secret of bringing life to inanimate material, a process in which he was “forced to spend days and night in vaults and charnel-houses.

My attention was fixed upon every object the most insupportable to the delicacy of the human feelings” (45)