Frankenstein serves as a warning to any
who read it about unshackled passion and drive to the point where it destroys
oneself. In the novel, Frankenstein’s
drive to create a living being starts a spiral that ends up destroying himself,
his family, and his Creature. However,
as much as it is a warning, it is also a deep tragedy that we must look upon
today as a loss of innocence and love of the picturesque and beautiful, two
things that can be attributed to being human.
As Frankenstein loses more and more of his loved ones through the novel,
he starts to become more and more empty inside and ends up becoming a shell of
a man by the end with only one driving goal left in his life: to kill the
Creature. While not without blame in his
downfall, this loss of innocence goes beyond the usual that is seen in Gothic
Romantic novels and his inevitable tragedy is still worth lamenting over. At the same time however, the Creature also
suffers a similar loss of innocence and appreciation for the picturesque and
beautiful. These two falls parallel each
other and offer a sense of tragedy to the lives of both the main characters in
the novel.
We can
trace Frankenstein’s fall of innocence back to his early days when he
discovered outdated yet intriguing scientific theories. These laid a foundation of scientific
intrigue that alone were mostly harmless but eventually grew with his learning
in the modern sciences into an almost religious fervor to create life from
death. This is the beginning of his fall
from innocence and grace that was present all throughout his childhood. He spent two years working on bringing the
Creature to life and neglected his own health, being shut up in his room away
from the world. While being nursed back
to health after the Creature came to life, it appears that everything would
return to normal, but that was not the case.
The Creature would not allow it, and as his family and friends were
picked off one by one, Frankenstein suffers mental breakdowns and detachments
from the world around him. His innocence
is more than lost; it is shattered without hope of repair.
The
Creature too has his own story of the loss of innocence. In his case however, it is not solely because
of Frankenstein but because of a variety of other people as well. When the Creature is first introduced, all it
knows is the beauty of the world around it.
As it learns language through the De Laceys, he grows attached to them
and hopes to make his presence known.
All he wants is companionship since humans find his sight repulsive, but
when he makes himself known to the De Laceys he is run off and they move away
once they get sight of him. Eventually
he comes across William, Frankenstein’s younger brother, and ends up killing
him, thus starting the chain of events that would cause the Creature to
decimate Frankenstein’s family. However,
the Creature no longer has the innocence of the world that he was born with and
only lost it because of the harshness of humanity.
Frankenstein is telling his story
to Walton so that he may kill off the Creature if he himself should die, but as
readers there is no doubt that it is a warning.
We can see shades of this story in contemporary ones, notably in the
book and novel Jurassic Park. It deals with going too far with science and
having to face the consequences, in many cases it is death or being scarred for
life from the experience. We must heed
the warning of Frankenstein, or else we will suffer a similar fate of
Frankenstein and his Creature. Our lives
are not worth giving up in an unrelenting drive towards something. All we will leave if that is the case is
destruction in our wake.
This is an interesting thought - that the innocence of both Frankenstein and the Creature is lost as the story progresses. This representation of innocence being lost as the characters grow into their fates could represent how children inevitably lose their innocence as they turn into adults. As babies, we are only able to recognise the beauty around us, but as we grow up we end up hurting people around us without realizing it and we come to yearn for more.
ReplyDeletePerhaps Frankenstein losing his innocence is in some way a representation of God and how he had moments of regret, according to the bible, of creating humans. Frankenstein wants to kill the creature in the novel, and in the old testament, God kills all man kind with the great flood. This novel outlines the insanity of creation, and how as soon as the creation awakens, it becomes a completely different entity and mind from the creator.
This reading of the book is very intriguing, especially in viewing Frankenstein and the monster as similar beings on the same downward slope. There seems to be a greater distinction between the evil conducted by "normal" beings and other, more wild and dangerous evils. By this I mean that Dr. Frankenstein conducts more cowardly sins of willful blindness that society might not punish him for. The monster, on the other hand, is caught in a system that wants nothing of him, and pushes him towards evil acts. In truth, the connection could be a metaphor for man and his actions: we do things society deems evil or unnatural or ungodly or hideous, and we run from being connected to them, even if we knowingly and willingly took part in their creation. The moral of the story might be a little confusing, then, as Frankenstein heeds against too much science. What the real problem is too little human compassion and understanding. The monster, then, might just be something normal and full of life, rather than an abomination.
ReplyDeleteI think viewing the monster as initially innocent is very compelling. We see his birth, we see his gentleness, then we see his destruction. I wonder however if Frankenstein the novel deals more with the inheritance of sin that passes from father to son by birth in the form of innocence becoming destruction. Shelley uses a fictionalized creation the monster to stand as a representation of all of what he might inherit on earth. This would include the destructive passion, which, like Stephen says, is paralleled with that of his maker; and any values the monster has learned in the midst of humanity, such as love of knowledge but also the overpowering worth of beauty--which he does not have.
ReplyDeleteI don't know, I guess all in all I would say Shelley is less arguing for the monster's lost innocence, and more so for the awfulness that we all inevitably are. I think it's about the inheritance of sin because Frankenstein despises what his own hands create. The monster is despicable in one way or another, either by his ugliness or later by his actions. He's destructive because he chooses to reciprocate hatred with hatred, (note this is not necessarily because he 'learns' it, that it seems like the 'natural' thing to do; the monster knows that he does ethically awful things) and also because of what the doctor has given to him by bringing him into the world.