Frankenstein Essay
Frankenstein Essay
Mary Shelley's Frankenstein is a story about Victor Frankenstein; a scientist who intended to make a wonder of modern science but ends up making a monster that eventually kills him. While exploring the Arctic, Robert Walton comes upon Victor Frankenstein. Victor soon tells the story of the monster of which he had released into the world. Through Victor's narration, Mary Shelley expresses a few of the story's many themes of isolation and alienation. The characters who demonstrate these traits most frequently are Walton, Frankenstein, and the monster.
Walton is the first character to exhibit these traits. Walton spent a couple of years in preparation for his voyage to the Arctic in isolation. During his voyage, Walton sends letters to his sister sporadically to tell her how lonely he is out there by himself. He expresses his loneliness is all of his letters. Once he rescues Victor, his feelings of loneliness slowly disappear, as he becomes friends with Victor. It was clearly visible that the feeling of being isolated from the people he loved caused him great grief. "I have no friend, Margaret: when I am glowing with the enthusiasm of success, there will be none to participate my joy" (Shelley 18).
Frankenstein, like Walton, isolated himself from the world for many years. Frankenstein spent a long time working on his creation is his dungeon of a basement away from the rest of the world. According to Frankenstein, he spent so much time working that he started to forget his friends and family (Shelley 53). Frankenstein's work had consumed his life and had become his life. Frankenstein would not realize how lonely he was until his old friend, Clerval, arrived and reminded him of all his family and friends he had left behind. It is at this time that Frankenstein feels the full force of loneliness that had been brought about by his isolation.
Frankenstein's monster feels alienated from the very beginning of existence. As...
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