Describe it.

My subject would be the Frankenstein and more specifically his misery. Frankenstein was created innocent and wanted to fully take part in society. He learned the language and much more hoping that it would better assist him in fitting in. But after many attempts and years of trying to become one with society, he realized that he would never be accepted. He would be alone forever.

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Frankenstein was first created by Victor because of Victor’s obsession with science. Victor’s desire to animate the dead and led to the successful creation of Frankenstein. However, the success was short lived, as the birth of Frankenstein led to Victor’s descend back to reality and resulted in Victor abandoning Frankenstein. From that point, Frankenstein was on his own. He lived a lonely and miserable life. He had no parents to guide him, and needed to learn everything by himself. First he taught himself how to survive. Then he learned the language. He was a very polite person and many times helped people. But every time his good deed would come back hurting him. Finally he learned that society will not accept him not even his creator. Frankenstein lived a life with no one, and his only desire was a companion. Knowing that he could never be happy, he plans to inflict the same pain upon his creator as an act of revenge.

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Frankenstein’s experience is very similar to Locke’s idea of an education. Things can only be learned from experiences. Victor lived a very good life, in a well off family. He would have never understood the pain and misery that Frankenstein endured his whole life. Ultimately when Victor refused to make a companion for Frankenstein, Victor had no understanding of what Frankenstein been through. As an act of revenge, Frankenstein made Victor’s life lonely and miserable, taking away his wife and family. In a way it educated Victor on how it feels to be alone.

Describe it:

1. My subject is about how in the novel Frankenstein by Mary Shelley, Frankenstein is abandoned by his creator, Victor. He is left to survive by himself in the harsh cruel world with no knowledge of how society operates and solely through sensations and reflections. My topic is comparing John Locke’s An Essay concerning Human Understanding” to Shelly’s Frankenstein through Locke’s ideology that there are no innate principals in the mind. (All ideas come from sensation or reflection). Our mind is born a blank slate (tabula rasa) and we are educated from experience.

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2. The moment Frankenstein was created, his mind was a blank slate as he was filled with many different sensations; “I felt light, and hunger, and thirst, and darkness; innumerable sounds rang in my ears, and on all sides various scents saluted me” (Shelley 57). Frankenstein learned that fire solved the cold as he experienced sensation of joy after building a warm toasty fire. He also learned about the feeling of revenge and anger because of his hatred towards his creator. Victor was the one who brought him into this world isolated and shunned from society because of his monstrous appearance. Over time, Frankenstein learns that rather than hurting Victor directly, he could cause him more harm by hurting Victor’s loved ones. He achieves this by ultimately killing Victor’s brother, William, Justine, and Victor’s wife, Elizabeth. Therefore we can see Frankenstein’s transformation as he is lost and innocent in the beginning, to revengeful and malicious at the end.

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3. Frankenstein’s experiences were influenced primarily because of Victor’s abandonment which caused him to experience the outside world by himself. One instance which solidified Frankenstein’s understanding of what society thought of him was when he saved a little girl from drowning in the river. The man immediately assumed that Frankenstein was harmful and shot him. After this instance, Frankenstein lost faith in humanity and “vowed eternal hatred and vengeance to all mankind” (Shelley 76).