Thursday, February 11, 2016

What are the two major allusions in the book Frankenstein?

I am not sure if you mean literary illusions or objective illusions.  If I were to look at the illusions that I observed in the book Frankenstein it is that Victor Frankenstein appears as good and turns out to be bad and the creature appears to be bad and turns out to be the victim.


Victor Frankenstein is introduced to us as an ill man who is in repentance for something from the past.  He tells his story to Watson, the ship's captain, who likes him and establishes a friendship with Victor.


Victor appears to be a nice and ambitious young man and a loving son.  He had a good and adventurous childhood, loves his parents, his younger brother and Elizabeth, his cousin and future wife.  He is also very intellectual and attends the University where he struggles to learn new medical methods and everything that he can to create a being that would be resistive to disease.  This is the result of his trauma over his mother's death.


However, the more the reader learns about Victor, the more the illusion fades.  The reader begins to see a selfish young man who is driven by ambition on the idea of the glory of playing "God" by creating man.  He goes to deep unethical depths to collect body parts and puts them together to create a human being.  He does not think about the human's reaction to being created nor the outcome of what the being would look like based on the scraps of bodies that he has pieced together.


Once the creature comes to life, Victor is appalled by his creation and abandons him.  The creation is left desperate and alone in a world that finds it repulsive and grotesque and fearful.  In the end Victor has the benefit to escape the creature by his own death.


The illusion of the creature is hat he has the physical appearance of a monster when he is actually a being desperate for love, touch, and companionship.  Every time he approaches a human they run, scream, and try and hurt him.  Even his own "father" rejects him and tries to do away with him.

No comments:

Post a Comment

Discuss at least two characteristics of Romanticism in John Keat's poem "Ode toa Nightingale".

The poet in Ode To A Nightingale  is an escapist .He escapes through imagination .On his way the bower of the bliss wher the nightingale is ...