Frankenstein 10

"But Paradise Lost excited different and far deeper emotions. I read it, as I had read the other volumes which had fallen into my hands, as a true history." (118)

Frankenstein’s monster’s entrance to life was the complete opposite of that of Adam’s in Paradise Lost; Adam came into life as a perfect being, loved by God and prosperous in all respects. The monster, however, was brought into life an experiment, and had never known love from anyone he had met, including his creator. Shelley incorporates Paradise Lost into Frankenstein in many character parallels, as the creation is comparable to both Adam and Satan in different respects; he monster being the first of his kind like Adam and being abandoned like Satan.

Works Cited:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradise_Lost

Frankenstein 9

"I will soon explain to what these feelings tended, but allow me now to return to the cottagers, whose story excited in me such various feelings of indignation, delight, and wonder, but which all terminated in additional love and reverence for my protectors (for so I loved, in an  innocent, half-painful self-deceit, to call them)." (109)

This dialogue from Frankenstein’s creation parallels Frankenstein’s feelings of ownership that he had over Elizabeth when his parents first adopted her. The monster doesn’t feel ownership over the De Laceys, so to speak, but more of a need to care for them and protect them from any harm. He would fetch them firewood and stop stealing their food, all for their own well being. Frankenstein himself had a similar need, and would blame himself entirely if anything ever happened to Eizabeth. Shelley writes this parallel to form yet another tie between the monster and his creator. 

Frankenstein 8

"In The Sorrows of Werter, besides the interest of its simple and affecting story, so many opinions are canvassed and so many lights thrown upon what had hitherto been to me obscure subjects that I found in it a never-ending source of speculation and astonishment." (117)

Shelley incorporates The Sorrows of Werter by Johan Wolfgang von Goethe to relate the pain that the main character, Werther, goes through in his life to the pain that Frankenstein’s creation goes through. Both of their pains are due to human cruelty, and The Sorrows of Werter effectively parallels the creation’s questioning of his own purpose in life. Werther commits suicide in the end of the novel, which sparks a defiant unwillingness to live in the monster.

Works Cited:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sorrows_of_Young_Werther 

Frankenstein 7

"Their colours and their forms, were then to him an appetite; a feeling, and a love, that had no need of a remoter charm, by thought supplied, or any interest unborrowd from the eye." (145)

This poem titled Tintern Abbey by William Wordsworth is incorporated by Shelley to explain the comfort that Frankenstein’s creation feels from being in the wilderness, out among nature. Since he cannot draw the fascination and love he needs from other human beings, he finds all of that with the serenity and aloneness of being in the woods. Since the creation relates being among other people to pain and vulnerability, he would naturally find comfort in things that he had absolutely no control over, and had no control over him. 

Works Cited:

http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/19411

Frankenstein 6

"The book from which Felix instructed Safie was Volney's Ruins of Empires." (107)

Shelley uses this particular piece of literature to bring religion into the text. Although Frankenstein does not have a lot of religious subtext, religion is a part of human instinct, as one wants to believe in something so they can entrust themselves to some form of higher power, whatever that may be. The De Laceys act as a higher power to the creation, and prove as the beginning of a religious feeling for him.

Works Cited:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constantin-Fran%C3%A7ois_Chasseb%C5%93uf

http://www.inrp.fr/edition-electronique/lodel/dictionnaire-ferdinand-buisson/document.php?id=3805

Frankenstein 5

"Soon a gentle light stole over the heavens and gave me a sensation of pleasure. I started up and beheld a radiant form rise from the trees." (91)

Shelley recognizes humankind’s fascination with the moon and the sky and ties that fascination in with the monster’s desire to be and feel human. From the first night that he noticed it, the creation feels an immediate need for love and caring from someone, and seeks social contact. However, whenever he confronts a human with the hope for affection, he’s always attacked verbally and physically. He cannot be human, because he isn't given the chance to feel human emotions. If Frankenstein was there to provide him with what he needed, the monster could have matured very differently.

Frankenstein 4

"We feel, conceive, or reason; laugh or weep, embrace fond woe, or cast our cares away." (85)

Mary Shelley incorporates these lines from her husband Percy Bysshe Shelley’s poem Mutability to tie in Frankenstein’s creation’s struggle to be and feel human with all of the wonderful emotions that balance out the hatred and anger. His desire to feel, or even to have the compassion to weep, is stopped by his ever growing anger. He is never given the opportunity to feel compassion. Shelley uses this poem of human emotions and actions to strike the reader with the idea that these emotions that humans take advantage of are completely non existent in the monster.

Works Cited:

http://www.english.upenn.edu/Projects/knarf/PShelley/mutabili.html

Frankenstein 3

"I, who had ever been surrounded by amiable companions, continually engaged in endeavoring to bestow mutual pleasure. I was now alone." (31)

This quote from Victor is the opposite of how his creation’s maturing was going so far. Victor had spent the beginning of his life with considerable amounts of love from his parents and everyone around him and had grown up with many friends and people who cared about him. The monster, however, started his life with a terrified face running away from him, and awful looks and threats from humans wherever he went. Throughout the text, Shelley shows contradictory life events and emotions between Frankenstein and his creation that somehow still tie each of the beings together with a similar bond. 

Frankenstein 2

"I was their plaything and their idol, and something better their child, the innocent and helpless creature bestowed on them by Heaven, whom to bring up to good, and whose future lot it was in their hands to direct to happiness or misery, according as they fulfilled their duties towards me. With this deep consciousness of what they owed towards the being to which they had given life, added to the active spirit of the tenderness that animated both, it may be imagined that while during every hour of my infant life I received a lesson of patience, of charity, and of self-control, I was so guided by a silken cord that all seemed but one train of enjoyment to me." (19)

Victor Frankenstein’s childhood was lived with his parents devoting their every moment to caring for and loving him. Shelley perhaps used a seemingly perfect childhood to form a budding desire to create in Victor. This budding desire grew into an almost crazed need to create something that he could care for as much as his parents cared for him. When he looked upon his creation for the first time, however, he realized that it was not the perfection he had aimed for, and neglected it. The fact that he could not care for his monstrous creation as his parents had cared for him formed a beginning hatred for himself, and this feeling grew as his creation’s hatred of humankind grew. 

Frankenstein 1

"I said in one of my letters, my dear Margaret, that I should find no friend on the wide ocean; yet I have found a man who, before his spirit had been broken by misery, I should have been happy to have possessed as the brother of my heart." (13)

When Frankenstein’s creation was first brought to life, his newborn-like curiosity made him want to discover humans. However, he did not expect to befriend anyone, as he didn’t realize that he would come across anyone. Shelley uses Walton’s statement to both parallel and contradict that of the creations, as he simultaneously desired but did not expect to befriend anyone.