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