Frankenstein Mary Shelley

In Mary Shelley’s novel Frankenstein, Victor Frankenstein’s behaviour becomes more and more grotesque in the buildup to the creation of the monster. When he leaves for the university in Ingolstadt he is healthy, of sound mind and optimistic....

The character Robert Walton has many functions in the novel of Frankenstein. His role in the story, though relatively brief, is extremely important. He fulfills four roles. First, his own writings anticipate much of Frankenstein’s behaviour....

Laced with haunting similarities between the creator and the created, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein implements the Doppelganger effect to further develop the story of one man’s quest for knowledge and the journey that ensues. From the beginning of...

In Mary Shelley’s chilling novel Frankenstein, certain characters represent major thematic ideas that Shelley endeavors to criticize or praise. The main character, the scientist Frankenstein, is used to exemplify the consequences of uninhibited,...

Frankenstein’s Creature is, to be sure, an essential actor in the unraveling of Shelley’s narrative. For this reason, it is logical and arguably necessary to question his unnamed status throughout the novel. He is described as many things: a “...

Beneath the most obvious plot line in Frankenstein lies a more subtle relationship between Walton, Victor and the monster. The three characters are very closely linked; their existence depends on one another. Walton represents the youthful desire...

In Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, Shelley illustrates how the environment tears apart the life of a scientist, Victor Frankenstein. Victor’s generation of a creature from dead matter seemingly deems him an immoral man. However, one often overlooks...

The concept of the Other is understood through its division from the Self. Specifically, Otherness represents those who run counter to predominant societal ideologies; thus, the Other, denounced as a threat to norms, is shunned from humanity, if...

In Whale’s classic motion picture interpretation of Frankenstein, the Creature is nothing but a monster, a blight to humanity, from the moment of his creation. The inherently evil nature depicted in the movie comes as a direct result of the...

Frankenstein is a novel characterized by an unusually layered narrative structure. Narrators exist within narrators, narratives are passed from one character to another, and a distinct gap exists between the telling of the story and the historical...

Erin Erkocevic

8 December 2010

An Analysis of Human Nature in Frankenstein, As it Connects to Freudian Psychology

In her novel Frankenstein, Mary Shelley skillfully laces a chilling tale of horror with social commentary to create an exploration of...

From its outset, Frankenstein establishes a link between the procuring of knowledge, or the uncovering of secrets, and evil. Walton’s sister’s ‘evil forebodings’ that surround his attempt to reach the North Pole, pointed out in the very first...

Both the poem The Cry of the Children by Elizabeth Barrett Browning and the novel Frankenstein by Mary Shelley portray acts of cruelty in an attempt to arouse pity from readers. The victims in each case feel bitter self-pity and respond with...

‘Art is unimaginable without a matrix of culture… it is inconceivable without a history’ .

Stephen Cox’s comment articulates the poststructuralist view that the meanings of a text always derive from its context. Certainly, much of Mary Shelley’s...

Dr. Jekyll and Victor Frankenstein decided to push the boundaries of science and take the supernatural into their own hands. Both of the scientists’ experiments yielded creations that got out of control, but the men had very different intentions...

A binary opposition refers to a pair of related non-physical elements that are opposite in meaning; it is an important concept of Structuralism which defines the contrast between two mutually exclusive terms. Mary Shelley’s 1818 novel Frankenstein...

The desires of discovering the secrets of the universe and becoming famous have always been human vices, but these quests mainly lead to ruin. In some people, these basic human drives escalate to dangerous proportions. Mary Shelly uses...

Two concepts often appear to be in conflict or contrast at the heart of Gothic fiction; the dualities of good and bad are often critical to the formation of the literature. Within ‘Dr. Faustus’ the battle between good and bad is particularly...

In Plato's The Symposium, a discussion between Socrates and another philosopher, Diotima, arises on how man tries to attain goodness. They agree that man loves what is good and pursues the love of good. The next section of their discussion deals...

Shelley uses nature as a restorative agent for Victor Frankenstein. While he seems to be overcome with grief by the murders of his friends and family, he repeatedly shuns humanity and seeks nature for health, relaxation and to strengthen his...

Suffering is a major thematic element in Mary Shelly’s novel Frankenstein. The Wretch constantly struggles mentally with negative experiences of rejection. The psychological suffering endured illustrates self-realization through a new found...

In the novel Frankenstein by Mary Shelley, the parent-child relationships that are introduced are surprisingly critical to the manner the novel plays out. Through each literal and metaphorical pair, the course the child leads is in direct relation...

As a professor of psychology and the author of a host of books that examine various psychological elements at play in some of the most recognized pop culture mainstays within the science fiction genre, Sherri Ginn seems more than qualified to...

Exclusively raising opposition to commonplace phenomena can only go as far as just that: talk of a new contrary, and usually unwanted, opinion. The crucial ingredient in making a significant impact with a foreign idea is to make a claim so...