Assignment #2
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Topic One: Select a primary character from your novel and write a well-organized essay in which you show how a character’s demise helps to illuminate the meaning of the work as a whole.
Mary Shelley's ominous novel, Frankenstein, uses Victor Frankenstein's death to magnify the immense meaning of rejection. Throughout the entire novel, the monster is just in search for acceptance from his creator, Victor. Victor represents the boundaries in why love cannot be attained. The monster is ugly, huge, not proportionate, and unlikable. No one would ever want to be near such thing. At first, Victor was in a hypnotic state creating the monster, constantly working on him and devoting all of his time into it, basically enclosed in his own little world. Once finished, Victor's mindset made a 180 turn for the worse "Mingled with this horror, I felt the bitterness of disappointment; dreams that had been my food and pleasant rest for so long a space were now become hell to me..." ( Shelley, 36 ). One can compare this to try on a new pair of shoes. At first it may seem beautiful, and yet when it is finally tried on, one may not view it with the same interest in it anymore. In this case, Victor devoted all of his time into one thing, so much time and effort wasted in the end only to realize that he had created a monster. As the novel progresses, the monster antagonizes Victor by killing his family and friends out of the rage of not being able to feel accepted or even have Victor create a companion for him. The monster goes as far as saying to Victor " You accuse me of murder, and yet you would, with a satisfied conscience, destroy your own creature" ( Shelley, 69 ). The battle between the monster and Victor would be an eye for an eye, man vs. man. The monster has no one that loves him, so therefore out of sadness, he kills those who are dear to Victor. The monster physically murders people, but Victor could also be considered a murder by emotionally murdering the monster that he created. By the end of the novel, the monster had realized that he did not need Victor's love any more. It was his own love in himself that he needed and states " Neither yours nor any man's death is needed to consummate the series of my being, and accomplish that which must be done, but it requires my own" ( Shelley, 166 ). Victor has died on his quest of revenge to the monster and the monster had realized that he was finally at peace with himself. No more having to suffer the rejection from his own creator and causing the misery of him either. He can now rest his soul in heaven where no one can tell the difference of him being an unwanted monster. Victor being gone, symbolizes what could have been. What could have been if he had not shunned the monster. What could have been if Victor had showed some companionship towards him. What could have been anything.
In the end, the monster had just wanted a sense of companionship with someone. One would assume that the creator and the creation would have some type of bond with one another, yet in Frankenstein, this was definitely not the case. All of the problems could have been avoided if Victor had initially loved the monster to begin with. That was all the monster had wished for all along, yet there were so many limitations that caused Victor to not do so. Victor's death symbolized a realization for the reader to understand the full extent of how rejecting someone can lead to so many wrong-doings. If only Victor has been more compassionate in the beginning, if, if,if. Many hypothetically questions that are asked constantly on a day to day basis that one can never really understand. Victor's death represented the many who rejected to look for the quality traits in someone and just judge based off of looks.
