Sunday, September 26, 2010
God or Not
Did Victor play God when he created the monster? This has been asked, investigated and debated. When the creature realizes that there could be proof of a higher power, he is humbled and his attitude and outlook on life changes. He drops his learned thoughts and ideas and takes on those of Frankenstein. God gave man the ability to reason and to think. This makes the monster feel freakish, even unworthy of life. Being able to relate and to think, takes the attention away from God or satan and places it on the monsters humanity and on Victors actions and his behavior. Regardless of Gods or satans position in life, Victor and only Victor is responsible for his own behavior and for the deaths of those he loved as a result of his actions.The more the monster understands the circumstances of him being alive the more he ponders his situation. "Everything is related in them which bears reference to my accursed origin; the whole detail of that series of disgusting circumstances which produced it is set in view: the minutest description of my odious and loathsome person is given, in language which painted your own horrors, and rendered mine ineffaceable. I sickened as I read. Hateful day when I recieved life" (Shelley 87-88). The monsters becomes lonely and notices others with a mate. He realazies that he is alone and that he needs a companion. "You must create a female for me, with whom I can live in the interchange of those sympathies necessary for my being. This you alone can do; and I demand it of you as a right which you must not refuse"(Shelley 98).
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Excellent Topic Larry, this was what I considered writing about at first. You made the point that God gave man the ability to reason and to think. Are you saying that if Frankenstein had nurtured his creation and showed him how to reason that the Monster should look at his creator as God? I won’t go that far, I think the monster should look at Victor as you and I see our mother and father, as the people who got me here but not the reason why I’m here.
ReplyDeleteVictor’s obsession with playing God caused him grief “A fiend had snatched from me every hope of future happiness:..”(Shelley 137). I think Victor was so focused on being the creator of new life he never realized that he was only restarting a heart that had already been in a beating chest. It’s like taking the parts of five different cars and saying hey guys I invented the car.