The Self-Conflicted Monster
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Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, is a novel full of controversy of the self. Throughout this complex novel, Victor Frankenstein’s creation tries to find his humanity, while being overcome with the temptation of destruction. The representation of self conflict describes, in a more dramatic nature, the internal relationship of man. The wanting for love and kindness that is, in a sense, unachievable. By this technique, Mary Shelley makes the unnatural, grotesque creature of Frankenstein strangely relatable as the monster balances destruction or mercy.
“When I looked around I saw and heard of none like me. Was I, then, a monster, a blot upon the earth, from which all men fled and whom all men disowned?” (Shelley, 119). Here, is an intimate moment in which the Creature share’s a thought with the reader. Firstly, the act of thinking already humanizes him. You couldn’t imagine a monster, in other terms, having thoughts and feelings as quoted above. This is Shelley’s first side of conflict. She this, reminds the reader that he is infant “a monster, a blot upon the earth.” This creates the odd controversial question of whether a soul could be created within stitched together limbs, within the reader.
Another portrayal of the inner conflict of Frankensteins Monster is in chapter 15, where he just had learned that his creator loathed him. Despite this, he looks for social mercy one last time with the De Lacey family. As much as the reader hopes the Creature may find a loving place, it ends with the following thought:
“I could have torn him limb from limb, as the lion rends the antelope. But my heart sank within me as with bitter sickness, and I refrained. I saw him on the point of repeating his blow, when, overcome by pain and anguish, I quitted the cottage, and in the general tumult escaped unperceived to my hovel.” (Shelley, 134).
In this case, it is easy to judge