Frankenstein 11

Cesar Tellez
Mrs. Douglas
AP Literature Period 3
10 January 2011
Frankenstein Essay
The main theme in Mary Shelley’s novel, Frankenstein, is rejection. Victor’s creation is born good, but evil is introduced because of social mistreatment by his self-centered creator, Victor. The main characters in Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, Victor Frankenstein and the monster, are similar to the characters of God, Satan, and Adam in John Milton's Paradise Lost.
In Frankenstein, Victor is an obsessed creator who wants to be the first man to be able to give life. Although Victor is successful, as is God in Paradise Lost, he does not posses the positive traits that God has. Instead, Victor is a self-centered man who only does things that will benefit himself. In Paradise Lost, God created both Adam and Eve, while Victor created his monster. Likewise, both God and Victor rejected their creations. God exiled Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden for disobeying him. On the other hand, Victor rejects his creation purely because of the hideous look that it has. After Victor inspects his creation, he cries, “I had worked hard for nearly two years, but now that I’m finished, the beauty of my dream vanished, and breathless horror and disgust filled my heart.” Victor does not give his creation a chance at life, so Victor instead cowardly avoids the monster. In contrast, God has a logical reason to exile Adam and Eve from their paradise because they had chose to disobey his commandment.
The monster Victor created strongly resembles to the character of Adam. Like Adam, the monster never really had a chance to meet his creator. He was immediately thrown aside and his creator wanted nothing to do with him. Although God was very pleased with his creation of Adam, he also pushed him away after he had betrayed his trust and eaten from the tree of knowledge. He too never really had a chance to know God, his creator, since he was rejected from the Garden of Eden. Frankenstein's monster did...