Response Paper Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

Response Paper - Essay Example The novel played on emotions of horror, awe and trepidation in order to elicit strong emotions particularly against the scientific rationalization of nature. Indeed, Frankenstein, is often considered as a work that initiated the dark visions of the cruelty and barbarity of the scientific endeavors by megalomaniacs wishing to control the world rather than as a tool for the spread of Enlightenment ideas. The setting and time further highlighted the Romantic character of the Frankenstein. The story happened in the eighteenth century, a time wherein political, social and scientific norms required resistance. In addition, the setting: the Swiss Alps and the cold regions of England and Scotland serve to tell us that these desolate places are where the monsters are appropriately exiled. It also underscored the sublime and untamed character of nature, which, for its part, highlighted the scientific atrocities committed by humans against it. Through the setting, there was an interfusion of elemental contraries that better demonstrate Shelley’s objectives. One of the most important themes that I found in the novel is that of the concept of monstrosity. Although Frankenstein is the most obvious example of what a monster is, he was in fact less of a monster than his creator. His hideousness hides a compassionate creature and his lack of companionship deeply troubled him. This was summed up in the line: â€Å"I, the miserable and the abandoned, am an abortion, to be spurned at, and kicked, and trampled on.† (Shelley, p. 188) Victor, his creator, on the other hand, displays a more intense monstrosity in his ambition, secrecy and selfishness, which led him to murder members of his own family. It is, however, unnoticeable because such monstrosity is hidden in his humanity. These two characters served two represent varying concepts that permeate in the literary world.