Relationships Between The Creator And Creation example essay topic

An Ideal Relationship In Herman Hesse's novel Siddhartha, George Bernard Shaw's play Pygmalion, and Mary Shelley's novel Frankenstein, there is an obvious link between the creation and creator. The relationships between the creator and creation vary from work to work, questioning what the ideal connection between both should be. Ideally, the creator has a responsibility to the thing he has made, and maintains a critical bond with it. In general, part of the creator has been placed inside the creation, and therefore it is preferable that they take charge of it, however lovely or ignoble it may be. This, however, is not always the case. How the creator relates and provides for his creation has a profound impact on the creator and his creation, altering the story and the destiny of both characters.

Without properly sustaining an effective relationship, the results can be disastrous for both the creator and his work. In Siddhartha, the creator and creation figures are difficult to detect. They are not as straightforward or conventional as the other two works. Siddhartha contains two such relationships, that between Siddhartha and himself, and between Siddhartha and his son. Throughout the novel, Siddhartha strives to obtain enlightenment. This sacred quest for knowledge leads him to explore several methods and manners of achieving the spiritual clarity for which he strives.

At first he sees the self-denying life of a Saman a as the correct path. He spends his time fasting and praying, but soon decides that a life of pleasure and love seems the right way. Throughout his travels, Siddhartha undergoes a divine metamorphosis. He is ever-changing in his beliefs as he constantly questions his faith. Siddhartha in a sense recreates himself. It is through his own efforts and experiences that he forms a new Siddhartha; one that finally realizes inner peace.

In this same search for enlightenment, Siddhartha gains a son through his lover, Kamala. Even though this boy was of his own creation, Siddhartha, lives for many years without any knowledge of him. Upon meeting his son, Siddhartha feels an almost instantaneous fatherly need to teach and protect him. Siddhartha feels this because he made the child, and therefore must be responsible for him, although he knows the boy could never love him.

"Siddhartha understood that his son did not know him, that he could not love him like a father" (Hesse). Nonetheless, as a creator should, he strives to gain his son's affection through his own love for the boy. "Don't you shackle him with your love? Don't you make him feel inferior every day, and don't you make it even harder on him with your kindness and patience?" (Hesse). Siddhartha's attentions to his son are unfortunately met with scorn. His love is never returned, and the child eventually runs away.

The reason for the child's flight from Siddhartha more than likely stems from his knowledge that his creator was absent for so many years, and was not there to protect and nurture him, as a creator should. When his son runs away, it reminds Siddhartha of his own escape from home, and the pain he must have caused his own father and creator at his departure Frankenstein encapsulates an apparent creator and creation. Victor Frankenstein, a young Swiss student of chemistry, constructs a monster of his own design that he brings to life. Frankenstein, at first, deems his monster a thing of great importance. He believes in the advancement of science, and haughtily disregards the laws of nature. The generation of life without the role of a woman, is incredible to him, and he is anxious to see progress.

Yet, Frankenstein's attitude toward his experiment changes greatly upon its awakening. When he perceives its movements, and that life flowed through its veins, he flees the scene almost immediately. He is terrified of what he had done in the name of science. "But now that I had finished, the beauty of the dream vanished, and breathless horror and disgust filled my heart. Unable to endure the aspect of the being I had created, I rushed out of the room... ".

(Shaw). He denies his creation the attention that it deserved, however horrendous it had been. Frankenstein's monster reacts drastically to his jarring abandonment, turning against mankind, Frankenstein himself, and all those connected to him. Such are the consequences of an unfeeling creator.

Perhaps if Frankenstein had taken the time to care for the monster, teaching it to read, write, and function in society, it would not have gone on a rampage. "Believe me, Frankenstein, I was benevolent; my soul glowed with love and humanity; but am I not alone, miserably alone? You, my creator, abhor me; what hope can I gather from your fellow creatures, who owe me nothing?" (Shelley). Frankenstein, by no means embodies the ideal caring, concerned creator. Pygmalion, on the other hand, displays a different side to the creation-creator relationship, although not the ideal. It is the story of a young lower class woman, Eliza Doolittle.

She is transformed from a lowly flower-girl, into a genteel woman at the hands of Henry Higgins. Higgins, at first, only takes an active interest in Eliza when he sees that she will be of some profit to him. He agrees to change her into a lady by way of changing her phonetics. This is after Col. Pickering proposes a bet to him stating that he could not pass her off as a Duchess at a garden party. And so the transfiguration begins. Higgins. after several months of training, molds and shapes Eliza into a woman fit to be out in society.

What he has created has a profound impact on him, and over time Higgins' attitude, once cold and indifferent towards her, changes. He comes to care for the girl, yet, his affections may be based in pride. He shields his creation, but only because she is almost a manifestation of himself. He denounces her intentions to marry Freddy, and laughs at her attempts to exist outside of her creator's sphere. "You shall marry the Governor-General of India or the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland, or somebody who wants a deputy-queen. I'm not going to have my masterpiece thrown away on Freddy" (Shaw).

He becomes very protective over his creation and the new knowledge he's bestowed on her, even mocking her for it. "You will jolly soon see whether she has an idea that I haven't put into her head or a word that I haven't put into her mouth. I tell you I have created this thing out of the squashed cabbage leaves of Covent Garden" (Shaw). Once again, the reader does not see the ideal, nurturing creator. None of these three works exemplifies the model relationship between the creator and the creation, which should be one of harmony, understanding, and love. In all of them a great misunderstanding, or confusion on the creator's part, wrecks the relationship.

The destiny of both the creator and his creation is unquestionably altered by the role of the creator in the life of his creation. What these literary examples can do is to teach us something about how one should interact with one's work.