Satan's Relation To The Monster's Rejection example essay topic

From the first look at the Frankenstein's creation, you could see a complex relationship between Mary Shelley's Frankenstein to John Milton's "Paradise Lost". Mary Shelley's novel, Frankenstein, was the reaction to reading the poem. And she used allusions to Paradise Lost in Frankenstein to help illuminate many central ideas of the work. Victor's creature, born innocent, tried to fit in the world that he was put into. But the constant rejection and isolation from the very beings that he longed to interact with caused him to evolve into a self-acknowledged Satan, from Paradise Lost. Frankenstein's creature relates the two stories to each other, and the conditions that caused his transformation ties him with Adam and Satan.

Like Satan, the monster was created to be beautiful. But he ends up falling from his creator's grace and becomes a perversion of beauty. The monster is cast away from his creator's presence just as Satan is cast out of heaven. This comparison shows how something created to be great can be easily perverted into something loathsome and utterly different than its original purpose. Rejection is one of the biggest themes in both stories. Satan was one of God's heavenly children but was ultimately rejected by God.

And so he fell with his companions to "hell". On the other hand, the monster fell alone, and he himself brings this fact to the attention of both Victor and the readers, saying that his loneliness was the most loathsome part of his existence. Both the monster and Satan do not attack his creator in retaliation. Instead, they both attack those closest to the their creators, inflicting much more pain than any direct attack could.

The pain caused by the attacks on the close companions illustrates the romantic idea that close companions are essential to life and the peace of the individual". Like Adam, I was apparently united by no link to any other human being... I was wretched, helpless and alone. Many times I considered Satan as the fitter emblem of my condition". (pg. 135-136). The monster reflects that hell is produced as an internal condition, and it is increased through loneliness. He then believes that his only salvation is the creation of a mate, his Eve.

In Paradise Lost, Satan is a much more complex and developed character than God is. His speeches are extremely compelling to the reader, just as his temptation is extremely compelling to Eve. The creature is a form of Satan, who exists as all evil in the fallen world. They share a similar plight, and Paradise Lost is mentioned in Frankenstein several times.

The most telling phrase is when the creature says, "Evil thenceforth will be my good". Just as Satan falls out of God's grace and turns to evil, so does the creature. But the move towards evil in both stories is marked by different characteristics. Milton's Satan is corrupted by his pride and unwillingness to worship the Son of God and God the Father. Satan also refuses to be subjugated to God and aspires to equal him in power or at least oppose him.

The creature is forced to evil through mankind's malevolence towards him. To make the creature more like Satan, Mary Shelley uses the idea of spurned character reacting to a society of poverty and classes". I learned that the possessions most esteemed by your fellow-creatures were, high and unsullied descent united with riches. A man... doomed to waste his powers for the profits of the chosen few!" After the creature has felt the mistreatment of the DeLaceys and a number of villagers, he is driven to hate mankind. We, as fallen humans, will necessarily tend to side with his evil because even when our prime examples, Adam and Eve, were perfect, they could not resist the characters of Milton's Satan. Shelley warps this perception so that the reader is repulsed by the creature's evil deeds, but at the same time they feel sympathy for someone who is an outcast, and we also see the injustice in our own society.

Also in Shelly's novel Frankenstein, the monster is often compared to Adam from Milton's epic work. Like Adam, the monster was perfect at his creation. The monster was full of love for humanity and nature at his creation but was turned to a life of evil and hardship by outside forces beyond his control. Similarly, it was a circumstance beyond Adam's control that turned him into a life of sin and hardship. The comparison of the two monsters focuses attention to the ideal of the noble savage. This idea stressed that man, left to his own devices, is inherently good.

But the opposite happened to the creatures, and they are ashamed of their faults. The monster was unable to bear his horrible crimes and his master's death. However, he also sees himself as being similar to Milton's Adam because he has no other like himself and fervently desires the companionship of an equal. Both implore their maker to create such equals. Once again, Adam and the monster are characters engaged in struggles within themselves: the monster is like Adam because he does not dominate sins as God asked for it.

In this way, they are symbols of the humanity with these following characteristics: feelings of impatience, a will to emancipation, a kind of madness and genius being adapted to hard conditions of living, and an intense desire to accomplish their life with achieved goals. In conclusion, Mary Shelley used other characters in the poem to help us understand what the monster was going through, and to give us a stronger picture of it. Not only did Satan in Paradise Lost become banished and rejected just like the creature, but the use of Satan and Adam in itself gave a firmer feeling of insight. Most people have stronger belief towards religious characters than ordinary ones, so the use of these characters will interest more people.

Satan's relation to the monster's rejection was because of similar conditions and how this was the cause of their turn to evil.