Tuesday, July 17, 2012

Provide quotes from Mary Shelley's Frankenstein that show the creature longing for love and acceptance

"They loved and sympathized with one another; and their joys, depending on each other, were not interrupted by the casualties that took place around them. The more I saw of them, the greater became my desire to claim their protection and kindness; my heart yearned to be known and loved by these amiable creatures; to see their sweet looks directed towards me with affection was the utmost limit of my ambition."

“I do know that for the sympathy of one living being, I would make peace with all. I have love in me the likes of which you can scarcely imagine and rage the likes of which you would not believe. If I cannot satisfy the one, I will indulge the other.”

"There is something at work in my soul which I do not understand. I am practically industrious — painstaking, a workman to execute with perseverance and labor — but besides this there is a love for the marvelous, a belief in the marvelous, intertwined in all my projects, which hurries me out of the common pathways of men, even to the wild sea and unvisited regions I am about to explore."

"I admired virtue and good feelings and loved the gentle manners and amiable qualities of my cottagers, but I was shut out from intercourse with them, except through means which I obtained by stealth, when I was unseen and unknown, and which rather increased than satisfied the desire I had of becoming one among my fellows."

"I swear to you, by the earth which I inhabit, and by you that made me, that with the companion you bestow I will quit the neighborhood of man and dwell, as it may chance, in the most savage of places. My evil passions will have fled, for I shall meet with sympathy! My life will flow quietly away, and in my dying moments I shall not curse my maker."

"My heart was fashioned to be susceptible of love and sympathy, and when wrenched by misery to vice and hatred, it did not endure the violence of the change without torture such as you cannot even imagine."

"Sometimes I allowed my thoughts, unchecked by reason, to ramble in the fields of Paradise, and dared to fancy amiable and lovely creatures sympathizing with my feelings and cheering my gloom; their angelic countenances breathed smiles of consolation. But it was all a dream; no Eve soothed my sorrows nor shared my thoughts; I was alone. I remembered Adam's supplication to his Creator. But where was mine? He had abandoned me, and in the bitterness of my heart I cursed him."


In his talks with Victor and with Walton, the creature tells of his longing for love and acceptance. These desires include communication, partnership, and inclusion.

When he looks into a peasant's home, the family scene moves him.

[The man] smiled with such kindness and affection that I felt sensations of a peculiar and overpowering nature; they were a mixture of pain and pleasure, such as I had never before experienced.


On his own he learns to read, so he can learn what others know, and to talk, so he can communicate with them.

By great application, . . . I discovered the names that were given to some of the most familiar objects of discourse.



He approaches people in his desire to fit into their world, but must face the fact they think he is ugly and fear him. He has to stay away from them despite his feelings.

I admired virtue and good feelings and loved the gentle manners and amiable qualities of my cottagers, but I was shut out from intercourse with them.



Asking Victor to make him a female to be his mate, he trusts Victor, who lets him down again.



With the boy William, he feels he might find nonjudgmental companionship, only to find this is yet another Frankenstein and feels compelled instead to kill him.



As I gazed on him, an idea seized me that this little creature was unprejudiced and had lived too short a time to have imbibed a horror of deformity.



With the lovely Justine, merely looking at her asleep reminds him of the rejection humans mete out based on physical appearance. Assuming she would be no different, he frames her for William's death.



After finally avenging himself on Victor, the creature tells Walton of his loving heart and that he never wanted to go down that path.




My heart was fashioned to be susceptible of love and sympathy; and, when wrenched by misery to vice and hatred, it did not endure the violence of the change without torture.




Sadly, he took into himself one of his maker's fatal flaws, always casting blame and not taking responsibility for his own actions. Unable to endure his lonely life, he ends it.
https://www.gutenberg.org/files/84/84-h/84-h.htm

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