He does not care because he is greedy. Victor is the same way. He wants the knowledge of how nature works. He is curious and this eventually gets the best of him. He says, "I would sacrifice my fortune, my existence, my every hope, to the furtherance of my enterprise. One man's life or death was but a small price to pay for the acquirement of the knowledge which I sought" (Shelley 13). Victor realizes the folly of his ways but it is too late to salvage anything that he has lost. Dorothy and Thomas Hoobler agrees with this assumption, noting that the irony of the story is that, "at the culmination of his research, the moment of his triumph, all Victor's pleasure in life ends" (Hoobler 159). Both men are consumed and actually believe that they possess some of the characteristics of God. Both men suffer from their selfish desires. Aylmer wants so desperately to change Georgiana's appearance, that he kills her. The sad aspect of this story is the fact that she let him talk her into the entire thing. She let him believe that she was not pretty enough and that she needed to be prettier. She also let her husband think that he could do it. In other words, she believed in him and was willing to risk her life on his guess. Even worse, Aylmer believes in himself enough to risk her life as well. He is full of enough foolishness to say, "Unless all my science have deceived me, it cannot fail" (Hawthorne 611). His failure is the equivalent of murder. Victor loses everyone he loves because of his over-confidence. Once the monster is alive, Victor has no control over him or his emotions and never considers that the creature might seek revenge when it is too late to do anything about it. He realizes his folly and admits that his efforts pushed him "lower in the dirt" (Shelley 194) and he tells Walton, "Seek happiness in tranquility and avoid ambition, even...
Neither Aylmer not Victor gets what they thought they would when all is said and done. Hawthorne and Shelley use the destructive results of these men to warn us about the dangers involved with a desire that has gone out of control.
For example, in the beginning of the play, he's loyal to King Leontes, but not loyal enough to poison Polixenes, and flees with him to Bohemia. Camillo is the one who helps Prince Florizell and Perdita, when Polixenes storms off at the end of the play. Camillo is thus the character who is comfortable jumping from side to side and dealing with the extremities of the situations which present
There is more going on between Marlow and Kurtz because of Marlow's desire to know Kurtz. There is a curiosity there that allows Marlow to be open to Kurtz on some level. He is fascinated by his success and searches him out. He may begin his journey as a man looking for another man but Gillon maintains that Marlow's search represents a "search for truth" (Gillon). This search reveals
The fact that a novel in the sentimental and seduction genre attained such heights of popularity is, in the first instance, evidence its impact and effect on the psyche and minds of the female readers of the novel. As one critic cogently notes: Why a book which barely climbs above the lower limits of literacy, and which handles, without psychological acuteness or dramatic power, a handful of stereotyped characters in
Scientist Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde This is a paper that outlines the case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hide as a cautionary tale. It has 6 sources. Novels or films often have several themes running simultaneously together, and authors or directors often highlight more than one theme so that they can portray a maximum amount of their thoughts to the reader. There are certain writers who portray these themes in almost
Frankenstein An Analysis of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley wrote in her 1831 introduction to the reprint of Frankenstein that "supremely frightful would be the effect of any human endeavour to mock the stupendous mechanism of the Creator of the world" (x). These words not only indicate the manner of her thought on the night she conceived the idea for her gothic novel, they also reflect, as she notes, the ideas
While the sisters have to rub their eyes with an onion to make it look like they are crying, the brothers actually shed real tears. Beauty, on the other hand, "did not cry at all, because she did not want to make everyone even sadder" (De Beaumont 71). In addition to serving as another case in which women's self-expression is discouraged, this incident shows the brother's favorable characterization in
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