Drama Frankenstein Protagonist, Antagonist, Setting & Genre by Mary Shelley

Drama Frankenstein Protagonist, Antagonist, Setting & Genre by Mary Shelley

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Protagonist

Victor Frankenstein is the protagonist of Frankenstein. His goal is to achieve something great and morally good, which will secure him a lasting reputation. In pursuit of this goal, he creates the Monster, but his pursuit of his goal also causes his conflict with the Monster. Because of his outsized ambition to achieve greatness, Frankenstein cannot tolerate the flaws of the being he has created. When the Monster demands that Frankenstein make him a female companion, Frankenstein’s goal of achieving greatness brings him into conflict with the Monster. He can’t bear the thought that his actions might ruin his future reputation: “I shuddered to think that future ages might curse me as their pest.” Frankenstein does not learn from his experiences. He dies trying to destroy the Monster because he is still pursuing greatness. Just as he initially sees the creation of the Monster as the key to lasting fame, Frankenstein later believes the destruction of the Monster will protect his future reputation: “You may give up your purpose, but mine is assigned to me by Heaven, and I dare not.” He dies having achieved his first ambition, to create life, but believing he has failed to achieve his second ambition, which was to destroy the life he created.
 

Another possible protagonist of Frankenstein is the Monster himself. Throughout the novel, the Monster pursues connection and human contact. His quest for connection drives the plot, as other characters react to his attempts to forge relationships. Once the Monster realizes he will never have a friend or mate, he is driven by the desire for revenge against his creator, Frankenstein. In pursuing revenge, the Monster continues to drive the plot, killing everyone Frankenstein loves and causing Frankenstein to chase him across the globe. Unlike Frankenstein, the Monster changes over the course of the novel. He comes to see the error of his ways and express remorse for his actions. Also unlike Frankenstein, who dies still pursuing his goal of destroying the Monster, the Monster dies because he can’t live with who he is and what he has done. Self-knowledge leads the Monster to believe his life no longer has value.

Antagonist

The Monster is Frankenstein’s antagonist. He thwarts Frankenstein’s goal both by what he does and what he is. Frankenstein’s ambition is to achieve something great, but the Monster’s terrifying appearance forces Frankenstein to recognize that not only has he not achieved something great, he may have done something terrible. Once the Monster starts killing everyone Frankenstein loves, Frankenstein can’t help but acknowledge that his creation has the potential for evil. After being thwarted in his desire to create something good, Frankenstein’s ambition requires him to destroy the Monster, but again the Monster thwarts him. Another possible antagonist is Frankenstein himself. If the Monster is the true protagonist of the novel, Frankenstein is his antagonist. Frankenstein directly thwarts the Monster’s goal of human connection by refusing to sympathize with the Monster himself and refusing to create a companion for him. The Monster initially sees Frankenstein as a father figure, but Frankenstein denies him a familial relationship. Throughout the novel, Frankenstein repeatedly denies the Monster everything he wants, and antagonizes the Monster into committing acts of violence.

Setting

Much of Frankenstein’s story unfolds in Switzerland, the country in central Europe where Mary Shelley was staying when she began writing the novel. However, the novel ranges widely within Europe and across the globe. Frankenstein visits Germany, France, England and Scotland. Walton travels through Russia. Elizabeth is Italian and the DeLaceys are a French family living in Germany. Safie is Turkish. Clerval plans to move to India, and the Monster proposes relocating to South America. The novel’s frame story, narrated by Walton, is set in the Arctic Ocean, where Walton is trying to find a new route around the world. By encompassing the whole globe in this way, Frankenstein presents itself as a universal story. The global reach of the setting also suggests one way in which Frankenstein can be read allegorically. Shelley’s era saw a rapid expansion of European power across the globe, driven by the same advances in science that enable Frankenstein to create the Monster.

Frankenstein’s Swiss and Arctic settings support the novel’s argument that the natural world should be respected for its dangers as well as its beauty. The Swiss Alps are initially a place of wonderful beauty: as Frankenstein describes, “I suddenly left my home, and, bending my steps towards the near Alpine valleys, sought in the magnificence, the eternity of such scenes, to forget myself” However, as Frankenstein climbs, the “eternity” of the Alps becomes inhospitable and foreboding, a “sea of ice” and “bare perpendicular rock.” This physical journey from his comfortable home to the barren mountains reflects Frankenstein’s intellectual journey. He leaves the safety of home to seek out wonderful new knowledge, but he goes further than human beings should go, and he ends up somewhere dangerous when he creates the Monster. The barren landscapes of the high Alps and the Arctic help to make one of Frankenstein’s central arguments: not everything in nature is safe for humans to discover or experience.

Genre

Gothic Novel, Science Fiction

Gothic Novel

Frankenstein is a Gothic novel in that it employs mystery, secrecy, and unsettling psychology to tell the story of Victor Frankenstein’s doomed monster. The Gothic emerged as a literary genre in the 1750s, and is characterized by supernatural elements, mysterious and secretive events, settings in ancient and isolated locations, and psychological undercurrents often related to family dynamics and repressed sexuality. In Frankenstein, readers get only vague descriptions of the process Victor uses to construct the monster, and descriptions like “Who shall conceive the horrors of my secret toil” amplify the horror by prompting the reader to actively imagine what Victor must have done. Much of the action takes place at nighttime, and in mysterious circumstances. The novel also hints that Victor’s strange behavior may be rooted in repression. While he claims to love Elizabeth, their relationship has incestuous tones since they grew up together as siblings. He also seems reluctant to marry her and is fixated instead on his friend Henry. His desire to create life outside of typical sexual reproduction might reflect some level of trauma or disgust with heterosexuality, or sexuality in general.

At the same time, Frankenstein challenges some of the conventions of Gothic literature. Unlike traditional Gothic supernatural elements such as ghosts or vampires, the monster’s origins are deliberate and not mysterious. We know exactly where he comes from, who created him, and why. There’s never any question about whether the monster actually exists. We know the monster was created on purpose and the havoc he wreaks is the result of a lack of foresight on the part of his creator, Victor Frankenstein, not of unknowable forces. The mystery of the book is not where the monster came from, but what he wants. Frankenstein is also set in approximately the same time period when it was written, whereas traditional Gothic fiction was almost always set in the past. While many Gothic novels imply that in the past people’s lack of knowledge and repressive customs led to horrifying situations, Frankenstein suggests too much knowledge and an emphasis on innovation might also lead to horror.

Science Fiction

In addition to the Gothic elements, Frankenstein inaugurates the genre of science fiction, and many critics cite the novel as one of the first examples of the science fiction novel. Science fiction as a genre speculates about possible applications for advances in science and technology. In science fiction novels, the rules governing normal life are transgressed in some way. For example, a popular convention in science fiction is life existing outside of Earth; for Shelley, the idea of humans being able to artificially create new life becomes possible within the space of the novel. In many science fiction novels, the fictional technologies and scientific developments can be read as an implicit criticism of contemporary society. By prompting her readers to think about an extreme example where someone recklessly pursues knowledge, Shelley sheds light on her own era, where a focus on inventing new things and optimizing technology was beginning to threaten established ways of life.

Drama Frankenstein Protagonist, Antagonist, Setting & Genre by Mary Shelley 
Drama Frankenstein Protagonist, Antagonist, Setting & Genre by Mary Shelley

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