Loneliness

Both Victor Frankenstein and his creature are lonely. Frankenstein has never been surrounded by many people and his creature is fated to be lonely because of his appearance.

Victor Frankenstein has isolated himself from his peers in his pursuit of knowledge. Yet his loneliness is most poignant after the death of Justine Moritz. Frankenstein knows that the creature killed William, but he chooses not to say anything, “Did anyone indeed exist, except I, the creator, who would believe, unless his senses convinced him, in the existence of the living monument of presumption and rash ignorance which I had let loose upon the world?” By identifying himself as the creator, Victor is separating himself from everyone else. Although he is anguished just like everyone else in his family over William’s death, he does not let himself tell them what happened in Ingolstadt or who really killed poor William. As a result, he becomes distant, “solitude was my only consolation-deep, dark, deathlike solitude.” Even when his father and Elizabeth try to reach out to him, he shuns them because he feels that he does not deserve their love. At this point in the novel, Frankenstein is very troubled and wants more than anything to be a part of his family, but cannot stop feeling guilty over the deaths of William and Justine.

Just as his creator is lonely, so is the creature. Throughout his short life, many people have run away from the creature and have left him alone. However, the creature truly got to know the French family in the cottage. He came to love Felix, Agatha, the old man, and eventually Safie. It was through their English lessons with Safie that the creature even learned to talk. As time goes on, the creature yearns to be a part of the family, “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 creatures; to see their sweet looks directed towards me with affection was the utmost limit of my affection.” The creature watches them from outside a window wanting desperately to be a part of the scene that he looks upon every day. In his loneliness, the creature decides to reach out to the family, but this ends in violence and horror. The creature is shunned by the family because of his appearance and again he is alone, "My protectors had departed and had broken the only link that held me to the world." The creature had dared to hope that he would be accepted, but he was wrong. As a result, his loneliness intensifies and at this point in the novel, he resolves to search for his father.

How the Mighty Have Fallen

In Mary Shelley’s novel Frankenstein, both Robert Walton and Victor Frankenstein believe that they will be one of the people to enrich mankind and achieve something no one else has before. They believe that they will be greater than great. It is this desire to be great that drives them to spend their time wholly in pursuit of notoriety. As a result, they have become loners and the pursuit of knowledge has become their only companion. In this way they are similar to Ozymandias, a character in Percy Bysshe Shelley’s poem. He is the self-declared “king of kings” and tells everyone to “Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!” Just by this inscription on his statue, we can assume that Ozymandias is very arrogant and just like Walton and Frankenstein, wanted to be notorious and achieve something great that others could not possibly hope to achieve. However, the narrator describes the land around the statue of Ozymandias as “boundless and bare, The lone and level sands stretch far away.” Ozymandias might have wanted to be the greatest, but by the desert surrounding his crumbling statue, he is long forgotten. Based on the fall of Ozymandias, I believe that Walton and Frankenstein’s notoriety will not last very long. They might be doing mankind a service by trying to better people’s lives, but they are doing it for selfish purposes. Ozymandias is sculpted with a “frown, And wrinkled lip” indicating that he was not a very pleasant man to be around and wanted to be notorious for his own personal gain. Consequently, I believe that since Walton and Frankenstein are devoting their time to be great for their own purposes, they will not achieve notoriety for very long, if at all.

Science vs. Religion

Yes, I do think that science and religion will see life the same way. At a glance, they seem to be total opposites. Science deals with facts and concrete ideas that you can test over a long period of time and still get the same answer. Religion deals with faith and abstract ideas that you can't prove, but believe in nonetheless. As with any idea or set of beliefs, you will always have people who believe and people who do not believe. I believe that it is not science or religion themselves that create a division amongst people, but people themselves. Religion is a big leap for someone who can only accept the facts, which is why many scientists completely exclude religion out of their set of beliefs. This is understandable considering what religion stands for and abstract ideas have always been harder to accept than concrete ones.

Science and religion are two sets of beliefs that were made to be opposites because they arose from people with different viewpoints. In the past, many people have tried to bring science and religion together by proving that one cannot exist without the other. Usually religion exists because science needs a creator which only religion, not just science, can explain. However, these people received such fierce opposition that they either backed down or were oppressed. This is not to say that religion and science cannot ever see life the same way, just that people who believe in religion or science cannot accept that the other can also be true.

In the end, I believe that it is not the actual ideas of science and religion that cannot see life the same way, but the people who believe in those ideas that cannot ever see life the same way.