The Tragic Fate Of The Monster In His Search Of The Self In Frankenstein

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (1797-1851) was born into a world with great political changes at the end of the 18^th century, such as the great revolutions in France and America. The industrialization of Europe resulted in a rapid increasing of the middle class and a population shift from country to cities, with dramatic changes in social stability. Mary Shelley herself had an unusual family background. Her parents were two literary celebrities, a political philosopher William Godwin and the radical feminist Mary Wollstonecraft, and her husband was the great Romantic poet Percy Shelley.In 1818, at the age of nineteen, Mary Shelley published Frankenstein, or The Modern Prometheus, and for nearly two hundred years, the tale of a young scientist who creates the monster has gripped our imaginations and haunted our nightmares. It has almost become an obligatory reference in any attempt to challenge the technological pride of the modern era. The ambiguity and paradoxes of Mary Shelley's novel do not take the look of the principal intellectual currents of her era, although it is filled with Romantic concerns, as the subtitle The. Modern Prometheus indicates. Mary Shelley is occupying a marginalized position, and her "resistance" and "subversion" would be highly prized in the contemporary intellectual climate.This thesis tries to track down the tragic fate of the monster in the quest for the self and his identity in the human world, so as to reveal the resemblance of his representation of man's loss of the self and alienation from nature and society, and to interpret the myth of the novel. It consists of five chapters.The first chapter deals with the definition of the self. Human beings have never stopped pondering over the question: who I am? Abandoned in an alien world, the monster is forced to isolate himself and to be "invisible" and silent. His self-interpretation is uncertain and shifting, from a baby to an "other", from Adam to Satan, as well as an alien intruder and transgressor.Chapter two focuses on the monster's quest for social relations. It is inevitable for him to establish social relations in order to stabilize his identity. The monster tries to make friends with human beings but his deformity frightens them away; he demands a female monster but his plan ends in abortion The monster's tragedy in the journey of self-definition is caused by many reasons, such as patriarchal ambitions and institutions, prejudice, alienation and cruelness of man.Chapter three reveals the complicated relationship between the monster and his creator Victor Frankenstein. They are, at least, of the relations of the creation and the creator, the unconscious and the conscious, the controller and the controlled and the chaser and the chased. At the same time, their relationship could be shifting and ever changing, and one should be cautious trying to define it.In chapter four, three main male characters in the novel are compared, all of whom lead a lonely life of exile. On one hand, people's patriarchal desire for and pursuit of power and authority drive them to exploit nature in the name of the scientific study, neglecting the human affection from the domestic sphere and leaving behind social responsibility. On the other hand, in such an isolated and alien world, each man is threatened by the loss of the ability to define the self and thus suffers from the "identity crisis", and he is desperate to find his own "roots" and to fix himself, for fear of drifting away.The last chapter is concerned with the return of the self. Marry Shelley has implied the means to return to the self: woman, nature and society. Women, in the novel, symbolize family, peace, love and spiritual support of men, although unfortunately they are also the victims to men's pursuit of power and ambition. To Victor, nature is a symbol of power and force, as well as a source of replenishing his courage and energy. The narrator Walton is more realistic than Victor since he is working in a team and his journey is like an adventure with a small society that makes consultation and agreement indispensable. As Walton records Victor's tragic story, Victor's narrative becomes a lesson for him to learn from and to avoid repeating.To conclude, the creation of the monster bears much significance. Made out of the bones from corpses, he is a transgressor from death to life and is "born" or animated in the absence of the mother by means of electricity against the natural law. His creator, Victor is also a transgressor, a "modern Prometheus" to create life and receive punishment. He has usurped women's unique right - giving birth and become an all-power parent and Walton is obsessed with exploiting a virgin land. Both of them sacrifice familial and social life for their pursuits, alienating themselves from society and endangering other people's lives. Their excessive masculinity is one of the primary causes of the monster's tragedy and of their own tragedies as well.In a sense, the monster, deprived of a female companion, is a paradigm of an isolated person, an "everybody", wandering aimlessly and lonely, with no one to turn to. The monster is always rejected and misunderstood in the doomful fate as an outcast child and neglected fallen angel, as Devil outside of the Paradise, as the silent deprived of the right of living, and as an "Other" hidden in the unconscious. Dramatizations of alienation have continued to our day as a central theme of modern literature.The story in Frankenstein has become a myth itself in the western culture. Mary Shelley's enduring fame lies in the story's ambiguity and paradox. She has challenged the traditional ideas, and foreseen the future. The monster's self-interpretation is uncertain and shifting, and people's interpretation of the monster is also changing. The monster is not only the symbol of the patriarchal victory in science over nature, but also symbolizes man's alienation and dehumanization as well as the complexity of the human psyche.