Different Approaches in Frakenstein.

Paper no:E-C- 201

Topic:  Different Approaches in Frakenstein

Name: Gohil Hetalba

Roll No :5

Class:M.A,Sem-2

Submitted To:
Dr.Dilip Barad.

Department of English

Bhavnagar University

Bhavnagar

Frankenstein

      Frankenstein was written in 1818 by Mary Shelley, wife of p.b Shelley.There is two different approaches which is used in Frankenstein.

1) Moral and Philosophical Approaches.

2) The Formalist Approaches.

Moral and Philosophical Approaches.

 The moral and philosophical approaches is as old as classical Greek and roman critics.

      Frakenstein is akin to some scientists of our own day against whom ethics bring charges that the scientists attempt and achieve development more and they have the ethical clarity to direct their studies. Frakenstein stoked his ambition by the self-0deluding thought that he would discover the secret of life and create a living being that in turn would be the flower of humanity.

      He does not think through the full range of possibilities, including the possibility of disastrous failure in the midst of his seeming success.

     There is another moral dimension in Mary Shelley’s novel besides the creation of another life; momentonsas being enters the world and society. There the moral dimensions extend to responsibility for one’s own children.Frakensteinis moral culpable for his failure to accept responsibility. Frakenstein refuses to accept responsibility for his progeny and to society for the horrors he himself has inflicted upon it.

        While pursuing the moster we can see absence of love and a person has totally lost his moral compass and if Frankenstein challenges a moral universe, frakenstein, the 19th ceatury novel challenges the 21^st century.

The Formalist Approach.

      The outward form ,almost the visual shape of Mary Shelley’s Frakenstein.Infact ,the entire book is placed within a frame of the letters,so that the frame itself becomes a formalist deviceand especially important at the beginning and the end of the book,with the extensive letters of captain Walton to his sister.We occasionally have a box-within a box effect which in turn introduce a possibility of a shifting  point of view.For a formalist reader,this entails attension to who the speaker/writer is and which perception change accordingly,if any.

     The closer reader of the novel  must  soon perceive two opposing ideas and concept which forms the major theme of the novel.The theme of hope and despair,Frakenstein and walton’s dreams for great scientific successes  but both fails stupendously while sacrificing the lives of other(Frakenstein) or endangering lives(Walton)

The contrast between hubris hopes and human despair form a major theme of the novel.