How Far Do You Agree That Mary Shelley’s Viewpoint on Prejudice Shows It Has a Destructive Capability?

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Furthermore, Shelley produces pathos through the monster in order to intensify society’s destructive ability because of prejudice. Via the religious and literary allusion of the monster revelating his “misery” he declares, “I ought to be thy Adam, but I am rather the fallen angel” which invokes the epigraph of Frankenstein where Adam condemned God which is similar to how the monster criticises its creator- Frankenstein by opposing him “How dare you sport thus with life?” Shelley’s use of a rhetorical question here expresses Victor’s responsibility towards his creation because in the monster’s view Victor is the “omnipotent God”. However, Frankenstein hasn’t fulfilled his role in playing God yet like a flawed man as he failed to complete his responsibilities towards his conception, which should’ve been treated how Adam has. Shelley, here, illustrates how the creature’s innocence fades away after being rejected and isolated by his creator and the society, which made the monster notice the similarity between him and the devil when he educated himself with Paradise Lost by John Milton. Shelley is suggesting that there are dangers of playing God, one which Victor is experiencing, leads to be foreshadowed by the novel’s subtitle, the Modern Prometheus, that he is a Romantic over-reacher, who transgresses the boundaries between the human and the divine. This is an expected result for the audience, that this denouncement for Frankenstein must face the outcomes of his action, he will endure eternal torment.

Not to mention how this allusion also denotes the Romantic’s and society’s agitation of scientific discovery of the 19th century, while Shelley mirrors the Romantic’s trope of the solitary scientist being charged away “like a hurricane” of their ambition and intelligence, the simile connotes the idea of Shelley’s warnings against this, portraying the dangers of isolation that results to construction of the “unearthly ugliness” and its own misery because of society’s prejudice while in the process of enveloping the sublime of nature throughout the novel that reflects the Romantic’s movement and their perspective of the sublime.

In conclusion, the “misery” of abandonment of the creature as a product of prejudice highlighting the destructive ability as he burns the cottage and watches the fire “clung to it and licked it with their forked and destroyed tongues.” Shelley’s use of biblical allusion here suggests about the epigraph, Paradise Lost, yet Shelley’s actual intent via this allusion is to unveil the solace which the monster has developed through this operation of fury to ease him from the anguish he has endured when he lost his only link to society. Through this event and murder of William, the monster has assured that it will never be adequate in human society and by affirming revenge he has excluded any hope of participating the human society, all due to the rejection and prejudice he has been showered with by his creator and the society. The monster only becomes a monster because society labels it a one, his fatigue of all this and in order to receive revenge he accepts that label and becomes the definition of a monster that is stereotypically imagined to be.

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