Frankenstein Themes

Developing the theme of the paper is often the hardest part for me, i have to really think out and theme and fully deveop the idea before I can start writing. If I don't I often find myself drifting through my paper and changing my thesis and my theme as I go. For me, this either leads to an unfinished, mess of a paper or me having to rewrite the whole thing.

Within Frankenstein there are a few themes that I'm considering, they more intriguing to me than others and should allow me to further develop my ideas and create a more motivating argument for my thesis. I'm going to start developing a few of the main ideas of each theme so I can start working on the outline of my paper.

First theme: Parent versus Child

The parent Victor, is the creator of the monster, he gave the monster birth. Like a parent, Victor should have been responsible the monster, he shoudl have taght the monster the about life, happiness and family. Instead he left the monster behind and ran away. Just as with any parent who would do that to their child, they feel guilty and the child feels neglected and unhappy. Children will rebel out if they are neglected, similiar to how the monster rebelled against Victor by killing his friends. This theme also follows the idea of guilt and creation, it incorporates many of the feelings going on within both Victor's life and and the monsters actions throughout the story.

Second theme: Secrecy

Victor has been creating the monster in silence, he dropped contact with Elizabeth, Henry and all of his other friends and family. Even when Henry comes to visit, he just hopes the monster isn't around, and doesn't even inform Henry what he did. This is weird because he put so much effort into creating the monster, for most people this would have been a time of celebration. Then when his brother is murdered and Justine is blamed for the death, Victor still keeps quiet knowing it was the monster that killed his brother. This brings up the question, why won't Victor confess what he did? guilt, embarassment, intimacy problems. I'm still trying to decide what the reasons are but I have to finish the book before I can further develop my idea.

I have to develop the ideas further but writing them out is helping process my thoughts.