Athena Evers
Mrs. Obringer
Comp. 1110
16 December, 2015
Eaten Alive: Power in Mary Shelley's Frankenstein In the novel Frankenstein, a story about a man who oversteps the bounds of nature and suffers for it, the desires and struggles for power run rampant. With a literary base, Mary Shelley addresses the tendency of power to overcome and destroy its pursers. She presents three distinct characters, all of whom are infatuated with some form of power; all are responsible for the deaths of others due to the pursuit of this power. Robert Walton seeks discovery. Victor Frankenstein seeks natural power. The Creature seeks to control. Robert Walton, the arctic explorer, dreams of discovering secrets in the far north; as he says “What may…show more content… This drive morphs into a desire to understand the structure and existence of life, then into the desire to create artificial life. Frankenstein succeeds in his creation, but fails to take responsibility of the creature he has made. This leads directly to the deaths of William, Justine, and Clerval. Frankenstein even, albeit in a fever, calls himself “..the murderer of William, of Justine, and of Clerval” (Shelley 151). These deaths don't destroy him, though; it takes the murder of his wife, Elizabeth to do so. By the time he loses her, however, he has stopped caring to blame himself. Frankenstein swears to “...wreak a great and signal revenge on [the Creature's] cursed head”(Shelley 168). He pursues the Creature across Europe, until he can no longer, and expires on Walton's chartered…show more content… The Creature, in the simplest fashion, wishes acceptance in society. When it is evident that his grotesque appearance will not allow this, he turns his sights towards obtaining a mate. He decides the best course of action is to convince Frankenstein to make a female. It is here the Creature begins to exert power over Frankenstein, threatening the man's family in search of compliance. Precisely, the threat is “… I will work at your destruction, nor finish until I desolate your heart, so that you shall curse the hour of your birth”(Shelley 126). The Creature certainly follows through, murdering both Clerval and Elizabeth when Frankenstein fails to create a mate. In the end, the Creature is remorseful and resolves to destroy himself to hide Frankenstein's research, thus losing
