Reply to the discussion post 100 words each

Paragraph number one below give a reply should each be about 100 words and also add to the discussion with new ideas, different examples, additional quotations from the text for support and illustration. This is for chapters 1-16 of Frankenstein.

First discussion to reply to:

My feelings and impressions of the monster have completely changed after he told Victor the story of his life. Up until that point, we had only ever seen the monster through Victor’s eyes and heard only his opinion on him. Being able to hear his life story along with everything he learned and experienced along the way really goes to show just how human the monster really is, despite the method of his creation. Throughout his story, he repeatedly shows that he is an intelligent creature with feelings and empathy. One of the main sections of the story where this is outlined is his time living in the cottage next to Felix and Agatha. By listening to and learning from them every day, the monster is able to understand what it is they are going through and why they always seemed so unhappy all the time. Eventually, he realizes that they are very poor, a fact which was not being helped by the monster siphoning food from them every day. Once he learns that his taking food is hurting them, he immediately feels guilt for his actions and does what he can to make up for it. As the monster put it in the story, “I had been accustomed, during the night, to steal a part of their store for my own consumption; but when I found that in doing this i inflicted pain on the cottagers, I abstained” (78). He clearly shows many human qualities throughout his story that he tells Victor, with this being a major one. The fact that he feels such a strong sense of empathy and guilt for these people’s poverty really shows how different he is from what Victor first saw him as. It really makes me feel sorry for the monster when you consider how lonely his entire existence has been thus far. Overall, all of these things that the monster talked to Victor about completely changed my initial opinion of him.

Second discussion to reply to:

My main impression of Dr. Frankenstein’s meeting with his creation was very disappointing to see how Victor was assuming the creature was evil and went straight to attack him. He should have been more empathetic with him being that he was the one who created him and abandoned him to his own misery. My feelings and impressions of the creature after he tells his story after his abandonment were very sympathetic “Of my creation and creator I was absolutely ignorant, but I knew that I possessed no money, no friends, no kind of property.” (Shelley 85) because I felt sorry for how he was feeling and what he went through and he truly was abandoned with no one to care for him or love him.

The creature definitely has redeeming qualities except they are not fully developed because of the way he is treated by his physical appearance. He has a huge heart and means well, however everyone that meets or sees him makes him feel the anger and rage because of how they judge his appearance. In the scene where he is near the cottage with the the DeLacey family he noticed that they were poor and suffered from food abundance “This trait of kindness moved me sensibly. I had been accustomed, during the night, to steal a part of their store for my own consumption, but when I found that in doing this I inflicted pain on the cottagers, I abstained and satisfied myself with berries, nuts, and roots which I gathered from a neighbouring wood.” (Shelley 78) and felt guilty stealing from them. This scene depicts the humanity the creature had in him because he felt remorse for stealing. As for my feelings for Dr. Frankenstein have not changed since volume 1 since I have heard from the creatures perspective it has made me feel even more upset.