Nature Vs Nurture
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Nature vs. Nurture
The nature vs. nurture debate revolves around a central question, “What factors contribute to the mental development of an individual? Nature (that is the biological or genetic make-up of a person) or Nurture (that is how a person is raised by whom and in what environment)” (Mental Health). For a long time there has been disputes over whether or not inherited genes or environment influence affects one personality, development, behaviors, abilities, and intelligence. In the book the author uses the theme of nature vs. nurture through characterization, the setting and the irony of it all to show that the creature would not have been a monster if society and his environment had not influenced him to be that way.
Since the beginning of life all things have to learn, how to survive and live. Nature represents the biological qualities that organism inherit a their birth, while nurture represents the qualities the organism acquires from society. Both of these are very important in the development of the creatures behavior. The author uses” Rousseaus theory on the natural man, who is born free and who is good but is corrupted by his environment”(trincoll.edu), because of this is that nurture is the main reason in why the creature behaves the way that he does.
Victor Frankenstein created a monster out of his own selfishness and left him by himself in the world. For the most part Victor Frankenstein had a good childhood. However, it was because of the way he was raised by his father, that he was the type of parent that he was to the creature. His father never really nurtured him in away that a parent is supposed to care for a child. When he was young, his father never really took an interst in him or taught him how to do things.
He always told him what ever he was doing was stupid, “My father looked carelessly at the title page of my book, and said “Ah! Cornelius Agrippa! My dear Victor, do not waste your time upon this; it is sad trash.”( Shelly, pg. 34). Never cared or bothered to sit down with and teach him, talk to him, play with him,have father and son bonding time which is very important for a child and it shows how much of a failure his father was and how much of a failure he is with his own creation.
Victor Frankenstein was obsessed with creating life that he never once thought about what would happen if he actually did . He was not prepared to take care of his creation if and when it came to life, he never really had a father and didnt know how to raise the creature. Nurturing a child is very important to their development. The monster neededVictor,”parents are childrens primary nurturers from infancy through the teen years”, and while he was not a “child” he still needed time for development. (Importance of Parents) Instead of taking responsibility for his creation and teaching it to learn, love, and to love otthers.
In the novel, he says that before he knew how to do anything, he slept, ate, and acted like an animal, eating berries off of trees, and, drinking from the brook and sleeping in the woods. “This was the forest near Ingolstadt; and here I lay by the side of a brook resting from fatigue until I felt tormented by hunger and thirst, and I ate some berries which I found hanging on the trees and lying on the ground, and slaked my thirst at the brook”(Shelly, pg.96). It is reasonable to say that even though doesnt know how to do anything or doesnt know what the world is like, he still has the basic primary functions that everyone has.
Then he starts to watch the cottagers and learns to speak, read, write and starts to think intelligently .He watches them, learns from them what certain things and emotions mean and what they are.” He raised her and smiled with such kindness and affection that I felt sensation of a peculiar and over-powering nature; that were a mixture of pain and pleasure, such as I never experienced”(Shelly, ch.11.) This is showing that he forming reasonable thoughts and watching he develops a more human train of thought. They also give a self-awareness that tells him that he will never be apart of humanity but at the same time that he can not go back to his previous existence.
The nurture he gets from the cottagers overcomes his animal like character, that through this he was able to have this pristine knowledge. I believe its true that the only way the creature has