Voltaire's Candide and Shelley's Frankenstein Essay

This section of the novel opens our eyes to the real monster of the story and, as a result, we feel sympathy for the creature. His desire to learn about life and the world around him is amazing and his encounter with the De Lacey family demonstrates just how much he wants to makes friends and be a part of his "community." He teaches himself to read and attempts to make friends with this family because he is aware of the importance of connecting with others. Watching them, he is filled with "sensations of a peculiar and overpowering nature" (Shelley 93) and wants to be a part of their world. He is a good creature at first and Shelley does an excellent job of portraying him in this light. He only becomes evil after he suffers rejection and abuse from those that he is trying to connect with on a more personal level. Here we see a compassion in the monster that we never see in Victor, who is supposed to more educated and human.

I enjoyed both of these stories because of the message they convey. Voltaire teaches us the difficult lesson Candide must learn and, by doing so, he is helping us from making the same mistakes he did. Candide traveled all over the world to come to the realization that there is good and evil everywhere. There is nowhere that one can travel where one will exist without the other. They balance each other out in the sense that we appreciate the good more when we endure the difficult times in life. Without pain or sadness, joy would seem less joyous somehow. Candide also realizes that regardless of where he lives, he knows he can find happiness and once he realizes this, he finds comfort in the unknown but hopeful future.Candide realizes that our choices to do good will ultimately determine our worth in this life. At the end of the story, he says, "All events are all linked together in the best possible worlds" (Voltaire 101). Once this is realized, things appear to make more sense to him and he is able to live confidently.

I also enjoyed Frankenstein for the message it conveys as well. Victor must endure awful tragedies to realize that the knowledge he sought was exactly what ruined his life. He tells Robert to be wary of such desires because they lead to ruin. Victor became a victim to his passion and he let his emotions get the best of him. He became a man obsessed and the worst thing of all is that he did not stop to consider any unintended consequences. When the creature did not look like he thought it would, Victor acted like a child and deserted it when he should have taken responsibility. He did not intend on the creature being ugly and he certainly did not intend of the thing garnering an education and exacting revenge upon his maker. Victor was blinded by his greed and, in the end, it consumed him. Victor teaches us that we should always stop and think before we act and we should never assume that we know what the future holds. Victor was full of himself and proves how pride destroys lives even with the best of intentions.

Work Cited

Shelley, Mary. Frankenstein. New York: Bantam Books. 1981.….....