Conflict

This weeks concept is desire. Desires of a character and their motive within the story. I chose to highlight Dr. Frankenstein in our reading of Frankenstein. In class we discussed conflict in detail and how a characters desires encounter this conflict. This is a very important aspect as every character in every story has some goal there intend to achieve. Along the path to achieve this goal, there is generally some sort of conflict that they will face. This conflict, depending on the character and how vital their goal is to the story itself, is a crucial piece is developing a fictional story and how it will flow. The reader gets to know the character and learns of their desire. They then tend to side with this character and sometimes have an emotional bond with them and it becomes the goal of the reader to achieve this goal, through the character that they are reading. Dr. Frankenstein is in so many words, obsessed with creation. Through his experiences with the death of his mother and relationship with Elizabeth, his love, the doctor is set on the idea of creation and the power that it brings with it. In our reading, we see Dr. Frankenstein experiment with the human body, both how it is built and how it falls apart. He is enthralled with every aspect of his experiments. The conflict we come to see is after he brings his creation to life. He is absolutely disgusted with what he has created and cannot bear to even look at it. He struggles with internal conflicts with himself and questions his motives to bring this, "thing," to life. The resolution of this conflict goes beyond our reading. I am, however, familiar with the story and know that the monster goes on to destroy everything and everyone that the doctor loves. This internal conflict that we see in this story defines Dr. Frankenstein. What began as an obsession and also as his life's work, ends in utter disaster causing the doctor to question everything in his life. We can see now the effect conflict has on a character and the story itself.