A binary opposition refers to a pair of related non-physical elements that have opposite meanings; is an important concept of structuralism that defines the contrast between two mutually exclusive terms. Mary Shelley's 1818 novel Frankenstein is full of these contrasts, and none are more relevant and notable than the oppositions allegorized in the relationship between Victor and his creature. These can be separated into seven tracks that connect, merge, blur and mutate to deconstruct the text; creator and created, civilized and wild, inclusion and rejection, love and hate, life and death, good and evil, free will and determinism. Between each of these there is a border, a liminal threshold applied by man that divides the two and creates the opportunity for exchange, change and rupture between the two characters to bring only misery and suffering when Victor dies and the creature disappears in the darkness. darkness and distance'. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original Essay Binary oppositions in themselves are exceptionally problematic since the contrast between two mutually exclusive terms is difficult to define and separate. When we imagine two elements that are opposite in meaning or meaning, we often see only two entities that are at opposite ends of a spectrum and deny the infinite mass of possibilities that lie between them. Furthermore, we mistakenly imagine a clear boundary between the two, as negotiable as the gap between light/dark. While as humans we are able to identify the difference between light and dark, or hot and cold, the boundary between the two is fabricated entirely by human subjectivity, as stated in the Protagoran maxim, "man is the measure of all things " and therefore forced to disintegrate. In terms of hot and cold, we place our perception as the focus of the measurement; we feel comfortable in our climate anywhere around twenty degrees Celsius, anything markedly above or below this is labeled hot or cold without considering for a moment the subjective opinion of another body, or the concept of infinity (there is no limit to how hot or cold something can be) and the perpetual decimals in the temperature shift that can completely alter a state of being; this demolishes the idea that there is some sort of imaginable boundary where one can go from hot to cold or vice versa. This becomes immensely complicated if we replace temperature with morality, the binary opposition between good and evil, as subjectivity destroys any possibility of shared human knowledge that would allow for an easier understanding of heat and cold. In this way, the boundary between good and evil is non-existent, yet we still value the two as binary oppositions. Furthermore, no two binary opposites have the same merit, an idea developed by Claude Levi-Strauss and Jacques Derrida, who both commented on the need for a "dominant" element in binaries; It is a fundamental element of human nature to organize everything in a hierarchical order. This dominant element is 'presence' and is positive and the other is 'absence' or 'lack', which is negative. Cold is therefore the "lack" of heat and evil the absence of good; warmth and goodness are the 'presence'. However, as Nietzsche alludes to in his essay On Truth and Lies in the Non-Moral Sense, this attribution of “positive” and “negative” is simply a “human construct”; there is nothing inherently negative about coldness, darkness, evil or even the word negative, it is simply something that humanity has deemed not beneficial and therefore "bad". Shelley explores this notion in his deconstruction of thebinary between Frankenstein and his creature. Victor is initially represented as the first, "presence", and positive and the creature the second, "absence" and negative. Almost every binary opposition, where Victor was the positive and his creation the negative, is blurred and reversed. At first Victor overcomes the laws of nature by creating his creature, but by destroying his machinery at sea the binary between Science and Nature is reversed as the natural sea swallows scientific technology. Victor's physical creation leads to his mental destruction, and the creature's acquisition of knowledge leads to his mental development. The creature desires integration into society, and Victor desires to escape from it. The creature wants to live happily and Victor wants to die fighting. The creature wants to be equal by having a wife and Victor loses his entire family because he refuses to allow his creature one. The creature is initially determined entirely by Victor, but by learning the nature of life with the DeLaceys he gains a level of free will, meanwhile Victor is enslaved by the threat to all his loved ones; this notion is summarized in the creature's phrase "you created me but now you are my slave". In Ferdinand de Saussure's structuralist theory, linguistic units are defined by signs that indicate what they are not since "in language there are only differences". These opposing relative and negative signs arise from the syntagmatic and paradigmatic context of conceptual and phonic differences which mean that 'language is a form and not a substance'. Saussure would argue that within this form there exists the idea of ​​a "something" and a "not something" that defines signs and creates binary oppositions. This is true when referring to physical entities; here there is only presence and lack. The opposite of the moon is not the sun, but not the moon, the creature learns this when dealing with the world and the DeLaceys in Volume II, Chapters III to V. The creature follows a process similar to Saussure's notion of difference . learn to distinguish between the operations of my various senses'. It does so by discovering a series of binary opposites, the first of which is light and darkness; the creature is blinded by the light before “the darkness came upon me and troubled me” and then “the light poured upon me again.” This greatly confuses the creature and leaves him as a “poor, defenseless, miserable; I didn't know and couldn't distinguish anything." This shows that lack of binaries leads to suffering and merging of binaries also causes suffering, there is joy only when there is a comfortable balance between the two, which is almost impossible. In identifying physical objects as moon/not moon, stream/not stream, foliage/not foliage, the creature confuses the binaries as they are not opposites but lack or absence of the thing itself. In learning conceptual language with the DeLacey family the creature learns that some words produce "pleasure or pain, smiles or sadness" and reflects on this language of opposites as a "divine science". He learns the meaning of "fire, milk, wood, bread" through what they physically indicate, but has difficulty when it comes to "good", "dear and happy" as they rely on opposites to identify them. If the words have no intrinsic meaning of value, then the monster is not a monster until he is called "the wretched, the dirty demon" by Victor; he is given a place within the system before he has even done anything monstrous. This deconstructs the binary idea that Frankenstein and his creation are opposites. While the notion of conceptual opposition is certainly recognizable in Frankenstein, as with the idea of ​​the creator and the created, the most prevalent and interesting themes of the novel occur in the gray area. between and the imaginary border that separates thebinary oppositions that give way to displacements; as with the creator and the created binary: 'you created me but now you are my slave'. These borders are a kind of liminal threshold between states, but they are much more complicated and ambiguous than a simple border line between two states. This idea is tangible in Shelley's deconstruction of binary oppositions; he begins his novel on this metaphorical border, with Victor on the scientific border of the great discovery and Walton on the geographical border of the North Pole. Furthermore, both are trapped in a liminal limbo; the Victor through his mental capacity and Walton through the physical polar ice. Victor manages to cross his boundary and create the creature that becomes his binary opposition, however in the course of events in the novel this binary is shifted immensely, the new boundary (between creation/created, civilized/savage, inclusion/rejection, love/ hatred, life/death, good/evil and free will/determinism) are swapped, moved and broken down until Victor loses everything and dies. Frankenstein crosses the liminal boundary of science and creates a creature that then destroys everything Victor has ever loved. Walton, who realizes this and ultimately decides not to cross the literal geographic border, is allowed to live and return to the comfort of home. The relationship between Frankenstein and his creation is much more complicated and contains much more ambiguous binaries than classical depictions of antithetical characters such as God and Satan in Milton's Paradise Lost, which are constantly referenced in Frankenstein. The separation between heaven and hell and good and evil is exceptionally clear, Shelley uses it as a reference to describe how the nameless creature is somewhere between Satan and Adam and casts our sympathy between Victor and the innocent, defenseless creature. This is summarized in the creature's phrase "I should be your Adam, but I am rather the fallen angel, whom you cast away with joy for no misdeed." Analyzing Umberto Eco's essay Narrative Structure in Fleming and James Bond as the definitive representation of Perfect Binary Oppositions further demonstrates the lack of clear binaries and fusion that occurs in Frankenstein. Bond and Villain are absolute opposites where Bond is the "Anglo-Saxon, masculine and loving" protagonist and the Villain is the "foreign, impotent and sexually deviant" antagonist, or "variant" of Bond. The creature is in no way comparable to these villains, as it wants to love and live like a human, and Victor wishes to die fighting the creature. Terry Eagleton argues that “we cannot catapult ourselves beyond this binary habit of thought into an ultra-metaphysical realm,” so we can only form an understanding of the world through the discovery of opposites. However, he goes on to state that "one term of antithesis is secretly inherent in the other." The idea that an element of every entity exists in its opposite is fascinating when applied to the creature and Frankenstein. In many ways they are the same person and it is the attributes of the creature that are similar to a "good" human, mixed with the fact that it is not a human that produces horror; as Diana Fuss states in her 1996 book Human, All Too Human, "identity, not difference, causes our greatest anxiety." The opposition between inclusion and rejection, located for good and evil in Frankenstein and the Creature, is another primary example of the mutation of binaries through the breaking of boundaries. Upon his first discovery of evidence of humanity, a supposed blessing of the fire left by "wandering beggars", he quickly "puts" his hand "into the burning embers" only to unearth the harshness of human hell and see its "joy "turn into a 'cry of pain'. This is a very early metaphor for trying., 1996.