Victor Frankenstein is a brilliant scientist who has mastered everything he has learned from his professors. When Mary Shelley wrote this book, scientific discovery was making great leaps, some of the discoveries regarding human anatomy came courtesy of corpses from dug up graves. Victor was fascinated with the science of life as well as the nature of electricity. In his quest to understand death, Victor creates life, using his brilliant mind to actually bring a man to life. Victor made the right decision by destroying to make a female, monster because of many reasons. For one the relationship may not work between the two created
While attempting to uncover the meaning of life and death, and though he believed his experiments would further the paths of science, Victor fails to see the potential consequences of “bestowing animation upon lifeless matter” (Shelley 37). This, in turn, creates a monster. After his “great” experiment, Victor spends his life in grief. Despite this, he manages to belittle his creation, and act superior to him, claiming that “I [Victor] will not hear you. There can be no community between you [the creature] and me; we are enemies” (Shelley 84). Even later on, when assured by the creature himself that Victor would be left alone if he creates a female counterpart, Victor cannot see past the shreds of pride he has left and refuses, causing the death of his family and loved ones. It’s Victor’s pride and his fear of the creature that clouds his judgement and in the end leads to his
Victor started to distance himself from his colleagues, friends and family while he became more engaged in his research. He is so deeply involved with his research that he turns his home into a laboratory. The more Victor works on his research, the more selfish he becomes. He even confesses that “a new species would bless me as its creator and source; many happy and excellent natures would owe their being to me” (pg 48). His own words prove that there was no logical reason for Victor to create his monster besides the glory of creating life.
Mary Shelley's novel, "Frankenstein" pinpoints the life of Victor Frankenstein, an intelligent and ardent man to natural philosophy and science, who consequently animates a creature who he believes to be an omen to his existence. The novel introduces Victor's upbringing with an adored family, his contemptible creation of the monster, and the doleful murder of his brother William.
Alienation is a product of society’s inherently discriminatory bias, catalyzed by our fear of the unknown in the realm of interpersonal conduct. Mary Shelley, in her novel, Frankenstein, dissects society’s unmerited demonization of individuals who defy—voluntarily or involuntarily—conventional norms. Furthermore, through her detailed parallel development of Frankenstein and his monster, Shelley personifies the tendency to alienate on the basis of physical deformity, thereby illustrating the role of the visual in the obfuscation of morality.
Shelley addresses romantic conventions in Victor to convey his loss of identity. Victor is impatient and restless when constructing the creation, so much, that he does not think about it’s future repercussions. One of the great paradoxes that Shelley’s novel depicts is giving the monster more human attributes than to it’s creator [p. 6 - Interpretations]. This is true as the monster seeks an emotional bond, but Victor is terrified of it’s existence. The monster later reveals, “I, the miserable and the abandoned, am an abortion, to be spurred at and kicked and trampled on [Shelley, p. 224].” Victor’s lack of compassion is rooted from the inability to cope with his reality. He distances himself from others and is induced with fainting spells [Shelley, p. 59]. From this, the nameless creature exemplifies Victor’s attempt to abandon his creation to escape his responsibilities. His creation is described as, ‘wretched devil’ and ‘abhorred monster,’ eliciting that the unobtainable, pitied identity [Shelley, p. 102]. The act of not naming the creature reveals Victor as hateful, and unnaturally disconnected to his own created victim.
The Victim and Victimizer In Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, it can be hard to pinpoint who exactly is the victim and the victimizer. In a way, both Victor and the Monster are both victims, however, the Monster is the true victimizer between the two. From my perspective, Victor is the victim of poor planning and his own creation.
Eventually, Victor obtains knowledge of how to bring one back from the dead. “I had worked hard for nearly two years, for the sole purpose of infusing life into an inanimate body” (Shelley, 102). This new knowledge sends Victor on a path of destruction causing him to find human and animal body parts. He attempts to create life for a creature that has unknown capabilities and is created from what Victor thinks is what makes a human beautiful. After the creation of the the Monster, Victor had realized what he had done and events after the creation of the monster causes him to become unhappy because he realizes how obsessive he became with the Monster and how he completely ignored others to finish a product that he didn’t want for more than just proving a point about the goodness in knowledge.
At this point Victor is responsible for two deaths and must keep this all to himself. By suffering through the guilt and the illness it is clear that his decisions that were made in order to deepen his knowledge of the scientific world are becoming dangerous to himself and the people close to him.
Mary Shelley’s “Frankenstein” is about Victor Frankenstein’s excessive knowledge in the sciences and his refusal to accept his own creation. Frankenstein starts with a healthy curiosity in the sciences that eventually turns into an unhealthy obsession he can no longer control. He undergoes a drastic transformation because of making experiments that eventually result in his biggest one yet; the monster. Shelley applies the themes: the danger of too much knowledge, ambition, monstrosity, isolation, and Nature vs. Nurture throughout the novel with the characterization of the monster and Frankenstein.
Although Creature have questionable actions throughout the novel Victor is the center of it all and without him everything would have been fine. Victor created life, essentially playing god, without a care for the consequences not
While at college, Victor desired to acquire knowledge for “unknown powers and... the mysteries of creation.” Victor’s desire to learn
All his life Victor was obsessed with science and things beyond what they seem. He isolated himself from all human existence for two long years, studying, thinking and ultimately creating. Victor pushed the limit of science by creating a living, breathing creature. In order to create his creature he had to take body parts from the dead. This paints a great picture of how dedicated he was to science and really how morbid the setting of this novel really is.
However, Victor is faced with ¨what the duties of a creator towards his creation were¨ (70) Because of this VIctor decided to follow the beast to his cave and listen to his tale. The creature is lonely and wants a companion that will not be scared of him or shun him away. Victor agrees after the monster makes a very good argument, and resolves to make a wife. He succeeds in doing so, and then is regretful again, so he kills the monster’s bride-to-be.
Victor learning these things led to him figuring out how to bring a corpse made of different body parts back to life. Since Victor took those classes and learned how to do this it gave him the ambition to actually try it and bring the creature to life. Victor brings his creation to life and is so horrified by it that he becomes very sick, leaving this monster alone. While Victor is away his brother William is found dead, the Frankenstein family servant is the one blamed for the murder while Victor knows the real murderer.
Shelley uses electricity as the device that gives the monster life. Victor wonders about the potential to create life using electricity and a dead body and he is obsessed with creating life. After a great deal of research, he states the following: