Foreshadowing In Frankenstein

Throughout the entire of the novel, Frankenstein, Mary Shelley shows that Frankenstein’s demise is a direct result of his own decisions. Mary displays this through three vivid actions that Victor did; the creation of the creature, the death of his Brother and trial of Justine, and the ignorance Victor had that led to the murder of Victor’s wife, Elizabeth. Victor was a very smart student with an immense drive to accomplish whatever he told himself he was going to accomplish. With Victor’s early studying in college, Victor describes his situation when studying “Victor’s cheeks had grown pale with study, and my person had become emaciated with confinement. “ (Shelley 40), Showing Victor relied so heavily on studying that he was hurting his body

Victor is not the only one that has been on a quest for knowledge. The Monster that Victor created has search to know whom his father or creator is and

Victor Frankenstein was a regular scientist until he became obsessed and mentally ill. “This state of mind preyed upon my health… all sound of joy or complacency was torture to me; solitude was my only consolation-deep, dark, deathlike solitude” (Shelley 77). Mary Shelley created the character Victor, who devoted most of his time, research, and effort into creating a being which can hold life. Victor became successful, yet mentally scarred after the sight of his creature. This hurt Victor, but not as harshly as the creature's following actions. The creature goes on to kill members of Victor’s family and kill his closest and dearest friends. The creature’s actions cause Victor to suffer both mentally and physically. Victor then falls back

In the late 1810’s, a group of young adults decided to have a ghost story writing contest. This was a fun, silly activity that no one predicted to have a great impact on the world. However, it did. Mary Shelley, one of the contestants, wrote a wonderful short story for her friends; and with encouragement from her husband, she turned it into a full novel, Frankenstein. Since being published in 1818, the book has never gone out of print.

Victor is foolish, as he dedicated half of his life working to create the being, and the second half trying to destroy it. The creature causes Victor’s death, although it was not by the creature’s own hands. The creature drives him to desperation, and it is the creature’s fault that he has nothing and no one to live for in the world. Near the end of his life, Victor gives Walton some final words of advice saying, “Seek happiness in tranquility and avoid ambition, even if it be only the apparently innocent one of distinguishing yourself in science and discoveries" (162). Victor realizes his life has been ruined because of his scientific ambition, and he also acknowledges that the sins of his past will continue to haunt him. In the end, the creature causes Victor’s death just as the creature killed his family and friends; therefore, Victor neglects his health and travels to harsh environments to catch the monster ending in his own demise.

Frankenstein’s creation was lost in the world with no one who could have understood him . It felt sorrowful and unfulfilled emotions as seen in this quote. Betrayal by Victor leaves a large impact the monster carried, which, turned into a monster full of hate and dissatisfaction. Victor’s creation was not a monster , but new born baby in a grown horrific body that was not to be called his own . It becomes a monster both mentally and physically, who will be feared by all . Victor not giving him the love he needed gets the monster enraged, which leads the monster to cause series of events that affects Victor unforgivably. .

Throughout Frankenstein, Victor proves to be quite an egotistical person. Victor’s actions will sometimes be selfish and not as noble as he would like others to believe. He creates the monster with a desire to obtain awe and fame and to make sure that his name will be remembered throughout history. “… a light so brilliant and wondrous… that I alone should be reserved to discover so astonishing a secret” (Shelley 37). While this discovery of Victor’s may be groundbreaking, he fails to think of the negative consequences, only thinking of himself and what this could potentially

Throughout the novel, Victor ignores and shows no interest or empathy towards human beings. He is an alchemist himself who is interested in making things come to life from the dead specifically. He was unable to differentiate the “impracticability” of this creation he had in mind (Shelley 54). Victor has this big idea of taking body parts of the dead people and creating this creature that also becomes known as the Monster. He does not think about the future of the

Victor feels extremely guilty that he has created this creature, "It was on a dreary night of November that I beheld the accomplishment of my toils. With an anxiety that almost amounted to agony, I collected the instruments of life around me that might infuse a spark of being into lifeless thing that lay at my feet" (Frankenstein 34-35). The guilt expressed through the words of Victor shows how severe his mood changes are. He goes from being delighted that he has accomplished the impossible, to regretting ever the thought of creating something so hideous. Victor feels empty through out chapter five, because he feels so bad for creating this creature. Also the extreme loss of energy that Victor experiences after his manic episode, verifies that he has bipolar disorder. "…for I was lifeless, and did not recover my senses for a long, long time."(Frankenstein 38)

A romantic life full of pain and abandonment could only be given the monstrous form of "Frankenstein." Mary Shelley 's life gave birth to an imaginary victim full of misery and loneliness and placed him as the protagonist of one of her most famous and greatest works of art. As most people would assume, he is not just a fictional character, but in fact a creature who desperately demonstrates Shelley 's tragedies and losses during the age of the Romantic Era. Since Mary Shelley 's birth there have been numerous losses in her life. One extremely dominating event in Shelley 's life was the death of her mother. Soon after, her father remarried and Shelley entered a battle as the victim of a fight for love. In her

This experiment places him out of society and in isolation for months, showing his obsession with creating something that is his own. In addition, Frankenstein knows he has the ability to create the monster where he "[emphasizes] the necessary deference to nature that empirical science lacked, [Shelley] found her portrayal of Victor's artificial human complicated by the materialism of his genesis" (Willis 2). Victor's arrogance in knowledge led him to create the monster only because he knew he could. The monster is purely experimental and Victor creates the monster because his knowledge overcame his decision between morals and achievements.

Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein has several literary devices- such as structure, imagery, and many intricate details. She perfectly places words and puts them in such a way that the passage has a dual tone. Shelley begins with establishing the monster’s nature as being peaceful, because he wanted to reason with Victor. Him wanting to reason shows the importance of his decision to meet with Victor and shows that even though he has been through a great deal, he is still respectable to others. The audience gets to see the creature’s humble nature and makes the audience feel sympathetic towards him. This creates a peaceful tone to the passage. The monster wants to be loved by “any being and if they showed benevolence to me, I would return them hundred an hundred fold” (Shelley 148). The creature’s begging makes it sound like Victor will answer his plea. Using a broad term like “being”, demonstrates the monster’s need to be loved, putting him in a position with the audience again feeling empathetic towards him. Eventually, Victor’s compassion begins to fluctuate. The desperation the creature has looks like the desperation a human might have. This only gives the readers another reason to relate to him which leads to the other tone, impossible. Victor’s unreasonableness heightens this shared discontent as not only has the build up of the creature’s wistful nature made him an utmost identifiable character, but our views are adjusted in such as way that Frankenstein is seen

The idea of pursuing knowledge clouded Victor’s mind and when his creature is born he is shocked to discover that what he has created is far off his own expectations. Not only did the monster destroy his expectations of developing a creature that went beyond human knowledge, but it also affected his life, dignity, and fears. Victor himself admits to his own mistake when he says, “The different accidents of life are not so changeable as the feelings of human nature...but now that I had finished, the beauty of the dream vanished, and breathless honor and disgust filled my heart ” (36). Victor Frankenstein realizes what his obsession with pursuing an extensive amount of knowledge has brought him. His destiny to achieve the impossible with no regard for anyone or anything but himself shows that he is blinded by knowledge when creating the monster and is incapable to foresee the outcome of his creation. Victor’s goal was meant to improve and help humanity, but instead it leads to

The first of Frankenstein’s flaws, is his foolishness. Victor is foolish in various aspects, more specifically his intention to bring life from the dead. Throughout history it is a known fact, when someone or something has died, there is no hope in bringing life back to them. It is one of the fundamental laws of life and Frankenstein is foolish to think he can surpass it. To his credit, he is indeed able to breathe life into the creature but this is also where his

Possibly the most significant trait that connects Victor Frankenstein and Robert Walton is the desire to have knowledge of the forbidden, a theme that is echoed throughout Shelley 's book. During Shelley 's time, industrialization and science began advancing at unfathomable rates and Shelley feared that these innovations were in some ways inhuman and that boundaries should exist of what man truly requires knowing. Thus, she created two parallel characters to illustrate the different paths the search of forbidden knowledge produces, whether it is a science that resembles sorcery, or uncharted territories covered with impenetrable ice. Victor will stop at nothing to pursuit this forbidden knowledge and explains, "Curiosity, earnest research to learn the hidden laws of nature, gladness akin to rapture, as they were unfolded to me, are among the earliest sensations I can remember." However, his endless search to create life ironically triggers the destruction of lives, including his and the monster 's. He even symbolically hunts the creature, the product of his own doing, to stop the destruction he has spawned. He explains: