Frankenstein Quotes About Victor's Downfall

The decisions we make throughout our lives affect us in how we act, think, and feel. This is what Mary Shelley is showing throughout this novel. Victor’s actions, whether they be ethical or not, touch someone in his life in one way or another. It almost always hinders them and helps himself, which is a result of his unethical decisions, like abandoning the monster and essentially killing Justine. However, the one decision he makes to help people, which was to not make another monster, hurts the original monster anyways. Either

Knowledge plays an incredibly large part of Mary Shelly’s novel, Frankenstein. I think that Victor’s obsessive and unhealthy search for knowledge is the true cause of his suffering. Not only does he neglect his friends and family while working to create the monster he puts his own health in danger. “I had worked hard for nearly two years, for the sole purpose of infusing life into an inanimate body. For this I had deprived myself of rest and health.” In this quote we see that Victor stops at nothing to find if he would be successful with his creation. Victor has made this project such a main priority that once it is completed and the creature comes to life he does not know what to do. Since Victor has met his goals and done what he said he wanted to do he does not want to deal with the being he just created so this becomes a problem for him. We see that Victor was very troubled by this whole experience when he says, “You seek for knowledge and wisdom, as I once did; and I ardently hope that the gratification of your wishes may not be a serpent to sting you, as mine has been.”

Letter 1 Explain what is established in the first passage/letter who is narrating? Why is he making this voyage? When and where is this taking place? To whom is he writing the letter?

Victor thought “for this I had deprived myself of rest and health. I had desired it with an ardour that far exceeded moderation; but now that I had finished, the beauty of the dream vanished, and breathless horror and disgust filled my heart”(page). This quote demonstrates that once Victor had concluded his work of creating the monster, he realized that it may have been a huge mistake. He was not satisfied with his creation instead he was filled with terror. In result of his realization, he left the monster to fend for himself and suffer. Victor shows an evil side of himself by abandoning the monster and leaving him to be universally shunned by society. By Victor doing this one evil act, it causes the monster himself to go off and initiate evil acts of his own.

Part of your identity has become snagged by perceived insults and threats to the way you see yourself, causing inner conflict or escalating existing problems. Knowing this, we can conclude that Victor’s battle of his own insecurities led to a series of even bigger problems. To make this claim, the reader needs to know about the Victor’s character, but more so how terrifying he can be. The reader does not yet know the capacity of Victor’s love for Elizabeth. In turn, the reader does not how much regret festers inside of Victor. He suffers his own internal despise for his own monstrous creation. My topic of my essay is the numerous amounts of about conflict Victor had faced. The four topics I will be addressing are Person

Shelley uses to this quote to highlight the theme of madness seen in Victor Frankenstein. For example,Victor demonstrates his madness through his apparent mood swing (a common symptom of madness) shown in this quote. When suggested that Victor should socialize to remedy his grief over Clerval's death, Victor replies he “abhorred” the face of man. The connotation of abhorred has stronger negative reaction than a word such as dislike. He doesn't just dislike the face of man; the face of man fills him with hate and disgust. Although he states this assertion, he immediately retracts the statement and goes on to say how much he loves his fellow humans. Shelley helps establish this mood swing from hatred to praise by using anaphora with “my brethren” and “ my

The power of knowledge has also affected Victor in a negative way. Ever since Victor was a child, he had always been interested in science. As he got older, he got even more interested in specific topics within natural philosophy, particularly the human body. After his talk with his professor, he believed he could create an animate object from an inanimate object, in which this case the object turned into a monster. “My labours would soon end, and I believed that exercise and amusement would then drive away incipient disease; and I promised myself both of these when my creation should be complete” (57). Victor has put a lot of effort into learning the anatomy of a human body and pursues the creation of one, yet he doesn’t realize how small the margin of error would be. Later on in the book, the monster demands Victor to create a

“ Scoffing devil! Again do I vow vengeance; again do I devote thee, miserable fiend, to torture and death. Never will I give up my search, until he or I perish” (249). This quote is significant because this shows Victor's reaction to the creatures message of fighting each other to the death. After the murder of Victor’s friends and family, he vows to avenge his loved ones for the pain and suffering that they have gone through. Which leads him on a journey to hunt down his own out of body doppelganger and end him once and for all. The word doppelganger is significant in the novel because Victor's creation is his own out of body double. It also demonstrates how they are similar and different from each other. Victor had a very happy childhood, he is surrounded by love and happiness. Meanwhile the creature is forced into isolation and is physically harassed and tormented when he comes in contact with humans. Which is why the creatures vow of revenge is stronger then Victors, since he was the one who suffered more. Along with the fact that the creature has the ability to control Victor in a way that when Victor was close to death on his pilgrimage, the creature left a hare for Victor so to continue his revenge. Which in turn eventually led them to their demise, since they allowed their passion for revenge over power their sense of reason.

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

Victor, after being convinced to create a female companion for the monster, realizes that this will only create double the amount of destruction, he then makes the choice to discontinue his project to prevent more devastation. Instead of less damage resulting from this choice it only brings more harm to his life and everyone around him. First, his good friend Henry Clerval is murdered by the beast and Victor is accused of this murder, “The human frame could no longer support the agonies that I endured, and I was carried out of the room in strong convulsions.” (Shelley 129). This was Victor’s reaction upon seeing Henry’s corpse and demonstrates how deeply his pursuit for knowledge affects him. Even though he is later released on circumstantial evidence, he will be scarred for life knowing that he responsible for yet another death. Given that Victor destroyed the monster’s only hope of having someone else like him in the world; the monster swears revenge and that he will return on Victor’s wedding night. Victor misinterpreted this warning and instead of the monster attacking Victor, his creation attacked and

The monster believed that Victor would accept him, but after he realized that not only did Victor not want to assume his position in the monster’s life, but society also rejected him, it became a transitory thought, and instead became replaced with his bloodthirst towards Victor and his loved ones, which he knew would hurt way worse than just killing him; making him lonely like himself. Both Victor and the monster partook in horrid acts, in which held horrendous actions; the main one being Victor creating the monster in the first place which in result caused the both of them heartbreak, loneliness, and pain. If Victor wouldn’t have created the monster, then his life would not be filled with so much grief and emptiness; Victor is the true monster, although they are both the primal protagonists as much as they are the antagonists because of the display of the emotions they both portray as lamenting humans/monsters, and the power they give to nature in order to destroy one another. Victor used nature to his advantage, although it was wrong; Victor used nature to create and destroy the monster; he used the

Recognising the true feeling of his creator towards him the monster beings to inflict pain on to Victor by hurting his loved ones. Revengeful, Victor wants to“trample [his creation, the creature,] to dust” (Shelley 97) for the murders the wretched monster has done and fully intends to commit, similar to how a God in many religions may deliver divine retribution onto its creation. Victor’s supposition of authority over whether his creation will live or die is another attempt to play God. Victor plans to kill his own creation to protect the lives of his family and friends, however, as Victor pursuits after his creation, other humans are endangered and Frankenstein’s attempt to prevent the monster from harming any more of Victor’s loved ones is

Victor feels that his relentless search for more knowledge is the cause for all of his suffering. It is true that his knowledge is what created the creature, but what made things worse is that he never gave the creature what he needed, so the neglected creature set out to find it himself. Victor’s tragic fate was not the result of his knowledge but because he did not take care of his creature. 6. Foreshadowing is seen multiple times such as the night when Victor sees lightning strike down a tree and Victor is fascinated with how much power the lighting has. The monster also foreshadows his own death when saying, “But soon I shall die.. I shall ascend my funeral pile triumphantly and exult in the agony of the torturing flames..” 7. By not giving his creation a name, Victor didn’t give his creature an identity or a place in society. In society, a person’s name is who they are, people make their own judgment of people right away. The creature didn’t have a name and people judged him right away and identified him as monster and only that, rather than an actual being. 8. During the period in which Frankenstein was written, science was growing and it was seen as anything could be possible with the new research and

At first, even before the monster’s creation, Frankenstein’s physical and mental health is already in a poor state because of his infatuation with the experiment. “Every night I was oppressed by a slow fever, and I became nervous to a most painful degree…sometimes I grew alarmed at the wreck I perceived that I had become (Shelly 42.)” This points to Victor as the sole perpetrator in his pain as he seeks knowledge. His physical and mental condition continue to deteriorate as the story

Throughout his creation of the monster, he proves to be even more ignorant, because it is apparent that he knows how much he is suffering by pursuing the creation. Victor admits this by saying, “I seemed to have lost all soul or sensation but for this one pursuit…” (Shelley, 40) Here Victor is accepting that everything around him has merely vanished while he’s trying to pursue this one creation. He becomes too involved in his work, and it soon takes over his entire life. When he says that he has lost his soul, this is a true statement, and unfortunately his soul never returns. Once he begins to work on the creation, his soul is forever lost, and he no longer has a sense of wrong or right, because while creating monster he was isolated from the rest of the world. Victor’s ignorance continues when he again states that the acquirement of knowledge is dangerous, yet he continues to pursue the creation. He yet again states to others, “Learn from me, if not by my precepts, at least by my example, how dangerous is the acquirement of knowledge, and how much happier that man is who believes his native town to be his world, than he who aspires to become greater than his nature will allow” (Shelley, 39). This quote is very hypocritical, because Victor accepts that he would’ve been happier than he is now, if he hadn’t begun the creation in the first place. Hearing him say this makes him seem not only ignorant, but also very weak. He had to potential to turn things around at this point