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The Importance Of Fate In Mary Shelley's Frankenstein

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In 1818 a woman named Mary Shelley published one of the bestselling gothic novels in history, this novel is also known as Frankenstein. This book is frequently called the world’s first science fiction novel. In Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, there are many themes that play out before our eyes. One of the themes that best presents itself in the book is fate. Fate can oftentimes be described as the development of events beyond a person's control. There are various ways that fate plays large roles in many different aspects and situations throughout the story.
Victor Frankenstein is the main story’s protagonist. His fate started when he was just a young boy. John C. Maxwell once stated, “You will never fulfill your destiny doing work you despise.” Victor Frankenstein’s destiny was fulfilled from a very young age when he started to discover natural science. Young Frankenstein's family had taken a holiday to a small inn within the tiny town of Thonon. The way in which Frankenstein discovered his first science book was an example of destiny. Even Frankenstein himself described the encounter as fate, “Natural philosophy is the genius that has regulated my fate...the inclemency of the weather obliged us to remain a day confined to the inn.” (Shelley Page#) It was as if the weather was meant to be so severe that Frankenstein was not able to leave the inn, so that he would have stumbled across this volume at the inn. When Victor found the works of Cornelius Agrippa on the bookshelf at

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