The Futility of Aspiration Exposed in Frankenstein
Within the dreary gloom and depression of Frankenstein, Mary Shelley tells a fantastical tale of what happens when science and greed are combined. Through the eyes and journal of an eager seafarer named Walton, Shelley relates to us the tragic life of one Doctor Victor Frankenstein, a man reduced to crumbles by his own misguided lust for knowledge. It seems this Frankenstein had started on a path to scientific discovery when he came in contact with the writings of men like Agrippas and Paracelsus. These were men who by today’s standards disgraced science with their mysticism and their general disregard for understanding the world in favor of instead expanding it with new creations. Frankenstein studied these men’s works on his own, without proper instruction on the ethics of their experiments and creations. When he arrived at the university, he was introduced to modern science, and what he learned there when combined with what he had taught himself proved to bring about his own downfall. His unquenched thirst for knowledge led him to investigate the nature of life, and after sacrificing himself in his studies, he happened upon the ability to grant life. Frankenstein had the power of God. Anxious to put his new skills to practical application, he created a man—or perhaps a monster. The doctor had made his creation to physical perfection, so much so in fact, that as soon as the monster awoke Frankenstein started down a path of fear that he would never escape. Terrified by what he had done, Frankenstein ran away, a behavior that he would often repeat and eternally regret. The rest of his life was consumed by the pursuit of destroying this monster, to reverse the plague that would attack his family until nothing remained of it (except Ernest). But as we learn, Frankenstein was already distanced from his family the moment the monster came to life, and there were no hopes of returning to the loving home that he had left six years earlier. He was now a different man, and the home he had known was one built on his innocence. The only thing that could assuage the guilt that burdened him was the death of his monster.
The one man whom Frankenstein related his situation to was not at all unlike the doctor himself. His name was Robert Walton, and he had been commanding a ship that sought out the discovery of the North Pole, a place dreamed to be a utopia amid a white and frozen wasteland of ice and snow. His ship had been stayed by the waters freezing up around the vessel, and it was when the ice broke up Walton’s crew discovered the cursed Frankenstein aboard a most unworthy craft—Frankenstein had floated to them on a rapidly depleting chunk of ice. It was not at all coincidental that such a man as Frankenstein should be placed in the life of such a man as Walton. Frankenstein had been through life, he had tasted the perils that come from trying to grab a hold of the world and understand its mysteries, and he was miserable. Walton was as yet untouched by the fever of science and he still had the chance to escape.
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