Victor's gradual descent towards the dark side of the human psyche is clearly portrayed through Shelley's writing. As stated in previous discussions, Victor's original motivation in pursuing a career in the science field was purely out of love for the world of science and a true passion for acquiring knowledge. However, as the novel continues, we witness his motives go from authentic to impure. As such, we delve into the dark side. His pursuit of knowledge and his creation of the monster are all on the purer or perhaps lighter side of the psyche. It isn't until he abandons him that we begin to see him cross over. His choices to abandon the creature, to let someone else to die for its crimes, to create it a companion only to kill her, to allow the ones he loved to die at its hand, and to still refuse to claim it in the end are all acts …show more content…
We must ask ourselves if his guilt pardons him from his actions. Is he truly a dark and disturbed person if he feels guilt? I believe the answer is yes, solely because his guilt isn't enough to push him to try and amend for his actions. As a man alone, Victor has not at all failed. Man is flawed and as such is expected to make mistakes. In Victor's case, his mistakes are many and much, but nothing less is to be expected of a man, who in his own nature, is nothing more than someone else's creation. He did however, fail as a creator who is responsible for the actions and wellbeing of those he creates. The creature's actions are to be seen as not just his own crimes but Victor's as well. I do still that he can be classified as a morally ambiguous character. I personally believe that Victor acted selfishly a majority of the novel and has a poor moral compass guiding his actions. However, others may argue that he was acting in a way he thought would benefit those around him. There is evidence to argue both side, thus leaving Victor morally
If Victor had stayed around and showed the monster the real world, he might have not have went on to perform violent actions. This portrays Victor as a selfish character and gives more of an insight on his personal life. As a child, Victor is only interested in furthering his own knowledge and not worried about anyone else. He spent much of his time “drawing the picture of [his] early days... when [he] would account to [himself] for the birth of that passion which afterwards ruled [his] destiny” (Shelley 34), or otherwise a magnificent creation that would change his future. When constructing the Monster, he put all of his relatives in the back of his mind, and only focused on his own success and victory. This further explains the theme of being selfless and only doing certain things that will benefit
With nobody to reason with, Victor makes senseless decisions while he is alone. Victor begins this with his process of creating the monster. Nobody in the right mind would ever dig up graves, but that is just what victor goes and does. Once this creation is finally given life, which Victor has spent two years striving for, Victor foolishly abandons it. Victor comes to his senses to some degree after he brings life to the monster as he states, “‘now that I had finished, the beauty of the dream had vanished, and breathless horror and disgust filled my heart” (Shelley 43). Had there been companions around Victor during this creation time, perhaps someone would have been able to guide Victor away from creating the “wretch” (Shelley 43) he so hopelessly conceived. As for the monster, he makes fairly good decisions even without guidance from anyone, including Victor, his creator. The monster has the desire to learn and gain knowledge as a genuine individual. As the monster is continuously rejected and shunned by mankind, his natural benevolence turns to malevolence. In his loneliness, the monster wrongly decides to declare “‘everlasting war against the species, and more than all, against him who had formed me and sent me forth to this insupportable misery’” (Shelley 126). Say the monster was able to have comrades of some kind around him, he would not have turned to this
After bringing life to something seemingly horrible, Victor Frankenstein reveals his personality of avoidance and arrogance. Instead of facing the creature he created, he runs away from the problem. His motivations for the experiment vary, but there is one clear one that he even admits. "The world," he says, "was to me a secret which I desired to divine" (Shelley 18). Victor tells us that he's curious, and more importantly that he's always been this way. Victor has been raised in a very loving family. His father and mother were kind parents who loved all of their children, and even adopted some children. Victor, however, grows up a little indulged and perhaps because of this, he is selfish. He is stubborn and unyielding about many things. For
...or was not thinking of others in his actions, but only of himself. He did not consider the tumult the abnormally large creature could cause in the world, nor what the feelings of the monster would be towards him if he abandoned him. Victor also did not contemplate the safety of his friends, as he had the chance to stop the creature’s misdoings but failed to do so, risking the life of his friends. Therefore, Victor was a selfish being, who only concerned himself with his wishes and never evaluated the situation of his loved ones, ultimately causing their demise. The misfortunate events that occurred through Victor’s life could have been prevented, and also discontinued when Victor had the chance. However, Victor’s irresponsibility overcame these opportunities and he in turn, caused misfortunes for himself as well as his loved ones.
..., played God, abandoned his creation, and then hid any relation to the creature. Victor is quite at fault for the murders that take place in Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. True, the monster does know right from wrong, the difference is he was not brought up by his parents that way. How to live life is something that is learned and imprinted through experience and guidance. The monster was never fully given the chance to live because upon the day he arrived he was instantly rejected. Victor created the monster physically and emotionally within himself and in turn died by it.
Victor’s lack of compassion and sympathy towards the monster causes him to become angry instead of guilty. His cruelness to his creation made the monster kill and hurt the people he did but “when [he] reflected on [the monster’s] crimes and malice, [Victor’s] hatred and revenge burst all bounds of moderation,”(Shelley 325). Without compassion Victor thinks that the only way to stop the monster is to get revenge on him, instead of just giving him the empathy and kindness that monster craved. Victor realizes that "if he were vanquished, [he] should be a free man...balanced by those horrors of remorse and guilt which would pursue [him] until death. ”(Shelley 731).
As a romantic novel Victor is responsible, because he abandoned his creation. As an archetype novel, Victor is the villain, because he was trying to play god. Finally, Victor as a Gothic novel, Victor is at fault, because, he and the creature are two different parts of the same person. If Frankenstein is looked at as a romantic novel, Victor, not the creature, is truly the villain. When Victor created the creature, he didn't take responsibility for it. He abandoned it, and left it to fend for itself. It is unfair to bring something into the world, and then not teach it how to survive. The creature was miserable, and just wanted a friend or someone to talk to. On page 115, the creature said, "Hateful day when I received life! Accursed the creator. Why did you form a monster so hideous that even you turned from me in disgust." This line shows the agony the monster was in, because of how he looked when he was created which led to even Victor running away from him. If Victor didn't run, he could have taught the monster and made his life happy. After the creature scared the cottagers away he said, "I continued for the remainder of the day in my hovel in a state of utter ...
Mary Shelley refers to her most famous work, “Frankenstein,” as her “hideous progeny” (Shelley, 169). Her creation—the novel—mirrors Victor’s since they are both considered “hideous.” Shelley’s terming of the novel reveals her insecurities about her creation, much like Victor about his. Shelley calls the novel hideous like a form of self-deprecation. She let this novel “loose” like Victor let his creature “loose” on society, unsure of how it would be perceived. Her insecurities lie in the fact that she is a female author. Female authors were criticized and considered inferior to their male counterparts. This also displays her insecurities about childbirth, due to the death of her own mother through childbirth and having experienced a miscarriage
However, he is wrong on that front. He isn’t responsible for everything the creature does because he created him, he is responsible for all of the crimes the creature commits for the way he treats him when they interact. Victor’s intelligence is again proven when the creature is erected. Once he achieves his goal and the creature is animated, “the beauty of the dream vanished, and breathless horror and disgust filled [his] heart” (45). Victor creates a being that is meant to worship him, “a new species would bless [him] as its creator and source; many happy and excellent natures would owe their being to [him]” (43). When the creature rises for the first time, Victor becomes instantly repulsed, and abandons the ‘newborn’ alone in the laboratoratory where he was formed. The creature is left to fend for himself, and frankly, Victor hopes he wouldn’t survive. In fact, he plans to kill the creature himself, and when “[he] thought of him, [Victor] gnashed his teeth, [his] eyes became inflamed, and [he] ardently wished to extinguish the life which [he] had so thoughtlessly bestowed” (67). When he encounters the creature for the first time since its genesis, Victor dismisses the creature before he speaks. He exclaims, “begone, vile insect! Or rather, stay, that I may trample you to dust” (71). This treatment of his creation is
Victor was really the only one involved in this whole ordeal. However, the creature took it out his family on friends. The reason for doing this is very clear, he wanted to make Victor suffer as much as possible. The fact that he hurt many people not involved, people who had no idea this was going on, shows evil. One of the few things in the creature's defense is that he did own up to what he did.
Shelley provides numerical examples in which we see that the creature learns to hate Victor. Victor and the creature did not get along because Victor sees the creature as “the other” therefore the creature begins to view himself as such and begins to hate. The creature was born into the world and he was thankful for that and his creator. Victor sees the creature as an ugly monster. Therefore, the monster is the other in Victors eyes and feels superior to him.
Although some critics say that the monster Victor has created is to blame for the destruction and violence that follow the experiment, it is Victor who is the responsible party. First, Victor, being the scientist, should have known how to do research on the subject a lot more than he had done. He obviously has not thought of the consequences that may result from it such as the monster going crazy, how the monster reacts to people and things, and especially the time it will take him to turn the monster into the perfect normal human being. This is obviously something that would take a really long time and a lot of patience which Victor lacks. All Victor really wants is to be the first to bring life to a dead person and therefore be famous. The greed got to his head and that is all he could think about, while isolating himself from his friends and family. In the play of Frankenstein, when Victor comes home and sets up his lab in the house, he is very paranoid about people coming in there and finding out what he is doing. At the end of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, Victor says:
Because of Victor’s need for fame and desire for power leads to Victor becoming a monster. Victor begins his quest to bring life to a dead person because he does not want anyone to feel the pain of a loved ones death. At first he is not obsessed with his project. As he moves along in the project he thinks about what will happen to him. "Life and death appeared to me ideal bounds, which I should first break through, and pour a torrent of light into our dark world. A new species would bless me as its creator and source, many happy and excellent natures would owe their being to me." (Shelley 39) He realizes that he will become famous if he accomplishes the task of bringing a person back to life. The realization that he will become famous turns him into an obsessive monster. He wanted to be admired, and praised as a species creator. He isolates himself from his family and works on the creature. “I had worked hard for nearly two years, for the sole purpose of infusing life into an inanimate body. For this I 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.” (Shelley 156) By spending most of his time inside on his experiment, he has no time to write or contact his family. He puts fear within his family because they fear for him.
In chapter four The Frankenstein novel frankenstein has guilt that he made the monster that killed his little brother, william and states that “If the study to which you apply yourself has a tendency to weaken your affections, and to destroy your taste for the simple pleasures in which no alloy can possibly mix, then that study is certainly unlawful, that is to say, not befitting the human mind.” This statement is saying that If you put your mind,heart and soul into something but it is unlawful without a doubt should you do it? I personally disagree with this due to the way I have been raised. I was raised to obey the Bible and draw closer to God,but Satan was always throwing obstacles over to my way so it was even harder to get a close relationship to God. I feel that if you put your mind to do something that does not harm you in any sort of way
...aused him to have a low tolerance to nurture. Shelley is conveying that trying is worth it; at the beginning of the story, Victor was passionate about his science and worked hard to complete his quest for knowledge with success in attaining the skills needed to create life, but once something went wrong (his failure in creating the Creature) he became disheartened and through his lack of perseverance, things only got worse. By leaving the Creature almost immediately, Victor demonstrates his low nurture. Conversely, if he would have had a high nurture then he would have stuck around and tried to get to know the Creature. Victor’s arrogance is another factor that contributes to his lack of nurture. By not visiting his family while he is away at school he is ruining his opportune relationship with them by portraying a lack of love and only turning to them when in need.