Victor's Loss Of Innocence In Frankenstein

Andrew McCulloch suggests that Victor “has risen to the physical challenge he set himself, but he is woefully ill equipped to cope with the much greater emotional and spiritual challenges that lie ahead” (#). Because he was so self-centered, Victor failed to relate to the emotions and feelings of other people. He was not prepared for the impacts of creating the monster and showed no responsibility for taking care of the needs of his creation.

The third narrator, and the most tragic, is the monster himself. After Victor abandons the monster, the poor creature wandered around confused. He had the innocence of a child and was abandoned. As the life of the creature progresses, he experiences disappointments and sadness. Andrew McCulloch asserts,

It does not come as a surprise when, as Chao notes, the” benevolent monster turns in to a cynical murderer, paying back the violence of human society with violence against it” (225). After the creature retreats to the cottage, he finds Victor’s little brother named William. At first, he tries to help the boy but when the child says his brother will kill him, the creature breaks his neck in a fit of rage. When the monster finds a picture of a girl in his locket, he goes into another rage! As the monster later explains to Victor, “Can you wonder that such thoughts transported me with rage? I only wonder that at that moment, instead of venting my sensations in exclamations and agony, I did not rush among mankind, and perish in the attempt to destroy them” (Shelly 103). He is furious that he has been left alone when Victor and other men are happy (?). The monster confronts Victor and begs him to create a female monster so that he would not be alone. Victor makes the second creature but changes his mind and destroys the female monster. The monster was very upset by Victor’s action. The monster went on a killing rampage until Victor was the only one in his family left alive. Victor chases and tracks the monster to Antarctica, which is where Robert Walton finds him at the beginning of the

Britton notes that “…Victor Frankenstein dies after urging everyone on the ship to continue their suicidal mission; and the Monster leaves the ship to embrace a self-inflicted, painful death. Only Robert Walton, the intrepid explorer, remains, judiciously but reluctantly turning for home” (9). Of the narrators, only Robert was able to learn from the moral failures of the other two narrators. In some respect, he is reborn and given an opportunity to live a better life focused on doing good things in the world for mankind. Victor Frankenstein eventually realizes that he is dying and asks Robert to destroy the monster on his behalf. He confesses his sin of ignoring his responsibility to the monster but selfishly claims that his talents were better focused on contributions to mankind (Shelley 161). Sadly, the end of the story would have been different if Victor had guided the creature’s educational and moral development. Victor, without a doubt, represented the negative outcome when scientific advancement is done without consideration of the outcome and the any moral responsibility. Finally, the monster commits suicide because he could not live with the murders he has committed. He tells Robert about the overwhelming guilt he experienced from killing Victor’s family and friends. The monster tells Robert, “When I first sought it, it was the love of virtue, the feelings of happiness and affection with which