Blind Ambition in Mary Shelley's Frankenstein

It is the purpose of this essay to illustrate that it is actually society that has made a monster of Frankenstein. Victor Frankenstein is a young and eminent student who decides to break the bounderies between life and death. His desire will take him to work hard , even getting seriously ill , to achieve something that nobody has reached before : life after death .He devotes himself to that single pursuit  : "I was thus enganged , heart and soul , in one pursuit " (p.59) but everything changes when he sees for the first time his creation: "How can I describe my emotions at this catastrophe?" and "I beheld the wretch - the miserable monster whom I had created "(p.62 and 63). From this moment , the new creation is idetified as a monster , and just like that will be treated during the whole story , not only by a cruel and intolerant society , but by his creator, Victor , who rejects him from the beginning.

When Victor abandons the monster he runs away and tries to forget about his failed creation. It was extremely dangerous for Victor to flee his experiment because the monster soon becomes aggressive with hate and is curious to know why Victor left him; furthermore, the monster becomes obsessed with self-learning and knowledge. Mary Shelly explains in her novel Frankenstein the cause of Victors abandonment was the rage of the monster that he created. The monster’s reaction to his creator is “Was man, indeed, at once so powerful, yet so vicious and base? (119) The monster’s curiosity was similar to his creator’s strive for knowledge.

Frankenstein’s ambition did lead to disaster, but he was also the monster with no regard for human life. Now that Frankenstein was in the afterlife, the monster could now end his own life. His quest was over. He had won the revenge that he sought. He only waited for his creator to die.

His creation throws him into multiple depressions and Victor struggles to maintain a stable life. In the end, Walton considers Victor’s demise from a disastrous appetite for “nature’s secrets” as a lesson for his own conquest for glory and knowledge. In this, Shelley uses Frankenstein to warn society about its further audacity in pushing boundaries to uncomfortable limits. In the beginning, Shelley uses foreshadowing to allude to Victor’s ultimate demise due to his unrestricted curiosity. In describing his own childhood, Victor keeps referring to his imminent doom: his interest in science which he describes as “the fatal impulse that led to [his] ruin” (Shelley, 39).

When deciding who the true monster in Frankenstein is, one can point to the obvious and determine that it is Victor Frankenstein’s morbid creation (who commits murders), but when looking at the situation from both perspectives, the reader can deduce that the real monster is Victor. Despite the aforementioned murders, the creature was Victor’s responsibility, and the brilliant scientist decided to abandon him. This denial of affection greatly impacted Frankenstein’s creation because he had to forgo the trials of being an outcast of society ever since he was brought into the realm of the living. Victor Frankenstein is the true monster in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein because he heartlessly leaves his creation to suffer the strife of human discrimination.

Victor Frankenstein is the tragic hero of Mary Shelley's novel, Frankenstein ,because no matter his good intentions, his thirst for knowledge leads to his destruction because of a single cause and primary key factors that evident to heart wrenching results. The single and most influential cause of Victor’s dramatic downfall is his insane craving for knowledge. Victor wished to "become capable of bestowing animation upon lifeless matter" (Shelley 38) and would not stop until he fulfilled his dream. The world was as if it was invisible in the eyes of Victor because nothing else mattered until his creation was in motion. Victor’s dream suddenly turns into a nightmare when his creation is portrayed as a monster and "no mortal could support the horror of that countenance" (44).

It is these very acts of revenge that cause Frankenstein himself to lose himself to his anger to a quest that he knows will end in his death: “My present situation was one in which all voluntary thought was swallowed up and lost. I was hurried away by fury; revenge alone endowed me with strength and composure” (Shelley 145). Frankenstein here acknowledges that there is nothing left for him in life but his relationship with the creature. He now lives solely for the creature. In the position of pursuing revenge, Frankenstein, like the creature before him, must rely on his adversary; without the clues and food intentionally

Victor Frankenstein’s search for knowledge is a key factor in this novel’s gloomy timeline of events. As Victor slaves away over his creation of new life, by combining various limbs of scavenged human body remains, he detaches himself from everyone important in his life. He abandons his fiancée, Elizabeth, and forces her to wait for him to return so they can be married. All of Victor’s family members love and adore him, and he becomes selfish in his ambitious goal to create human life. After Victor accomplishes his work of genius, with the creation of the monster, he is suddenly filled with terror and hatred towards the hideous being that stands before him.

Here, Frankenstein is at the mercy of his creation. For though “[Frankenstein is the] creator… [the Monster is his master” (p205) – here the Monster establishes his dominance over Frankenstein by outwardly stating his power over his creator. This power struggle is most effectively culminated in the chase around the globe. Yet it must be seen that neither Frankenstein and his Monster are in control. The Monster leaves clues for Frankenstein, demonstrating his need for Frankenstein to follow him, for without Frankenstein the Monster has no purpose in life.

Frankenstein was a story about a man who created an individual which led his life to failure and death, because of his desire to play which nature, and attempting the role of God. The movie Frankenstein explores the consequences of what happens when man tries to play God and chases his ambition blindly. Victor Frankenstein became very involved in his work to create a being out of dead body parts. The doctor had the desire to achieve something that no scientist has ever done before: to give life to a being through science, not human nature. With this pursuit of knowledge, not only did Victor isolate himself from society but also from those who loved him, such as his fiancée Elizabeth and his father.