Mary Shelley's Frankenstein

Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus, explores the monstrous and destructive affects of obsession, guilt, fate, and man’s attempt to control nature. Victor Frankenstein, the novel’s protagonist and antihero, attempts to transcend the barriers of scientific knowledge and application in creating a life. His determination in bringing to life a dead body consequently renders him ill, both mentally and physically. His endeavors alone consume all his time and effort until he becomes fixated on his success. The reason for his success is perhaps to be considered the greatest scientist ever known, but in his obsessive toil, he loses sight of the ethical motivation of science.

"...now that I have finished, the beauty of the dream had vanished..." (Shelley 51). Victor's ambition blinded him to see the real dangers of his project. This is because ambition is like a madness, which blinds one self to see the dangers of his actions. The monster after realizing what a horror he was demanded that victor create him a partner. "I now also began to collect the materials necessary for my new creation, and this was like torture..." (Shelley 169).

He did not plan in advance as to what he will do after his creation is complete. On the Discussion Board, Cecila Fuchu agrees that creating the monster made Frankenstein sick, as she sums, “Victor 's desire to attain the godlike power to create life became more powerful than ever. This situation led to the destruction of his arrogance and the sickness of his mind.” Victor worked tirelessly to achieve his goal at the cost of his social relations. Since he selfishly cut himself off from his relatives and most social contact, he became a reclusive individual who could not sit still without being overly anxious. The mental strain that he had placed upon himself over the years correlates with his disregard to his health.

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.

The decrease in his social life developed a more suitable habitat for madness to grow within Frankenstein’s mind. Frankenstein was starting to realize the repercussions of scientific knowledge. The moment the creature came to life Frankenstein felt a pang of fear and regret. He realized how he had wrongly interfered with the nature of science. He was so blinded by the drive to finish the creature that he did not see how he was affecting his fut... ... middle of paper ... ...monstrates how much potential she believed it held.

This moral issue is initially ignored by Frankenstein, overshadowed by his zeal for accomplishing his impossible feat of reanimation. After he animates the creature and shuns it for its horrible appearance, it acts on its impulses for revenge. As the story progresses, Frankenstein realizes that he should have thought more carefully before acting, and the repercussions of his dark deed eventually lead him on a self-destructive quest to ultimately attempt to annihilate his own creation. By trying to ascend past his place in God’s universe, Frankenstein, in the end, destroys himself and all that he ever loved.... ... middle of paper ... ...etheus, Adam) and destructor (Satan) of life. (Desert Aine 2, 1-2) Frankenstein and his abominable creation are two characters inexorably linked with eachother, as father and son, as inventor and invention, and even as reflections of eachother.

The monster is the good one in the book but even he seeks knowledge about who he is, and why he is here, but that does not end well and he relies on his destructive nature to find the answers causing both pain and grief on those around him and on himself. The themes of the quest for knowledge and obsession with vengeance are shown in Frankenstein when Victor creates and abandons his monster causing the monster to monster to want to know his purpose causing him to become destructive and Victor to seek revenge for the death of his loved ones. When Victor Frankenstein gets his hands on the books by Cornelius Agrippa, he knows that he has to change the world, and this ambition cause him to lose his loved ones at the hand of his creation. When he is young, he disobeys his father by reading books by Cornelius Agrippa when he is not supposed to. And he does not stop there, because when he returns home, the first thing on his mind is to “...procure the whole works of this author, and afterwards of Paracelsus and Albertus Magnus.” (Shelley 39) As a child, Victor is full of himself and thinks he can change the world.

Dr. Frankenstein yearns to create life from death by creating what he pictures "a human being in perfection" (Shelley 40). Alan Rauch writes, in The Monstrous Body of Knowledge in Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, of how "Frankenstein's secretive approach to knowledge production [building the creature] can be taken as a sure sign that his discovery will be a disaster with respect to the public understanding" (Rauch 237). Rauch foreshadows that Frankenstein's creation of this "human being in perfection" (Shelley 40) would actually be a creation of disaster. Which the public, including Frankenstein, would reject to accommodate with. The public, will never want to be around a creature so hideous and intimidating, which leads reasons of how the public reacts to the Creature in a catastrophic manner.

The character of Victor Frankenstein illustrates the path of destruction scientists can create when ignoring their moral community. Individuals, who possess good ambition for knowledge, power, self-perfection, and strength in one’s society, are vulnerable to their own delusions and instability, to corruption, fate, and nature. Victor was so impassioned with his life’s work that he had lost all soul or sensation but for this one pursuit (Shelley 32). Frankenstein’s blinding ambition prevented him from seeing the potential consequences of his actions until it was to late. The first sign of Victor’s fatal flaw of egotism in that he has forgotten the bond he has with nature and to the people he loves.

Mary Shelly’s captivating novel Frankenstein tells the readers a story of love, life, and tragedy. In the novel an overly curious scientist named Victor Frankenstein decided to play God and mess with the force of nature; he created a life that was an abomination to the natural world. After Victor Frankenstein realized his mistake, he was frightened and decided to abandon all responsibility to fix what had been done. To begin with, the foolish mistake of even attempting to create a life form such as this was at its very core irresponsible and it came with terrible consequences. The murder that had resulted from this creation was absolutely in every way Victor Frankenstein’s fault.