What do you do when your love ones dies? This is the question Victor Frankenstein is forced to ask himself when the monster of his own creation kills them in Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. In the book, Victor Frankenstein is a man of Science and takes particular interest in the creation of life after hearing a lecture from Professor M. Waldman. After studying and reading many books Victor eventually finds the transcendent secret of creating life then, begins to surreptitiously create his own monster with parts from multiple bodies. When the monster is reanimated, Victor is immediately disgusted by the monster and wants to stay as far away from it as possible. This causes the monster to not feel loved and searches for the passion that his creator …show more content…
On page 136, when Victor is talking to his father, he says, "... Poor unhappy Justine, was as innocent as I, and she suffered the same charge; she died for it; and I am the cause of all of this- I murdered her. William, Justine, and Henry- they all died by my hands." When Victor goes back to his to his father, he is depressed due to lives that His monster has ended and since Victor is the creator of the monster he believed that their blood shed was his fault. The signifies Victor`s downfall due to the fact that he went from being super excited about the process of creating life to hating himself and feeling like he is a …show more content…
After saving a drowning girl, he “‘...endeavoured, by every means in my power , to restore animation, when I was suddenly interrupted by the approached of a rustic, who was probably the person whom she had playfully fled ...when the man saw me draw near, he aimed a gun, which he carried, at my body, and fired.’”(101) Simply helping someone who is in need causes him to be judged and looked at in a funny way due to his deformed body. This helps us understand why he would feel like he is alone. Even when being a good citizen, he is treated like a waste of space. When the monster requested for someone who is like him and would treat him like an equal his own creator denied his one request. The monster told his creator exactly “‘I am alone, and miserable; man will not associate with me: but one as deformed and horrible as myself would not deny herself to me. My companion must be of the same species, and have the same defects . This being you must create.’” Then Victor later tells the monster ‘“I do refuse it and no torture shall ever extort a consent from me. You may render me the most miserable of men, but you shall never make me base in my own eyes. Shall I create another like yourself, whose joint wickedness might desolate the world? Begone! I have answered you; you may torture me, but I will never consent.’”(103-104) When the monster starts to reveal
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
Although humans have the tendency to set idealistic goals to better future generations, often the results can prove disastrous, even deadly. The tale of Frankenstein, by Mary Shelley, focuses on the outcome of one man's idealistic motives and desires of dabbling with nature, which result in the creation of horrific creature. Victor Frankenstein was not doomed to failure from his initial desire to overstep the natural bounds of human knowledge. Rather, it was his poor parenting of his progeny that lead to his creation's thirst for the vindication of his unjust life. In his idealism, Victor is blinded, and so the creation accuses him for delivering him into a world where he could not ever be entirely received by the people who inhabit it. Not only failing to foresee his faulty idealism, nearing the end of the tale, he embarks upon a final journey, consciously choosing to pursue his creation in vengeance, while admitting he himself that it may result in his own doom. The creation of an unloved being and the quest for the elixir of life holds Victor Frankenstein more accountable for his own death than the creation himself.
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
It is through these actions that the monster acts out his evil doings and murders those that Victor loves. The monster does this because he wants to seek revenge on Victor and wants to make him pay for neglecting him all throughout his life. The monster is seen as awful and evil in every aspect by every person, but if he was nurtured and cared for by Victor, and the human societies didn’t initially judge him based on his appearance, he could have kept the goodness that he originally had when he was
Victor considers himself to be responsible for the murder of both William and Justine. On the night Victor returns to Geneva, he saw the frightening monster around where William had been murdered (50). Victor concluded that it was all his fault because if he hadn't of created the monster, his brother wouldn't of been killed. The monster framed Justine of murdering William by putting his picture of his mother in Justine's pocket (56). This made Justine look guilty and the court sentenced her to death because of it (60). At the end of chapter 8, Victor Frankenstein bestows the responsibilities of the deaths by directly saying this, "I beheld those I loved spend vain sorrow upon the graves of William and Justine, the first hapless victims to my unhallowed arts" (60).
The Monster starts to take action and starts to go crazy/ berserk and later on in the novel begins to kill Victor’s family. The Monster kills Victor’s little brother William out of jealously and confusion. The quote on page 58 states,” William is dead! That sweet child, whose smiles delighted and warmed my heart, who was so gentle, yet so gay. Victor he is murdered!” This quote shows that Victor is starting to feel repent, remorse, and guilt for the death of his brother and that he should be held responsible for his death. The character of Justine is falsely accused of the murder of William and she gets executed because of this. The quote on page 81 says,” The weight upon my spirit was sensibly lightened as I plunged yet deeper in the ravine of Arve,” which probably meant that Victor feels at fault for Justine’s death and that he should be held responsible for her death. Because Victor created the Monster he should be held accountable for the murders of both Justine and William. The Monster is not the actual monster of the novel. Victor is the true monster because he was the individual who created the monster that was responsible for the murder of his brother William and
Victor went to find out the murderer of his brother William. He has to cross a lake and he sees his monster standing on the bank. He immediately realizes his monster killed his brother but he allows an innocent girl to be convicted. The quote is significant because Victor knows that Justine is innocent. He allows an innocent girl to be convicted because he did not want anyone to know he unleashed a monster on the world. Along with the death of his brother, he has another death on his hands. The importance is that Victor’s monster is responsible for the death of two people and Victor has to live with that guilt. Victor “betrayed” the servant girl by not speaking up for her. He also “betrayed” the monster by running away from it and “betrayed”
In Frankenstein, Victor’s monster suffers much loneliness and pain at the hands of every human he meets, as he tries to be human like them. First, he is abandoned by his creator, the one person that should have accepted, helped, and guided him through the confusing world he found himself in. Next, he is shunned wherever he goes, often attacked and injured. Still, throughout these trials, the creature remains hopeful that he can eventually be accepted, and entertains virtuous and moral thoughts. However, when the creature takes another crushing blow, as a family he had thought to be very noble and honorable abandons him as well, his hopes are dashed. The monster then takes revenge on Victor, killing many of his loved ones, and on the humans who have hurt him. While exacting his revenge, the monster often feels guilty for his actions and tries to be better, but is then angered and provoked into committing more wrongdoings, feeling self-pity all the while. Finally, after Victor’s death, the monster returns to mourn the death of his creator, a death he directly caused, and speaks about his misery and shame. During his soliloquy, the monster shows that he has become a human being because he suffers from an inner conflict, in his case, between guilt and a need for sympathy and pity, as all humans do.
As a romantic, archetype and gothic novel, Victor is responsible for the monsters actions because Victor abandons his creation meaning the creature is dejected and ends up hideous and fiendish. It is unfair to create someone into this world and then just abandon it and not teach it how to survive. The quote from the creature “Why did you make such a hideous creature like me just to leave me in disgust” demonstrates how much agony the creature is in. He is neglected because of his creator. The monster says “The hateful day when I received life! I accurse my creator. Why did you form a monster so hideous that even you turned from me in disgust?” Victor is wholly at fault for his actions, image and evil.
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).
“If I were to remain silent, I’d be guilty of complicity” (Einstein). In Mary Shelley's classic, gothic novel “Frankenstein”, she emphasizes how everyone has to take action for one’s consequences and do the right thing. Dr. Frankenstein made others suffer because he was horrified by his creation and did not want to own up to his actions nor did he want to be perceived as a madman. This in turn shows that responsibility for one’s actions is a duty even if those actions have negative consequences, one has to accept them and try to fix them.
Even when Victor rejects him, the monster still seeks love from society and performs unselfish acts. He seeks the love from others. Longing for company, the monster stays in the cottage without revealing him and watches the family that lives there. By watching them he learned how to speak and read. The monster tried to understand the meaning of “beauty”. He somewhat understood why people he had interacted with had treated him ill and he realized that it was because they were frighten by his hideous appearance. “The absolute other cannot be selfed, that the monster has properties which will not be constrained by proper measure”(Spivak). This goes back to the idea of “other”, now the monster himself understand that he 's different from human, that he doesn 't have the properties as human do so he must be interior to them. Furthermore we see that by watching the family in the cottage, the monster soon starts to love the family. He liked the way they had affection and love they had for each other. “The gentle manners and beauty of cottagers greatly endeared them to me; when they were unhappy, I felt depressed; when they rejoiced, I sympathized in their joy”(Shelly100). This shows that the monster was very loving and caring towards the family as would a innocent
A major thing that Victor feels guilty about is Justine's death at the trail that is caused by his creation of the Creature (pg 71). After the Creature is ostracized by everyone that sees him, he begins feeling diffident and builds up a hatred towards Victor; he is searching for his creator when he comes across WIlliam, Victor’s brother. As soon as the Creature learns William is related to Frankenstein, he becomes angered and grabs William by the throat, which soon kills him. Realizing what he had done, the Creature takes the necklace William was wearing and puts it on sleeping Justine to frame her. A short time later, Williams family discovers him and Justine is put on trial. Victor comes home as soon as he gets word of what happened to william, but he quickly knows that his anathema of a creation is behind the crime. However, despite knowing that his creature is guilty he does not divulge the information out of fear of sounding crazy. Soon after the trail ends and Justine is put to death, Victor begins feeling guilt. The Creature feels guilt, just like his creator. The thing he feels most guilty about is killing William, Henry, and Elizabeth to get back at Victor. He does not start to show this guilt until the end of the novel after Victor dies and he is talking to captain Walton on the ship, “You hate me, but your abhorrence cannot equal that with which I regard myself. I look on the hands which executed the deed… and long for the moment when… that imagination will haunt my thoughts no more”(197). This quote shows the Creature reflecting on what he has done and reveals how he truly feels about himself after hurting those people, which proves his guilt. Even though they are guilty about different things, both of them did something to hurt other people that they feel bad
Since this monster killed Henry, Victor knew that his family was now in danger. The monster is very happy that Victor is having to suffer because, Victor is now feeling the loneliness that he feels all the time. Though the monster’s character is not evil, the pain he feels is what he wants his creator to feel. His revenge only increases throughout the book because he is only longing for a fellow companion that Victor can only give him, but yet he is choosing not to create it. The anger that is within the monster is only growing and this is increasing the possibilities of him hurting more people.
The novel Frankenstein demonstrates a connection between taking personal responsibility and the snowball effect. Certain circumstances throughout the novel where responsibility is not taking results in a situation in which something good or bad increased at an exponential rate. An example of this from the story would be when Victor Frankenstein did not take responsibility for the monster and the monster began to unintentionally scare and kill people. If Victor were to take responsibility from the beginning, the majority of the monsters actions could have been avoided, therefore avoiding situations from increasing exponentially. Those who took responsibility were also affected, both physically and mentally. The novel Frankenstein shows a connection