Discuss The Consequences Of Playing God In Frankenstein

Herber 1

Max Herber

Mrs. Armstrong

Intro To College Writing

7 January, 2016

The Consequences Of Playing God

“I had worked hard for nearly two years, for the sole purpose of infusing life into an inanimate body” (Shelley 58). This quote shows the time put forth and the purpose for Frankenstein’s experiment. In the novel Frankenstein by Mary Shelley, Victor Frankenstein portrays God by his attempt to bring back the dead, person v.s. person conflict and indirect characterization of the creature to ultimately resent the monster he has created.

Victor Frankenstein can be considered God because of his attempt to bring back a person from death and his belief in trying to prolong and even eliminate death. In the beginning of the book, underneath the

When Victor and his creature depart, Victor travels back to Geneva, but he can not find the courage to construct another monster. Frankenstein believes that without months of work and as Frankenstein says “laborious disquisition” (Shelley 155). A wife for his foe would be impossible to make, and travels to England only to second guess his agreement he had made with the monster. Victor reconsiders his deal and fears that his next creature could be “ten thousand times more malignant than her mate, and delight, for its own sake, in murder and wretchedness” (Shelley 170). Victor starts to consider the consequences of another monster. What if the whole thing was a lie and the monster had no intention of leaving Europe and wished to stay and terrorize the land Victor called home? “One of the first results of those sympathies for which the daemon thirsted would be children, and a race of devils would be propagated upon the earth, who might make the very existence of the species of man a condition precarious and full of terror”(Shelley 170). Victor acts as God by the fact that he is denying an entire

The entire ordeal would be his fault, since he would have been the one who created the daemons. Because of Frankenstein’s fear that another monster would wreak even more havoc than his last, Frankenstein decides not to construct another monster. A chase ensues and after many days and nights of an endless cat and mouse game, Victor follows the monster to the arctic circle but soon becomes sick and wonders upon a ship that is stuck in the ice. Victor’s health starts to decrease until he can hardly get out of bed by himself. After Victor 's passing, the monster climbs onto the ship and finds Victor but does not wish to harm his creator, because Victor is the only person he has ever known and felt compassion for. Even through the torment and suffering, the monster feels terrible because he has caused so much pain and made Victor miserable by killing his loved ones. The entire plot of the book is based off of the conflict between Victor and the monster and when Victor dies, there is no more conflict. When the monster loses victor, he also loses a part of