“The catastrophe of the tragic hero thus becomes the catastrophe of the fifth-century man; all his furious energy and intellectual daring drive him on to this terrible discovery of his fundamental ignorance - he is not the measure of all things but the thing measured and found wanting.” -Robert Fagles. A tragic hero is one who dares to complete the entirety of their aspirations, resulting in an exponential downfall and early demise--failing to recognize their flaws and only pines after what ‘could’ have been. In the book Frankenstein, the author Mary Shelley expands on the theme of the tragic hero through the main character Victor Frankenstein. Initially, Victor has a fairly comfortable life. He has loving family and friends which he has strong …show more content…
and affectionate relationships with, and vivaciously studies the wonders of nature through science. However, throughout his young adult years he becomes consumed with a need for a complete knowledge of the sublime, and does so by unlocking the mysteries of life itself.
Once life is created, Victor is disgusted by the fact that the creature has actual eyes, and an actual soul. His whole of beliefs and purpose of life are shaken, and he flees the life he has conjured. His wellness is then damaged, and a shadow of isolation and inhumanity constantly tears him to extreme conflict. When Clerval visits, there are distinct distances between the two men and their conduct. After the deaths of Justine, William, and Clerval, Victor rationalizes that he is the murderer and falls into a frenzy of illness. By the end of the book, we see a broken man that acknowledges his pain and suffering, but is no longer guilty, and accepts his death with a ‘smile.’ Victor’s digression through the book due to error of judgement, psychological damage, physical damage, and fall from humanity illustrates the wholeness of what a tragic hero …show more content…
is. Frankenstein’s easy demise points out detrimental flaws to the main character.
Victor cannot acknowledge the real facts of his situations due to his tendency to suppress emotions that lead to dangerous secrecy and a failure to recognize his flaws. One of these flaws is the process of guilt. This is first seen after the trial and death of Justine when he says, “during the whole of this wretched mockery of justice I suffered living torture” (67). However, as he is sick on the ship of Walton he says he no longer feels guilty, and welcomes a peaceful death. Another error in judgement is his blindness in understanding of humanity. In the beginning he does not acknowledge the effects the creature will have on the human race, too consumed in his personal pursuit for knowledge. Then, the opposite extreme occurs when he destroys the plans for another creature. He justifies his actions by saying, “Had I the right, for my own benefit, to inflict this curse upon everlasting generations?” (156). Victor then considers the effects of the creature after seeing the destruction the first can cause. This exemplifies the fact that Victor tends to be blinded due to his own anticipation and excitement. A failure to process his responsibilities and guilt exemplify a solid base of tragic
heroism. The similarities of Victor to the being he creates is a gradual process throughout the novel that marks the process of his development into a monster himself. This is exemplified by the beginning when the creature says, “God, in pity, made man beautiful and alluring, after his own image; but my form is a filthy type of yours, more horrid even from the very resemblance” (93). This text shows that Victor did indeed unintentionally make the creature very much like himself. Another example is when Victor becomes ill. When he views himself after isolation, he says his hair is [black and face is white and gaunt, a skeleton of a man]. Through his isolation and illness, he becomes much like the ‘monster’ he created. His apparent deterioration exemplifies the fact that he shuts off emotion and suppresses strong feelings, drawing out his humanity. Through Victor’s timeline of events leading to his ‘tragic heroicness’ the most prominent feature is the downfall of his psychological behavior. The evidence provided provides a strong connection to Freud’s well known theory of psychoanalysis. By analyzing part of this theory, Victor’s tragic heroism can be most accurately understood. The three elements of personality (ID, ego, and superego) are all exemplified in the scientist, but never at a complete balance. In his childhood, he tends to be possessive of Elizabeth-he considers her a ‘gift’ or ‘token’. His impulsive ID in an underlying factor throughout the book. His ID is also dominant through the process of studying alchemy and pursuing the knowledge of creation. In fact, he is so impulsive and self-indulgent that he does not consider the consequences of his works until the creature is alive and wreaks havoc. Additionally, Victor also has a prominent superego. He speaks of protecting humanity after ripping up the papers for a second creature, and again when he wallows in the guilt of the murders. This leads him to isolation and then to ID impulsivity due to the fact that he has been restricting emotion regulation. Through this damaging cycle, Victor fails to ever unite the two into a healthy ‘ego’ view of a compromise. This vital factor is the biggest assisting point in the statement that Victor is a tragic hero. Due to his imbalance of ID and superego, he destroys his judgement, personal views, and state of sanity. In summation, Victor’s tragic hero state is due to his inability to synthesize information such as feelings of guilt and balance of humanity. His feelings are not stable and therefore contribute to his self harm. Victor’s fall from normal society into a sickly creature is a symbol of loss of humanity. The lack of egotism causes mostly all issues in his psychological processes, leading to a malfunction in sympathy and regulation. In fact, Victor’s emotional overflow leads to a shutdown of all senses, explaining his lack of guilt in his near death days. This character’s gradual numbness to natural human tendencies exemplifies the suspense and introspection that Mary Shelley creates for the reader. If anything, the tragic hero is an intriguing topic due to the fact that its psychoanalysis occurs frequently in daily human functions. And, at most, says a great deal about how tragic heroism degrades the society that all human figures occupy.
Victor Frankenstein may be the leading character in Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, but a hero he is not. He is self-centered and loveless, and there is nothing heroic about him. There is a scene in Chapter twenty-four where Captain Walton is confronted by his crew to turn southwards and return home should the ice break apart and allow them the way. Frankenstein rouses himself and finds the strength to argue to the Captain that they should continue northwards, or suffer returning home "with the stigma of disgrace marked on your brows." He quite obviously has alterior motives and if he were not the eloquent, manipulative creature he so egotistically accuses his creature of being, he might not have moved the Captain and the men so much that they are blind to the true source of his passion. Unfortunately for Frankenstein, the crew, (however "moved") stand firm in their position. Yet the things he says in his motivational speech are prime examples of the extent to which Frankenstein is blind to his own faults and yet will jump at the chance to harangue others. He is so self-centered that his lack of interaction and love for others after his experiment has been completed, would barely qualify him as a person, if the difference between being human and being a person lies in the ability to have relationships with others.
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).
Critic Northrop Frye says, “Tragic heroes tower as the highest points in their human landscape that they seem the inevitable conductors of the power about them, the great trees more likely to be struck by lightning than a clump of grass. Conductors may of course be instruments as well as victims of the divine lightning”. Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein greatly exhibits the theme of the consequence of knowledge and irresponsibility among others through its tragic hero, Victor Frankenstein. Northrop Frye’s quote is certainly true when looking at Frankenstein’s situation. Victor is a victim of his divine lightning, and ultimately causes much trouble for himself; however, Victor also serves as the tragic hero in the lives of the monster, his family, and his friends.
Victor is not able to see past the metaphorical clouds that seem to shroud his mind from seeing the truth. Furthermore, Victor is not able to let go of his hatred for the creature. In contrast, the creature admits, “But it is true that I am a wretch. I have murdered the lovely and the helpless” (275). The creature is able to recognize that he has made mistakes and as a result, he loathes himself.
Everything starts to change once Victors ambitions become his life. He leaves to study at Ingolstadt, where his destiny begins to unfold. This is when Victor’s isolation begins. The search for the secrets of life consumes him for many years until he thinks he has found it. For months, he assembles what he needs for his creation to come alive.
“Revenge alone endowed [him] with strength and composure; it modeled [his] feelings, and allowed [him] to be calculating and calm” (145). Victor gained new purpose and even on his deathbed holds to the principle that he is justified in desiring the death of his enemy. Moment before his death he turns to Captain Robert Walton and says, “I feel myself justified in desiring the death of my adversary. During these last days I have been occupied in examining my past conduct; nor do I find it blamable” (156). He even begins to lose the small amount of compassion he had for the creature’s struggle. When visiting his family’s graves he cries that, “they were dead, and I lived; their murder also lived” (145). Previously in the novel he blamed himself for the deaths of Mathew, Justine, and Henry, claiming to be their murderer and lamenting on the evil he had set forth into the world. Victor now places the weight of these deaths solely on the monster’s shoulders and believes it is his god given burden to cleanse the world of this evil. He had been “assured that the shades of [his] murdered friends heard and approved [his] devotion… rage choked [him]”(146). The death of the monster would not even weigh on his conscience since it is god’s
In the novel Frankenstein, by Mary Shelley, the main theme revolves around the internal and external consequences of being isolated from others. Being isolated from the world could result in a character losing his/her mental state and eventually causing harm to themselves or others. Because both Victor Frankenstein and the creature are isolated from family and society, they experienced depression, prejudice, and revenge.
...he window and see his own creation killing his wife. As a result of all the deaths in Victor’s family, his father kills himself because he cannot stand all the grief that he has been struck with. His death is a result of the hideous monster that his own flesh and blood created, but he will never know that because Victor will not tell anyone.
Many people know that Mary Shelley, the author of Frankenstein, was part of a family of famed Romantic era writers. Her mother, Mary Wollstonecraft, was one of the first leaders of the feminist movement, her father, William Godwin, was a famous social philosopher, and her husband, Percy Shelley, was one of the leading Romantic poets of the time ("Frankenstein: Mary Shelley Biography."). What most people do not know, however, is that Mary Shelley dealt with issues of abandonment her whole life and fear of giving birth (Duncan, Greg. "Frankenstein: The Historical Context."). When she wrote Frankenstein, she revealed her hidden fears and desires through the story of Victor Frankenstein’s creation, putting him symbolically in her place (Murfin, Ross. "Psychoanalytic Criticism and Frankenstein.”). Her purpose, though possibly unconsciously, in writing the novel was to resolve both her feelings of abandonment by her parents, and fears of her own childbirth.
Victor Frankenstein is forced by society to live a life of suffering. From an early age, Frankenstein grew up in one of the most distinguished families in the republic, meaning he had to partake in society and suffer from it’s influences unwillingly. He describes his father as being an honorable, and respectable syndic, which set high standards for Frankenstein. At university, Frankenstein is ridiculed for his belief in the alchemists, furthering Frankenstein’s ambition to prove the professors wrong. The actual “fate” Frankenstein describes is the influence of society which is constantly influencing him, whether it be through his professors or his parents, to be as ambitious as he is. The only way to have stopped
Throughout the journey, Victor mourns for his deceased loved ones, but consistently blames the Creation as the murderer. He uses the blame as an escape and justification to end the creature. While he repents building the creature, Victor does not accept that his ambition led to the loss of his family and friends. As soon as Victor encounters the Creation, he chastises him of the “victims whom [the Creation has] so diabolically murdered!” (102). Victor presumes the Creation is the murderer without evidence, thus imposing the complete fault on him. Victor admits to being the creator, driven by compulsive passion, and regrets it. However, he refuses to consider how his desire to create and role as the creator led to the deaths. Victor uses self-deception to avoid the reality of his assistance in victims’ deaths. Marking the Creation as the sole murderer, Victor uses the belief as a basis for desiring revenge against the Creation. Victor defends his reasoning, “he destroyed my friends… he ought to die” (220). Similarly, Victor places the blame on the Creation, but uses it as a subterfuge. Victor’s previous fixation on bringing life to a corpse replicates itself, but in the form of revenge. He self-deceptively sees it as a logical reason and derives his enslaving obsession from it. Subsequently, Victor surrenders the rest of his life to pursuing the Creation, failing to distinguish reality from his flawed perception, even until his last breath. His self-deception of the Creation as the murderer begins as an excuse, but transforms into a reason to defeat
When Victor arrives in Geneva and hears the results from the jury regarding the monster’s murder of William, Victor feels absolute guilt. Victor states “ words cannot convey the heart sickening, despair I then endured”(Shelley 72). Victor's guilt eats away at him for being responsible for the murders of William and Justine. Victor is responsible for the murders because he is responsible for the malign nature of his Creation and its’ actions.This shows that Nature is capable of using its omnipotent sway to alter the mental state of man. When Victor's Father visits him while sick after the recent death of Clerval, Victor's best friend Victor proves himself to be delirious. After an outburst Victor’s “ speech convinced my father that my ideas were deranged”(Shelley 176). Natures punishment of mental decay has caused even Victor’s family to believe he is deranged. Victor is suffering because when a person possesses guilt from a tragedy, the guilt manifests into reality and plagues the guilty. Nature uses its power to manifest toxic emotions into reality to affect current state as punishment. Also The monster demands Victor create a companion for him. While Victor is reluctant to begin construction because he fears “vengeance of a disappointed monster”(Shelley 139). Victor is plagued again because he allows his mind to be polluted with thoughts of defying nature. Nature applies mental deterioration as a punishment as a response to
In the novel, Victor is an introverted scientist who achieves the unachievable; Victor creates a monster out of various dead body parts. Both Victor and the monster soon realize the monster’s appearance is undesirable, and Victor refuses to create a mate for him. The monster then seeks revenge on Victor by killing Victor’s friends and family. Victor spends the rest of his life trying to stop the Monster from hurting more innocent victims, but his efforts fall short when he passes away before seeing the Monster die. Frankenstein’s Victor Frankenstein is a tragic hero because he represents all five of the actions that Aristotle calls for in his definition of a tragic hero through his actions, choices, and
After Justine is executed due to being wrongly accused of killing William, and Victor being at fault for unleashing the monster that had done the heinous crime, he cannot help but feel great remorse and anguish for the fact that Justine was killed for a crime she did not commit and he instead was free to live. He uses imagery when describing the blood flowing through his veins, and it is symbolic of the life that is actively present in his body. By bringing this up, Victor intends to question the integrity of his life because he feels that he should not be the one living, and bears tremendous guilt for aquiring life when Justine can not due to the cause of his own actions. Victor further emphasizes his anguish when he describes all of the emotions playing with his inner self; using a simile to compare himself to a wandering evil spirit.
Mary Shelley in her book Frankenstein addresses numerous themes relevant to the current trends in society during that period. However, the novel has received criticism from numerous authors. This paper discusses Walter Scott’s critical analysis of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein in his Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine Review of Frankenstein (1818).