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Victor Frankenstein: Possibly playing the role of God?
In the book of Frankenstein, Victor is known for playing the role of God. Some people strongly disagree with the position of anyone playing God. I strongly agree with the idea that Victor is playing God because he creates life, he isn’t religious, and he serves the purpose he was given. It is believed that human life is impossible to create unless you are God. Does Victor take life into one self’s hands by creating something entirely believed by people to be impossible?
To begin with, Victor attended the University of Ingolstadt where he continued his education from outside his hometown, Geneva. He discovered shortly after his arrival what he wanted to study and became highly interested in it. Mary Shelly states “From this day natural philosophy, and particularly chemistry, in the most comprehensive sense of the term, became nearly my sole occupation.” (35) His continual want for knowledge led him to an abundance of research and he began to attain anything that was put in front of him. M. Walden said “ Chemistry is that branch of natural philosophy in which the greatest improvements have been and may be made; it is on that account that I have made it my peculiar study; but at the same time, I have not neglected the other branches of science.” (Shelly 34) Victor uses what his teacher says as encouragement which aids him in more resources to create the monster, such as a broader knowledge of all the aspects of science. With all the knowledge he grasped over the period of time including the interest of the human frame, Victor put together all of which he knew of and created life by using reused body parts and assembled them together to create one giant seven foot creature. His...
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...e to me; it decided to my future destiny.” (Shelly 34) Victor has an interest in continual food for knowledge and continually gains education each day. It is human nature to do what you love and Victor does that by putting proficiency to good use. Victor States “When I found so astonishing a power placed within my hands, I hesitated a long time concerning the manner in which I should employ it.” (Shelly 38) He realizes the power placed within his hands and takes advantage of it, I mean who wouldn’t? He uses all he knows to create something so powerful in which everyone thought was impossible. Victor therefore proves it is possible, in this fictional world of course, that it is possible to bring things alive. Anybody can play God and at one point in everyone’s life you take on the role of playing God, which is the main idea that Victor Frankenstein shows the world.
If you create something should you be able to kill it? The notion of playing god like Victor did with the creatures in Frankenstein is comparative to the same issue the courts have with abortion laws. Various angles of abortion can be quite overwhelming as well as who makes the final decision. Many governments have struggled to strike what they believe to be a balance between the rights of pregnant women and the rights of fetuses. Before life is started, generally, an individual has thought about whether or not they want to create life. All life is created whether it is the creatures in Frankenstein or development of a fetus. Once life has been created choosing to end that life can cause many issues. The struggle of choosing between life and death could be avoided by an individual evaluating the results of creating a life before starting the process.
Although some critics say that the monster Victor has created is to blame for the destruction and violence that follow the experiment, it is Victor who is the responsible party. First, Victor, being the scientist, should have known how to do research on the subject a lot more than he had done. He obviously has not thought of the consequences that may result from it such as the monster going crazy, how the monster reacts to people and things, and especially the time it will take him to turn the monster into the perfect normal human being. This is obviously something that would take a really long time and a lot of patience which Victor lacks. All Victor really wants is to be the first to bring life to a dead person and therefore be famous. The greed got to his head and that is all he could think about, while isolating himself from his friends and family. In the play of Frankenstein, when Victor comes home and sets up his lab in the house, he is very paranoid about people coming in there and finding out what he is doing. At the end of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, Victor says:
In the beginning of Frankenstein, Victor was warned of the consequences of his gluttony, whereas Satan swooped under Eve?s radar and deceived her into a desire too strong to give up. Frankenstein exclaimed the even though so much has been done, scientifically, ?more, far more, will be achieved,? and he will ?explore unknown powers.? This aspiration devoured Victor to the point that he didn?t know when to quit. Nothing caused the need for this creature, it did not advance science in any way, it only led to Victor?s eventual and inevitable death.
Upon first discovering how to make life, Victor is overwhelmed with excitement and pride, feeling as though he has unlocked the greatest power on earth. His imagination is “too much exalted” by this newfound ability, and thus determines there is no “animal as complex and wonderful as man” for him to attempt as his first creation (Shelley 43). Frankenstein does not contemplate how he will react to or interact with the human he gives life to, or that he has created an extremely twisted parent-child relationship by creating a human from dead bodies. His general lack of concern regarding the consequences of his remarkable yet dangerous power is the root of the rest of the conflict between him and his monster throughout the rest of the novel, and it exemplifies Shelley’s underlying theme that science should not be pushed past morally and psychologically safe boundaries.
After Frankenstein discovered the source of human life, he became wholly absorbed in his experimental creation of a human being. Victor's unlimited ambition, his desire to succeed in his efforts to create life, led him to find devastation and misery. "...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). Victor's raw ambition, his search for glory, has left him. His eyes have been opened to see his horrible actions, and what have and could become of his creations. As a result, Victor has realized that he is creating a monster, which could lead to the downfall of mankind. His choice is simple, save his own life or save man.
He toils endlessly in alchemy, spending years alone, tinkering. However, once the Creature is brought to life, Frankenstein is no longer proud of his creation. In fact, he’s appalled by what he’s made and as a result, Frankenstein lives in a perpetual state of unease as the Creature kills those that he loves and terrorizes him. Victor has realized the consequences of playing god. There is irony in Frankenstein’s development, as realized in Victor’s desire to destroy his creation. Frankenstein had spent so much effort to be above human, but his efforts caused him immediate regret and a lifetime of suffering. Victor, if he had known the consequences of what he’s done, would have likely not been driven by his desire to become better than
Over two centuries ago, Mary Shelley created a gruesome tale of the horrific ramifications that result when man over steps his bounds and manipulates nature. In her classic tale, Frankenstein, Shelley weaves together the terrifying implications of a young scientist playing God and creating life, only to be haunted for the duration of his life by the monster of his own sordid creation. Reading Shelley in the context of present technologically advanced times, her tale of monstrous creation provides a very gruesome caution. For today, it is not merely a human being the sciences are lusting blindly to bring to life, as was the deranged quest of Victor Frankenstein, but rather to generate something potentially even more dangerous and horrifying with implications that could endanger the entire world and human population.
live his life under the demands of retribution. Victor Frankenstein’s fate is not so simple; fate is. crueler to Victor and more spiteful than he could ever be to the heavens. The question that precedes all others, however, is who is or what acts as god in Frankenstein. It is safe to assume that Victor Frankenstein’s god is that of the Christian tradition.
...y through her tale of Frankenstein gives reasoning as to why man should not play God. Through the creation and neglect of the monster, Victor has created a deadly force. This ruthless pursuit of knowledge proves dangerous, as Victor's act of creation eventually results in the destruction of everyone dear to him, and his obsessive hatred of the monster drives him to his death. He sought the knowledge of life scientifically, and although he achieved it, he totally missed the true meaning of life and happiness. Instead of simply living his life, he probed too deeply into its inner workings. Unlike his monster, he had the chance to live a happy life. He was well off, he had food, shelter, and most importantly people who loved him. Instead, he through that all away. If it were not for his scientific pursuit, Victor would have been poised to live a happy, fulfilling life.
Victor Frankenstein finds himself exploring the world of science against his fathers wishes but he has an impulse to go forward in his education through university. During this time any form of science was little in knowledge especially the chemistry which was Victors area if study. Victor pursues to go farther than the normal human limits of society. “Learn from me, if not by my precepts, at least by my example, how dangerous is the acquirement of knowledge, and how much happier that man is who believes his native town to be the world, than he who aspires to become greater than his nature will allow” (Chapter 4). He soon finds the answer he was looking for, the answer of life. He becomes obsessed with creating a human being. With his knowledge he believes it should be a perfe...
Since a boy, Frankenstein’s passion is to explore science and that which cannot be seen or understood in the field. He spent the later part of his childhood reading the works of commonly outdated scientists whose lofty goals included fantastic, imaginative desires to “penetrate the secrets of nature” (Vol. 1, Ch. 2). While he was told that these authors predated more real and practical scientists, he became intrigued by their ambitions, and devoted himself to succeeding where they had failed. When Victor is criticized at college for his previous studies in obsolete research, he takes after one of his professors, M. Waldman, in studying chemistry. In a lecture, Waldman tells of ancient teachers in chemistry who promised miracles and sought after “unlimited powers” (Vol. 1...
The novel Frankenstein written by Mary Shelley is a work of fiction that breaks the ethics of science. Ethics is defined as rules of conduct or moral principles which are ignored in the story. The story is about a person named Victor Frankenstein who creates an artificial being. Victor abandons the being out of fear and the being is left to discover the outside world on his own and be rejected by people making the monster go on a violent rampage. Victor’s decision would affect him later on by the monster killing his loved ones causing Victor to suffer. Then Victor chooses to seek revenge on the monster and this choice will bring him to his death. In novel Frankenstein one might say that the main character, Victor, breaks the ethics of science when he plays God by creating his own being.
Victor Frankenstein, the main character in Mary Shelley’s novel, is the creator of the monster. When Victor created the monster, he believed he created the monster for the betterment of humankind, but he actually created the monster because he desired to prove to the world that an average human can do Godly acts. The desire to create the monster goes back to Victor’s childhood. As a young kid, Victor’s passions always lied in science and chemistry and in college; he became obsessed with the idea of creating life out of inanimate objects. He then decided to specialize in Alchemy. Within Shelley’s book Frankenstein, Victor said:
Because of Victor’s need for fame and desire for power leads to Victor becoming a monster. Victor begins his quest to bring life to a dead person because he does not want anyone to feel the pain of a loved ones death. At first he is not obsessed with his project. As he moves along in the project he thinks about what will happen to him. "Life and death appeared to me ideal bounds, which I should first break through, and pour a torrent of light into our dark world. A new species would bless me as its creator and source, many happy and excellent natures would owe their being to me." (Shelley 39) He realizes that he will become famous if he accomplishes the task of bringing a person back to life. The realization that he will become famous turns him into an obsessive monster. He wanted to be admired, and praised as a species creator. He isolates himself from his family and works on the creature. “I had worked hard for nearly two years, for the sole purpose of infusing life into an inanimate body. For this I deprived myself of rest and health. I had desired it with an ardour that far exceeded moderation, but now that I had finished, the beauty of the dream vanished, and breathless horror and disgust filled my heart.” (Shelley 156) By spending most of his time inside on his experiment, he has no time to write or contact his family. He puts fear within his family because they fear for him.
He created a life, and then spontaneously he quickly decided to run away from his creation. Victor’s actions after creating what he created were really irresponsible, and did not correctly took care of the circumstance’s he put himself in. The creation was never actually evil, but he felt abandoned by what could had been called his father. Frankenstein, the monster, was only a seeker for companionship. He strongly desired to feel loved, rather than abandoned. Society’s evil behavior toward the monster is what altered the monster’s conduct and followed to how he acted.