Knowledge and Imagination in Mary Shelly's Frankenstein

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“He who knows nothing is closer to the truth than he whose mind is filled with falsehoods and errors”.(Thomas Jefferson).In Mary Shelly's Frankenstein, the theme of the sublime is featured throughout the text. It is seen in the use of knowledge, imagination, and solitariness which is the protagonist's primary source of power. This perpetuates their quest for glory, revenge, and what results in their own self-destruction and dehumanization. Ultimately, the final cause being irreversible harm.
Childhood is a time of freedom. However, for Victor, childhood is merely a remembrance of what is lost:
Before misfortune had tainted my mind, and changed its bright visions of extensive usefulness into gloomy and narrow reflections upon self. […] by insensible steps to my after tale of misery: for when I would account to myself for the birth of that passion, which afterwards ruled my destiny. (Shelly 21)
The birth of "passion" which Victor speaks of is that of Knowledge. His obsessive quest to construct and build life from death is the most prominent source of his own self-destruction. This thirst for knowledge enables Victor to succeed," in discovering the cause of generation and life, [he became] capable of bestowing animation upon lifeless matter"(Shelly 30). Here, Victor's creation of the monster can be seen as Victor becoming like a God. Victor's acquisition of knowledge has led him to believe he is entitled to glory, "A new species would bless me as its creator and source; many happy and excellent natures would owe their being to me. No father could claim the gratitude of his child as completely as I could deserve theirs" (Shelly 32). He truly becomes overpowered with the idea of glory losing himself in the process. Vi...

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...e me! Save me! I imagined that the monster seized me”(Shelly 37).Victor's imagination forms the sublime. The monster is formed from different body parts harvested from dead corpses. It is brought to life, hence the souls of the dead may very well be haunting Victor through his creation and need for knowledge. Solitude brought Victor to these circumstances as it brings him to peace:
The state of my mind preyed upon my health, which had entirely recovered […] all sound of joy or complacency was torture to me; solitude was my only consolation deep, dark death like solitude. (Shelly page number )

Works cited
Brontë, Emily, and Pauline Nestor. Wuthering Heights. London ; New York: Penguin
Books, 2003.
Hunter, J. Paul. Mary Shelley, Frankenstein: The 1818 Text : Contexts, Nineteenth- century Responses, Modern Criticism. New York: W.W. Norton, 1996.

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