The Value Of Life In Mary Shelley's Frankenstein

The events that occurred in Mary Shelley 's life altered her as a person, leading her write the novel she did. Mary Shelley had an extremely rough and depressing life due to the death of her son, step sister, and her husband. She presented some aspects of her life in her novel, Frankenstein. Mary Shelley also adds some of her personal characteristics to each of the characters in her novel. One character that strongly represents Mary, is Victor, he falls into deep depression due to countless reasons as did Mary Shelley. Underrating the value of life is prominent in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein through Victor 's creation of the monster, his treatment towards his well being, and his lack of compassion towards others safety.

Victor describes his

He soon became infatuated with creating life on his own. He had various things inspire him, such as the lightening bolt hitting the tree. Once he researched, collected his materials, and starting working on his creature he couldn 't stop. Victor isolated himself in his apartment from all of his family and friends while creating this creature. After two long years the frightening creature was created. Victor was in shock, he didn 't know what to do and that was partly because before he created this monster he didn 't think of the consequences. He abandoned his apartment, leaving the creature, at this point in the novel “we come to understand that Victor doesn’t value the life he is to create so much as what the creation will give him—a place in history as the (in)famous father of reanimating dead flesh.” (Lunsford). There were multiple factors Victor did not take into consideration before and during the process of creating the creature. This is because Victor doesn 't care about others. He was very emotional during the two years of the creation mainly because of the death of his mother. This shaped him into a different person that he was at the beginning of the novel, he was now careless, selfish, and isolated from the world. He devalued life by not teaching the creature how to behave, how to speak, and the other aspects of life. This shows that

Such as the death of his brother, William. Victor knew that the creature was at fault for the death of William. Which all falls back on Victor because he did not teach the creature right from wrong. He felt that he was somewhat responsible but didn 't act on it in any way. Instead of confessing and explaining the creation of the creature and how his creation was the one who killed William, Victor let everybody think it was his friend Justine who killed William. Victor at this point really didn 't care about anyone but himself, “instead, he [placed] a higher worth on his reputation.” (Lunsford). Victor continued to keep his creation from everyone, even if it meant the death of Justine. Justine as well as Victor knew she was innocent but kept quiet about it, because once again Victor felt that his innocence was more important. Victor once again let the creature kill, he could of stepped up and confessed himself but did not because of his selfish ways. Victor is constantly given opportunities to put others lives before himself and never once