Unknown In Frankenstein

Victoria Woodard

Miss Sibbach

Honors English IV

11 December 2015

Tampering with the Unknown

In Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, the demented scientist, Victor Frankenstein, drives himself mad after creating a paradox that ultimately destroys his life as well as the lives of those he loved the most. Frankenstein tells his story to a captain he meets by the name of Robert Walton as a warning not to meddle into the unknown. Victor tells him how he wanted this beast to look to him as its God, and how that stimulated his fixation from the very beginning. He allows the power to consume his whole existence.

Growing up, Victor Frankenstein stayed a curious boy. At fifteen, a terrible thunderstorm occurred and Victor witnessed a lightning bolt strike

a tree leaving nothing but a stump. “He is intrigued with life, specifically the creation of life” (Watkins). The lightning storm led to his interest in the study of electricity and ultimately began his fixation with life. He wanted to utilize the electricity to spark animation. Two years later, his mother dies of scarlet fever just before he leaves for college in Ingolstadt, Germany. The demise of his mother quickly prompted his fascination with death. His studies determined that he would need to find out how a body decayed in death, to have the ability to regenerate it with life.
Victor pours himself over this project for two years. “He cuts himself off from the world and eventually commits himself entirely to an animalistic obsession with revenging himself upon the monster” (Analysis). He loses not only sleep, but his appetite as well. He becomes so obsessed that he does not respond to his family’s letters for the time he works on the creature. He feels that studying death from books does not fulfill his lust for knowledge, he must see it for himself to know just how it works. Victor begins disgusting, unnatural tasks to reach his goal.
Finally, Victor finishes his monster, and he looks upon it with utter disgust.

“Frankenstein’s creature, in visioned to be a beautiful being with larger features then humans turned out to be a grotesque monster. Once it came to life, Victor Frankenstein himself could not even bear the sight of it, his own creation” (Watkins). Victor hoped the creature would exceed his expectations, but it does the opposite instead. He describes the horrible monster from which he made with his two hands as revolting and an abomination to the Earth. Shelley gives an eerie description of the creature that tells of just how disturbing it looks. “His limbs were in proportion, I had selected his features as beautiful. Beautiful!--Great God! His yellow skin scarcely covered the work of muscles and arteries beneath; his hair was a lustrous black, and flowing; his teeth of a pearly whiteness; but these luxuriances only formed a more horrid contrast with his watery eyes, that seemed almost the same colour of the dun white sockets in which they were set, his drivel led complexion and straight black lips” (Shelley 36). When he looks onto the atrocity, he is not only sickened with it, but himself as well for bringing life to it. Victor knew better than to interfere with the unknown. From the beginning, he regrets his selfish intentions and became so carried away with his scientific breakthrough, that he loses sight of his

morals.
After the fiend breathes his first breath of life, Victor abandons it to care for itself. Everything Creature does lies on Victor’s shoulders alone because he never taught the Creature right from wrong. If Victor did not want to care for this ugly beast, he should have terminated its life before he gained the knowledge to fight back. He waits until Creature has learned how to defend himself to pursue him. Victor let Creature mature and that played a huge role in why he died trying to get catch him. He created Creature as a stronger, faster being than any human being making it impossible to end his life.
Victor disowns Creature to live or die on his own, he does not love it, nor does he care for it at all.

He soon realizes the great mistake he has made when almost a year later, Creature kills Victor’s little brother, William. If Victor had gone home when his family begged him to, he would not have meddled with this dangerous subject and everyone he loved would still live. “His reasoning is overwhelmed by his fear, causing him to choose science over the safety of his friends and family” (Nguyen). Furthermore, he could have saved his family by simply telling them what he had done. Instead, he kept the monster a secret. “His failure to reveal his a secret of the monster leads to the destruction of those he loved. The loss of his family and friends detaches him from the rest of the world, and he remains in his secrecy out of guilt and shame” (Nguyen). Victor became the reason for the downfall of his family, as well as himself. He could have ended the monster from the moment he saw it and gone home to live a normal happy life, but instead he ignored it and let it learn on its own. He remained an accessory to the murders for never warning anyone about the demon he

created.
After leaving Victor’s apartment in Ingolstadt, Creature wanders aimlessly searching for love and compassion when he stumbles upon a tiny cottage of the De Lacey’s, a blind father and his two children, Felix and Agatha. “Frankenstein’s monster tries to fit into society with desire of acceptance but receives only hate and fear from the humans, because of this it swears revenge on humans and his creator, Victor Frankenstein” (Watkins). Creature lives outside this cottage and watches these people to learn how to speak, write, and read. Creature takes an opportunity to go speak to the blind man. Unfortunately, while inside the cottage, the children find him talking with the old man, and they panic. Agatha fainted and Felix beats Creature. They do this out of fear because of how big and terrifying he looks. Creature flees the cottage and vows to never return. Anger pours over from him towards Victor for making him ugly, and bringing him into a world where he will never know of acceptance, love, and kindness. Here, he claims his right for revenge against his creator.
Of course, Victor had good intentions when creating the creature, he sought to make a beautiful beast whose abilities exceeded those of the human race. “I had begun life with benevolent intentions, and thirsts for the moment when I should put them into practice, and make myself useful to my fellow-being” (Shelley 62). He wanted to become the first man to create such a paradox, he wanted the fame and the glory but he also wanted the creature to look up to him as his God and purpose for life. Nevertheless, the creature became corrupted and Victor can only blame himself. “After all these killings Victors devotes his life to destroying his creation, which eventually leads to his own demise” (Watkins). Victor becomes angry with himself and has begun to claim some of the blame, but he still wants his revenge. Ending the life he created would finally put him at peace. Subsequently, Victor now obsesses over destroying life, when before he obsessed over creating it.
After many months of tracking and chasing Creature, Victor Frankenstein ends up on Walton’s ship. “At the end of the novel, having chased his creation ever northward, Victor relates his story to Robert Walton and then dies” (Analysis). He tells Walton his story to make him promise he will destroy the monster, and Walton agrees. Instead, he turns his ship around not only giving up on Frankenstein’s goal, but his as well. “It is past; I am returning to England. I have lost my hopes of utility and glory;--I have lost my friend” (Shelley 160). Walton has clearly learned from the mistakes of Frankenstein because he lets go of his dream of seeing the North Pole and goes home instead. Victor and Walton both chase the dreams of going where no man has ever ventured. Victor died chasing his, and Walton takes this as a sign to turn around and quit before the same happens to him.
Victor, as well as his whole family, die because of his careless and selfish notions. He wanted this demon to look up to him as a father figure and a God, but instead he abandoned it to fend for itself. Creature did all that he did out of spite for not getting the love and compassion from Victor he so desperately desired. Victor told his story to Walton to ensure that he, as well as anyone else he shares it with steers clear of the mistakes that he made.