Victor's Loss Of Innocence In Frankenstein

Andrew McCulloch suggests that Victor “has risen to the physical challenge he set himself, but he is woefully ill equipped to cope with the much greater emotional and spiritual challenges that lie ahead” (#). Because he was so self-centered, Victor failed to relate to the emotions and feelings of other people. He was not prepared for the impacts of creating the monster and showed no responsibility for taking care of the needs of his creation.

The third narrator, and the most tragic, is the monster himself. After Victor abandons the monster, the poor creature wandered around confused. He had the innocence of a child and was abandoned. As the life of the creature progresses, he experiences disappointments and sadness. Andrew McCulloch asserts,

“This is what makes the creature's story so unbearably sad; we are witnessing the painful spectacle of the systematic destruction of the innocence, trust and love of a child” (#). The monster stumbles upon the De Lacy household and starts learning morality by observing the family. As he observes the De Lacy family, he wishes to be one of them. He sees them as perfect and himself as a hideous monster. When he looks into a pond to see his reflection he observes how he was “…unable to believe that it was indeed I who was reflected in the mirror; and when I became fully convinced that I was in reality the monster that I am, I was filled with the bitterest sensations of despondence and mortification” (Shelly 80). He decides that in order to be accepted by the De Lacy family, he will have to understand their language and be educated about the world. But as the monster discovers, humans are not exactly perfect. According to Shun- Liang Chao, “In order to shake off the misery of his accursed origin, the monster turns himself into an arduous learner of human language—a key to human society—and yet discovers that his pain only intensifies with the increase of knowledge and that human beings are in fact monstrous as well” (223). As the creature gained more knowledge, he realized that humans would never accept him. (McCulloch #).
When the family read Volney’s Ruins of an Empire, he quickly figures out how to use what he learned from the book to help figure out more of the human psyche (McCulloch #). The other books he begins to read have a similar impact on him. According to Andre McCulloch, “Goethe's The Sorrows of Werther, a book about the importance of emotion to any definition of humanity, enlarges his sympathies; Plutarch's Lives, like Ruins of Empire, offers further evidence of the extremes of human behavior” (#). His sense of morality is influenced by these books and he finds that he prefers literature over people. Paradise Lost is the book that impacts him the most. This book is based on the biblical story of Adam and how he was put in the world. The difference was that Adam had God as his guide, while the creature had no one. Adam was gifted the land of Paradise. The creature on the other hand, seemed “to be excluded from it and to be condemned, instead, to a kind of hell. In fact, he already senses that the figure of Satan may be closer to his own experience” (McCulloch #). But the creature still had some shred of hope that the De Lacy would be willing to accept him., even with his physical appearance. Unfortunately, his hopes are dashed tragically. As Chao describes, “He wholeheartedly expects the De Lacey—who indirectly educate him to be good and kindhearted—to overlook his deformed figure and become his friends, only to find that this virtuous family whom he has loved is not much different from the barbarous villagers who attacked him earlier in the novel” (Chao 225).
After this heartbreak, he becomes depressed and angry with the world.

It does not come as a surprise when, as Chao notes, the” benevolent monster turns in to a cynical murderer, paying back the violence of human society with violence against it” (225). After the creature retreats to the cottage, he finds Victor’s little brother named William. At first, he tries to help the boy but when the child says his brother will kill him, the creature breaks his neck in a fit of rage. When the monster finds a picture of a girl in his locket, he goes into another rage! As the monster later explains to Victor, “Can you wonder that such thoughts transported me with rage? I only wonder that at that moment, instead of venting my sensations in exclamations and agony, I did not rush among mankind, and perish in the attempt to destroy them” (Shelly 103). He is furious that he has been left alone when Victor and other men are happy (?). The monster confronts Victor and begs him to create a female monster so that he would not be alone. Victor makes the second creature but changes his mind and destroys the female monster. The monster was very upset by Victor’s action. The monster went on a killing rampage until Victor was the only one in his family left alive. Victor chases and tracks the monster to Antarctica, which is where Robert Walton finds him at the beginning of the

story.
By the end of the book, only one of the three narrators were alive.

Britton notes that “…Victor Frankenstein dies after urging everyone on the ship to continue their suicidal mission; and the Monster leaves the ship to embrace a self-inflicted, painful death. Only Robert Walton, the intrepid explorer, remains, judiciously but reluctantly turning for home” (9). Of the narrators, only Robert was able to learn from the moral failures of the other two narrators. In some respect, he is reborn and given an opportunity to live a better life focused on doing good things in the world for mankind. Victor Frankenstein eventually realizes that he is dying and asks Robert to destroy the monster on his behalf. He confesses his sin of ignoring his responsibility to the monster but selfishly claims that his talents were better focused on contributions to mankind (Shelley 161). Sadly, the end of the story would have been different if Victor had guided the creature’s educational and moral development. Victor, without a doubt, represented the negative outcome when scientific advancement is done without consideration of the outcome and the any moral responsibility. Finally, the monster commits suicide because he could not live with the murders he has committed. He tells Robert about the overwhelming guilt he experienced from killing Victor’s family and friends. The monster tells Robert, “When I first sought it, it was the love of virtue, the feelings of happiness and affection with which

my whole being overflowed, that I wished to be participated. But now, that virtue has become to me a shadow, and that happiness and affection are turned into bitter and loathing despair” (Shelly 164). That quote really highlights the contrast between how innocent he had been born and the sad state of his morality at that point in the story. He had become a broken man.
The story of Frankenstein, as Kristen Wright wrote, “serves as a warning that we can become monstrous ourselves through our battle with monsters, that in fighting the thing that frightens us we risk succumbing to our own worst urges” (4). This story is a warning about caring for others and not judging them by their appearance. Additionally, it cautions against the pursuit of scientific advancement without thought to the consequences and the responsibilities that comes with science. The three main narrators each had their own struggle with morality and each elected to take a different path. The author, Mary Shelley, crafted this tale based on her own nightmare but it also served as a warning to the reader. Frankenstein is one of the most horrifying and philosophical books of all time. It is truly one of my favorite books and each time that I read it, I notice something new.