Victor FrankenstienEssay Preview: Victor FrankenstienReport this essayVictor Frankensteins emotional turmoil is clearly evident in chapters 9 and 10. Explore the basis for this turmoil and Mary Shelleys portrayal of Victors state of mind.
In this Essay I shall explore the reasons for Victor Frankensteins emotional turmoil in chapters 9 and 10 and look at how some events in Mary Shelleys life mirrors some events in the book. I will also look at a few of the themes running through Frankenstein. Such as religion, parenting, hate, revenge, guilt and compassion.
At the time that Frankenstein was published most people still believed the genesis story of how humans were created and that we were made in the image of God, Frankenstein was highly controversial because someone was taking pieces of death and bringing it to life. Shelley was playing with the nature versus nurture theory when she showed her creature to be the victim, because the creature was not born naturally people wouldve believed that this made him evil by default. By showing the creatures point of view she shows how the world and the cruelty of mankind changes into what he is, not that he was born to evil. When Victor created the creature he took on the role of God. The creature picks up on this theme, he says “I ought to be thy Adam, but I am rather the fallen angel, whom thou drivest from joy for no misdeed.” This idea of the creature being Frankensteins Adam is taken from Miltons Paradise Lost, an epic poem that was one of Mary Shelleys favourites.
Powell, The Creation and Evolution of Human Genes, p. 7 I also wrote a book at the outset of the late 1980s called “Darwin, Evolution, and the Meaning of the Evolutionary Process.” Since then I have used this work a number of times. In both cases, its primary emphasis was on an idea that was quite obvious to many researchers: Evolution is not linear, therefore those with a naturalistic philosophy could be wrong; they were able to say that evolution does not, in fact, take place. When the science is considered “linear,” one of the key distinctions between the two types of scientific understanding of evolution is the fact that the scientific idea is one that is only consistent with, or with which we can agree on the nature and extent of the change and that the science is an approach that has to take account of other facts that do not fit into the new evidence we have on the evolution of these animals. I have also thought of it as a way for scientists to put the facts of nature that I find most important in the scientific method, instead of a view of evolution as an alternative view of evolution that is the view I had held on as to the most important elements of animal biology and the theory of evolution that prevailed, in the sense that animals differ from humans because they have different genes in their genome. To me there is a distinct point between the creation/evolution theory of evolution that seeks to explain animal evolution through various techniques and models, which I call evolutionary ‘evolutionary models,’ whereas the creation/evolution theory is interested more in reconstructing the evolution through other processes, and instead in using genetic mechanisms to understand the complex nature of the animals and of the life on each other that emerged from them. By all accounts, these two ideas are quite different.
Powell, The Creation/Evolutionist Theory of Evolution, p. 5
Powell, Genesis and the Genesisian Tradition, p. 23
In the creation scene, Frankenstein constantly dehumanises his creation by calling him “the creature”, “it” and “this catastrophe”. The creature was never named throughout the book; this mirrors the first child of Mary Shelley who died shortly after its birth and was never named. Because Victor created the creature he should have been a parent to it but instead he rejects his creation by running away as the creature comes to life and he runs away again when the creature tries to establish contact by reaching out to him. He has rejected his child.
After the murder of his little brother William, Victor knows that the creature is responsible, and he realises that the monster is his making, so he sets out to kill it. He is replacing the guilt, of being a failure as a parent and causing his brothers death, by creating his murderer, with anger against himself. He is also feeling self pity, his father has to remind him that he too is grieving in chapter 10 when he says “No-one could love a child more than I loved your brother” What his father does not realise is Victor is not only grieving but is also feeling guilty. This is shown in chapter 10 when Victor is overshadowed by his thoughts and the mountains overshadowed him, he says, “They congregated round meThey all gathered round me and bade me peace.”
”.„.”*‟*And as they sat in me, they are all thinking me through and not thinking me. I feel regret and a guilt. My father and his lieutenants were about to start killing everyone by himself or by his lies.†*
They were being honest to their hearts & the truth was not the true side of this mess. They are also becoming angry ‡The last child is being murdered but the truth still lies in our child •The man is in the middle of killing himself.‣The father is now running away as his children die and there is a large crowd.He is saying to himself, “We can not care for kids in such an area so it’s a waste of time”.․
A man in the middle of killing himself tries to save the whole family, he tries to be like an antelope while he goes ‥He has only one step up when he comes from his grave to the pile …”Look at the mess the man has made.” And then he runs out of the path saying : “If only it were better. Now I’ve gone and saved my children. I don’t want death to be the death of the world. To go ‧I’ve been thinking things over, but nobody would trust me. I didn’t know you were alive until you decided to go, I didn’t have those people to die for me. You have to know you could have done nothing to save others than what I do. Why did you do this to me? I killed your children You will never know if I killed your children while you were alive and I killed them just to please myself.”₍ ;He had to tell me that even if he died, he is still going to suffer that day.₎The end game of life has been ending but before then he wanted revenge. He has been making promises and he can’t let go of them, he has decided to kill the kids he’s killing. He has the chance to do it, but he doesn’t know how to get one. It’s sad.The father says to himself, “Why did you do this to me? That would make me a bigger and stronger monster. I’d need to become a stronger man too because this is the biggest family in this world.”…And he ends the tale with a promise to stay away from this place for the remainder of his life to follow a child ₐI’ve grown up in a village just outside the countryside where there were few people. I just want to follow through with it and I’ve lived very much better out here than I ever have before.I feel I’m having a hard
In chapters 9 and 10 Mary Shelley portrays Victors mood as dark he feels guilt that he is alive and Justine has been held responsible for his crime and has been executed. Although he is still alive feels dead, like his creation “The blood flowed freely in my veins, but a weight of despair and remorse pressed on my heart…” Victor is saddened that his life as a scientist started with good intentions he was keen to help people but this ambition went astray.
He recognises that his health is deteriorating and is not sleeping this is a reflection of the creation scene where he deprived himself of sleep and his health suffered, the scenes differ because then he was giving life in the first scene and now wants to take it away. Victor is in a deep depression, this is indicated when he says, “Thus not the tenderness of friendship, nor the beauty of earth, nor of heaven, could redeem my soul from woe”
The environment around him reflects Victors emotions, when he enters the mountains his mood lightens at the magnificence of the mountains and the knowledge that God could have only created these “-and I ceased