Consequences Through Irresponsibility and Power “The greater the power, the more dangerous the abuse.” Edmund Burke The quote by Edmund Burke, "The greater the power, the more dangerous the abuse," indicates that the possession of power carries with it the potential for its misuse and abuse. It resembles the theme that Mary Shelley portrays in her novel and shows the dangers and responsibility power holds in this novel. In Frankenstein, Mary Shelley portrays the theme that irresponsibility and power can result in irreversible tragedies through Victor’s pursuit of scientific knowledge, and abandoning the creature which builds revenge in his creation which ultimately leads to the deaths of William and Elizabeth. To begin, In Frankenstein, Victor …show more content…
Due to this, Victor’s power of being a creator sequence to tragic events. The theme of power and the dangers of scientific pursuit is shown in Frankenstein and the effect after his creation is made. Victor mentions, “I had worked hard for nearly two years, for the sole purpose of infusing life into an inanimate body… but now that I had finished, the beauty of the dream vanished, and breathless horror and disgust filled my heart” (43). Once Victor creates his creation, he is not able to endure looking at his creation. This shows the consequences that can arise from attaining power irresponsibly. Victor’s desire for knowledge to create life causes him to ignore the implications of his actions and the harm his experiment can cause. When he is successful in bringing his creation to life, his sense of accomplishment turns into horror and disgust. Victor’s power leads to his downfall by bringing the creature to life. The theme of pursuing knowledge is evident in the book and reinforces the idea that it can have disastrous and irreversible …show more content…
In chapter 4, Victor warns Walton about the dangers of acquiring knowledge. This serves as a sign of the events that will unfold throughout the novel. Victor remarks to Walton, “Learn from me… how dangerous is the acquirement of knowledge and how much happier that man is who believes his native town to be the world, than he who aspires to become greater than his nature will allow” (39). Victor tries to warn Walton about the dangers of trying to know beyond one’s limits. He realizes that it brings misfortune and consequences instead of joy and happiness. This shows his own experiences with the pursuit of knowledge and the consequences of it. Victor emphasizes the importance of one’s limits and the harm of exceeding them. It also highlights the danger of obsession and pursuit of knowledge for power. Ultimately, Victor’s choices lead to the deaths of William and Elizabeth. Mary Shelley suggests that in pursuit of knowledge, it is important to have caution and responsibility and abused power can lead to irreparable
Victor’s abandonment causes him to have to face the consequences of his greed for creating life, for after he abandons the creature bad things start to happen to him. An example of this is the death of William, Victor’s younger brother. The creature “grasped his throat to silence him, and in a moment he lay dead” (134). The creature uses his strength to harm people Victor loved, forcing Victor to have to face the consequences of his corruption and belief that he could defy God and create a new race. The creature continues with his path and murders Victor’s long-time friend Henry Clerval (171).
“I shuddered to think that future ages might curse me as their pest, whose selfishness had not hesitated to buy its own peace at the price, perhaps, of the existence of the whole human race” (186). Victor sacrificed the peace he wanted for himself and accepted the lifelong torment of the creature, a consequence of his broken promise. Victor did this for the greater good of humanity, recognizing the power of his choice to create or not to create, as well as the power of the creature. Victor had to discover the hard way, how powerful the creature became when reading letters like this one from his father, “About five in the morning, I discovered my lovely boy, whom the night before I had seen blooming and in active health, stretched on the grass livid and motionless; the print of the murder’s finger was on his neck” (72). What Victor thought he was doing to save his family and friends, ended up being the thing that killed them.
Victor gets ill every time a family member dies or something tragic happens. The illness sums up his guilt, as the tragedy that has happened was his cause. The illness shows his knowledge as a burden because the creature he has created has damaged his family to the point where it can never be fixed because they have all died. As a result of his obsession with discovering how to create life and his selfish desire to create with his knowledge, he is never satisfied and leads his studies down a dangerous path. This shows how knowledge can be a very dangerous gift to have when you cannot handle it
At the beginning, Victor is introduced to be a young, driven scientist with a desire to discover new things. He broken heartedly pleaded to Henry and Professor Waldman, “listen. You love someone, they have a sick heart-wouldn’t you give them a healthy one?”(scene 6) He genuinely saw it that way, to help others not feel the pain and sorrow he felt. Frankenstein’s innocent ambition quickly goes downhill as his craving for knowledge and the ability to create a being that will not grow old or sick takes over.
Other than this, he was happy when he eventually achieved his goal of bringing his creation to life, but he quickly met the effects of his actions. Victor's pursuit of glory and his ideology, finally brought his downfall since he did not factor in the potential risks of his experiment. Victor’s creation and experiment are a warning about the
Once Victor is acquainted with modern science and contributes it to his current studies, he discovers that creating life through electricity is possible on a large scale. His immediate idea is to ”attempt the creation of a being like myself” without having any previous experimentation or analysis to base his assessment upon (Shelley 53). Although he pondered the thought of creating a simpler project, his ignorance led him away as he “pursued nature to her hiding-places” (Shelley 53). Not understanding what he had created, Victor cast the creature away, ignoring the creature’s need for proper nurturing and affection. His drive for harnessing life also made him grow ignorant of his personal needs.
In his attempt to create a new being, Frankenstein is successful. That is, he is successful until he allows his creation's innocence to be tainted by the relentless savagery that is reality. As a result, Frankenstein's creation becomes Frankenstein's monster, defiled by hatred and the need for revenge. However, the destruction of innocence occurred not only in Frankenstein’s creation, but also in Victor Frankenstein himself. By the time of his death Victor is a monster consumed by hate and revenge.
By prioritizing his own desires over the needs of others, he causes suffering to those closest to him and loss of trust, as seen when Victor refuses to reveal the truth about the monster and the deaths that have occurred to those he loves. Although Victor's motivations for creating life are initially noble, as he wants to discover how to overcome death, they quickly become selfish as he becomes obsessed with proving himself capable of such great achievements. Victor's creation
This seemingly selfless decision to finally place his family’s needs above his work did not occur without negative consequences though. The creature had to learn about life, without the parental guidance most children receive, through trial and error. Upon meeting with Victor, he began pleading his story. The creature exclaimed that Victor had “endowed [him] with perceptions and passions and then cast [him] abroad an object for the scorn and horror of mankind” and therefore will pay for such maltreatment (Shelley 150). Victor completely shunning his accomplishment to focus on his family and himself harmed the creature in unimaginable ways and in turn risked his family’s lives.
Instead, he flounders in his own pride to the detriment of his own existence” (Rose). In some ways, Victor hides in his own pride to escape the disappointment and sadness of the people around them. His moral blindness essentially causes all of his suffering and destruction. If Victor analyzed the world and his role in it, he may have realized the detrimental consequences of creating a new species. Overall, Victor’s lack of morals and social blindness causes him to be consumed by pride and make life-altering
Although Victor’s idea was a clear vision. He came to realize that expectations did not come to reality after and that God's power should remain in his hands alone. By examining the relationship between Victor and The Monster, this essay addresses how Victor took no responsibility for his mistake and, in return, faced the consequence.
In Frankenstein, Mary Shelley uses Victor’s selfishness and ambition for knowledge to questioned how far society has to go to satisfy our yearn to be God. Vicor’s God complexion shows the dangers of wanting to challenge the limits of human knowledge without thinking of the consequences. When Victor attends university and the material he has learned is belittled by a professor as a waste of time, Victor is determined to prove him wrong. As Victor becomes more interested in the sciences and in the creation of life he sees that as the only way to make advancements that others have not yet done. He succeeded in bringing the dead back to life but not in the form he had in mind.
Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein openly propounds the co-existence of good and evil that yields to inexorable carnage and unrelenting revenge. A maniacal devotion to reason makes Victor the true antagonist of the novel and therefore the real villain in Frankenstein. Victor’s ability to create a life out of lifeless matter unbounded the pious, circumscribed view of God as the creator. Nevertheless, this infringement of propriety leads Victor down a path of revenge, which ultimately sets forth his destruction. Lastly, Victor and the monster are two aspects of the same person.
This theme was introduced in the very beginning and was further developed as the story progressed. Victor’s pursuit for knowledge eventually becomes the reason for the pain and suffering in his life and the life of his loved ones. Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein argues that it is better not to know everything because knowing too much is dangerous.
Throughout Chapters 17–20 of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, Victor and his creation experience character development. Victor’s character develops a sense of responsibility while trying to fulfill the creature’s enjoined request. Chapters 6–10 also showed slight development in Victor’s character, but nothing as significant as this. The creature's request is for Victor to create a female creation in order to vanquish the creature’s solitude. Victor acts selfishly in this situation and ultimately decides to protect his family, agreeing to satisfy the creature.