Aspen Sagan Ms. Haughey English 3 Honors 16 December 2022 Karma Through Illness In the novels, authors use both physical and mental illness as a device to reflect flaws within characters to develop the plot. Within Frankenstien, Mary Shelly uses her protagonist's illness; Victor Frankenetsien’s, to convey his flaw in negligence towards facing the consequences of his actions, as like a sense of procrastination and putting off dire situations that need to be addressed. Victor's illness allines with his issues both in physical and mental states, and due to these illnesses being conveniently when he has a responsibility to address, it causes him to have his problems escalate; a sense of karma for not attending to them sooner. Within Frankenstein, …show more content…
Through every major aspect of his life. Victor consistently gets sick and is able to avoid the sense in facing the consequences of his actions. When Victor first got sick in the novel, it was when he first created his monster Victor fell ill with a fever, and due to that it gets rid of all the hypothetical situations where he could have atoned for his actions and helped his creation. But due to his illness, his creation was isolated and rejected from society. He also was unable to reach his creation and try to help him, and it was conveniently too late to find or say anything to atone his creations actions, due to his illness being conveniently timed. When Victor was being treated for his fever by his friend; Henry Clerval, he “...was in reality very ill; and surely nothing but the unbounded and unremitting attention of [his] friend could have restored [him] to life" (Shelly 33). Victor's sickness is able to excuse him out of his responsibilities and is able to put everything on hold conveniently do what he needs and wants to do. When Victor {can't remember but event as to when} he is then able have an excuse to isolate himself and focus on his studies, in the beginning and then later on, his isolation is utilized to show that due to his isolated, it causes Victors mental health to decline and spiral into an episode. Victor's illness is due to his own isolation and leads himself to his own demise….(more to be …show more content…
Due to Victor's convenience of getting sick after major events in his life, he is unable to face the consequences of them and act accordingly due to the fact that he is unable to attend to them due to his wellbeing. When Victor's wife; Elizabeth, is killed by his creation, it had “...a grin was on [his] face” and “...seemed to jeer, as with his fiendish finger he pointed towards the corpse of my wife.”(Shelly 197). Due to Victor never taking the responsibility of creating the monster due to his sickness, he was unable to raise and monitor the actions it had. Due to his lack of responsibility and the consequence of him becoming ill, it led him to face the karma of his dead wife, and more of his loved ones. Because of the fact that Victor was the reason that his creature was isolated from society, his creation kills off his family in a sense making his karma. Eventually his creation kills enough of his family and friends for Victor to be alone. Victor's consequences of his actions come back to him in the end, feeling the same way his creature did when the first and only person to see and value in him rejects him, and makes society reject him
Victor is to be blamed for numerous incidents throughout the story. First, Victor is to blame because of his desire to create life. If it wasn’t for his desire, he would have never created the monster. Second, Victor is to blame because he abandoned his monster because he got so scared of his unpleasant appearance. If Victor spent a little bit of time with the monster and taught him the correct behavior for life, then maybe the monster wouldn’t have been so unstable.
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
He was bothered and sickened so much that over time he became so agonized that he died from guilt. If victor has done all those bad things imagine what Frankenstein could do. Victor paid his sins with his life. That's why he is not a monster because he is aware of what he did.
While Victor is at college he makes the decision that the best and only way for him to gain glory is to be the first man to create life. After Victor “had worked hard for nearly two years, for the sole purpose of infusing life into an inanimate body” (45) in order to gain glory and fame he claims that “[he] imagined that the monster seized [him]; [he] struggled furiously, and fell down in a fit” (48). Victor remains mentally ill for a long period of time while his creation dangerously goes out into the world with minimal knowledge to fulfill his own needs. Victor believes that he falls ill because of his fear of the creature making it out to be a monstrosity when it is actually his own ambition that scares him the most. Virginia Brackett comments on the way Victor continues to shift blame and makes the creature out to be a monster because he begins to regret the decisions that his ambition lead him to
At the beginning of the novel Victor is obsessed with finding the secret of life. He isolates himself from the world in order to fully focus in his studies. Once he successfully reaches his objective he want nothing to do with it. His abandonment to the creation leads the creature to seek vengeance on Victor. His vengeance results to the death of William, Victor's Father, Elizabeth and Henry which cultivates Victor’s hatred.
Title: The Impact of Mental Health on Individuals: Exploring its Effects through the Character of Victor Frankenstein in Mary Shelley's Frankenstein Mental health is a fundamental component of overall well-being, deeply affecting an individual's thoughts, emotions, and behaviors. In Mary Shelley's novel Frankenstein, the character of Victor Frankenstein provides a poignant portrayal of the consequences associated with mental health challenges. This paper aims to explore the far-reaching impact of mental health on individuals by examining Victor's experiences. By delving into Victor's struggles, we can gain valuable insights into the profound implications of mental health issues and consider potential solutions to address them. Victor Frankenstein experiences intense psychological turmoil due to his
Although the murder was not directly committed by Victor, he may have played a crucial part in the conditions leading to the tragedy. Through the negligence of his creature and failing to provide it with instruction and support, Victor left his creation to the influence of evil and its impulses. Moreover by failing to create a female creature as he had promised Victor destroyed the creatures only chance at companionship. When Victor was confronted by the creature it states: "You have destroyed the work which you began; what is it that you intend? Do you dare to break your promise?"
Victor had to deal with all the guilt and take responsibility for all the bad things the creature had done because he created and left the creature. “Unable to endure the aspect of the being I had created, I rushed out of the room and continued a long time traversing my bed-chamber, unable to compose my mind to sleep”(Shelley 49). Victor realized what he created and could not even sleep knowing that he created a “monster”. His abandonment of the creature was even worse, because he let the creature out into the real world with no knowledge or morals. “The different accidents of life are not so changeable as the feelings of human nature.
Victor's fear of being known as the creator of the creature, and the creature killing his family made him more and more isolated from the world just like the creature was. Victor even said “Revenge kept me alive" (pg149) similar to the creature's “insatiable thirst for vengeance”(pg 164) which kept him alive. Victor and the monster both had a similar desire for a loving family, and neither one could have it. Victor was given a woman to marry, his mother said “I have a pretty present for my Victor - tomorrow he shall have it” (pg 18) talking about Elizabeth. The creature wanted to be given a woman to be with just as Victor had.
Throughout the book the death of Victor's family has taken a toll on his mental state and he starts showing signs of mental illness. Much like Mary Shelley had mental illness because of the horrors that happened in her life. The illnesses that Victor starts showing signs of depression, paranoid schizophrenia, and anxiety. Depression is something that
Victor also had to deal with the consequences of his actions. He was ostracized by society and was viewed as a monster and a criminal. He was forced to flee from his home and had to live in hiding. He was unable to find peace or solace in any place he went. The creature, on the other hand, had
Also, this lead to Victor’s dedication to ending with the monster’s life until the rest of his life. The results were that because Victor was so dedicated to kill the monster, he died trying to do so and could never take justice by his own
Throughout the novel, Victor does not have a healthy method of dealing with the negative scenarios that life throws at him. He does not deal with his problems directly, rather he runs away from them literally and figuratively. As a child Victor was sheltered from loss and his surroundings, which restrained his character from establishing a true coping mechanism for dealing with his problems, he is left to manage these happenings using the only form of survival that he knows-running away. For the duration of the novel, Victor runs away in a literal sense, to escape his quandaries.
The scientist struggles constantly with sickness throughout the narrative and, while not specifically emphasized, he retreats into nature frequently after regaining consciousness to increase his mental and physical recovery. Textual evidence of nature’s effect on Victor includes when he states, “I remember... it was a divine spring, and the season contributed greatly to my convalescence. I also felt sentiments of joy and affection revive in my bosom; my gloom disappeared, and in a short time I became as cheerful as before I was attacked by the fatal passion” (Shelley 51). Victor acknowledges how the spring season, which includes the regrowth and renewal of the natural world, greatly increases his overall health to where he feels comparable to his self before he created the monster.
Mary Shelley illustrates Victor as a weak and helpless as he became sick after all the tragic and terrible events that happened in his life. Everytime Victor becomes ill, he is unable to take care of himself.