Victor Frankenstein Psychological Analysis

Right when a baby is born, they immediately begin to seek for someone to trust and provide for their basic needs. As an individual grows, they develop their own personality and characteristics, but this begs the question if a human’s personality and characteristics are determined more on nature or nurture. Which leads to the question: what characteristics make a human really a human? In Frankenstein by Mary Shelley, Victor Frankenstein creates a monster from the dead using body parts from the dead. Instantly, Victor abandons the monster who later turns to murder. These murders help him to cope with the isolation he feels from society and his creator. The monster is more human than Victor because he shows compassion, courage, and the need for human connection.

Parenting is needed in every child’s life. It is one of the most important things that will help a child grow. In the same way though, children need good parenting. Parents need to love their children and show them right from wrong. Without care from a parent, children may feel lost or lonely like the monster did in Mary Shelley’s novel, Frankenstein. Shelley analyzes the psychology of parenting through Victor Frankenstein and his creation, the monster, by comparing their behavioral and psychological development as a result of the parenting they receive in their childhood. Because Victor was loved and had a great childhood, he was able to grow as a person, psychologically and emotionally. As though Victor had a good childhood,

One out of every three children living in America lives without a father figure in his/her lives. Children growing up without a father figure can develop emotional and/or behavioral problems. In some cases, these children even become aggressive and get into trouble with the law (“Statistics on the Father Absence” n.p.). Frankenstein, written by Mary Shelley, occurs in Geneva and Ingolstadt, and portrays Victor Frankenstein as a deadbeat father figure to his creation because he does not take responsibility for him, and he must ultimately deal with the consequences of his creature.

The term victim describes anyone who suffers as a result of one or multiple unfortunate incidents. In Frankenstein, Mary Shelley portrays a number of different characters as potential victims, in particular: the creature, and Dr. Frankenstein. The similarities among the two in initial experiences create difficulty in labelling one as the true victim. However, as the story progresses, it is evident that the creature is able to overcome his fate of victimization by actively responding to his unsuccessful experiences. Whereas, Dr. Frankenstein suffers as a victim due to his cowardly reaction to his misfortunes. In the novel, Dr. Frankenstein is believed to be the true victim of the

Throughout the novel Shelley emphasizes empathy as a critical humanistic trait. The monster displays his ability to empathize with people even though they are strangers. On the other hand Victor, fails to show empathy throughout the novel even when it relates to his own family and friends. A plethora of instances depicted in the novel bolsters the reader's understanding of the monster's development of empathy which originated during

In Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, the tale of a mad scientist is told who surpasses the limits of science and what is typically considered to be possible for man to achieve. One of the many underlying stories, though, can be seen in the monster who is created and then brought to life at the beginning of the novel. The monster’s development throughout the novel begins with initially being rejected and neglected by his creator Victor Frankenstein. The monster turns aggressive soon after and seeks revenge on Frankenstein’s family, killing off each one, one at a time. These actions are obviously very unlike that of an average human child, but when you look at his horrendous acts as being in response to negligence by a parental figure, they can

After his mother’s death, he has an idea of bringing the dead back to life. He creates a monster with the remains of deceased. The creation turned out so ugly that he chose to abandon it. Before the monster was hurt by people inexorability, the monster’s nature was kind and he did not want to harm any one. The creation was driven by revenge and became a real monster. He swears to take revenge on his creator, Victor, so he killed Victor’s friends and family one by one. In the end, the monster also killed Victor’s wife Elizabeth. It wanted Victor to know how it felt during its life, lonely and misunderstood.

Shelley, Mary. Frankenstein. Ed. Hunter, Paul J. Norton Critical Edition. New York: W.W. North & Company, 2012. Print.

Victor’s parental figures in Frankenstein poison him by surrounding him with countless indulgences. From childhood, Victor was given all of his desires without question and this led to him becoming self-centered and dependent on the service of others. Victor describes his childhood with

His appearance scares the people he encounters, and his only desire is love. Further in the novel, there are many situations where the Monster is the victim. Shelley uses words that provide imagery for her readers. Readers will think Victor is the antagonist. He realizes if he would show the Creature love, the Monster would not kill the people. Love seems to be all he seeks, but he gets his feelings hurt when people reject and talk about him. The Monster should have to go through the bad experiences, if people would treat him with respect and and not judge him. Love and attention are the key factors that all children should experience from their parents. The Monster did not experience the love and that is what led him to being the victim in

In 1818 Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein, a novel that follows Victor Frankenstein, an ambitious man on his journey to defy the natural sciences. In Volume I of the novel, Victor discusses his childhood, mentioning how wonderful and amazing it was because of how his family sheltered him from the bad in the world. “The innocent and helpless creature bestowed on them by heaven, whom to bring up to good, and whose future lot it was in their hands to direct to happiness or misery, according as they fulfilled their duties towards me” (35). When Victor brings up his childhood, he suggests that parents play a strong in how their kids turn out, either "to happiness or misery" (35). In particular the main character was sheltered as a child to achieve this “happiness” leading to Victor never developing a coping mechanism to the evil in the world. 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.

Every action the monster takes reflects back on Victor, the one who invented him and then abandoned him at birth. Victor realizes how “[he] loved [Henry] with a mixture of affection and reverence that knew no bounds, yet [he] could never persuade [himself] to confide in [Henry]” (Shelley 55). The monster Victor created is pushing him away from Henry since Victor left his creation feeling useless, just like an archetypal evil-doer would to anyone. Victor is keeping his monster a secret as well as everything he knows about “awakening the dead”. This doesn’t seem like the smartest thing to do especially when there are people who’re oblivious to the monster roaming the streets. Also, kudos to Victor for making his fiend feel like "an unfortunate and deserted creature; [The monster looks] around [with] no relation or friend upon earth.[...][He’s] full of fears, for if [he fails] there, [he’s] an outcast in the world forever" (Shelley 122). Because of the villagers, the monster had become more educated, finding an efficient way to escape his eternal isolation. He first chose to confront the blinded man since he had no reaction when the monster approached him. Unfortunately, the De Lacey kids came back home to find the so-called horrifying monster. His isolation escalated, making him feel like there was no hope for him left. Now that he had to leave the people he referred to as his ‘protectors’, he was alone and it was all because Victor deserted the only thing he was responsible for and he couldn’t even do that. When Victor meets up with his creation, he declares “‘Begone! I do break my promise; never will I create another like yourself, equal in deformity and wickedness’” (Shelley 157). Anyone who sees the creature tends to act the same way just because people find him to be unpleasant to look at. But for Victor,

The fictional horror novel of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein is driven by the accentuation of humanity’s flaws. Even at the very mention of her work an archetypal monster fills one’s imagination, coupled with visions of a crazed scientist to boot. Opening her novel with Robert Walton, the conduit of the story, he also serves as a character to parallel the protagonist’s in many ways. As the ‘protagonist’ of the story, Victor Frankenstein, takes on the mantle of the deluded scientist, his nameless creation becomes the embodiment of a truly abandoned child – one left to fend for itself against the harsh reality posed by society. On the other hand, Walton also serves as a foil to Victor – he is not compulsive enough to risk what would be almost

Like a mother, Victor brings a new life into the world, technically making him the father of this creature whose appearance scares him away from showing any needed paternal affection. When a child is growing up, they are in desperate need for the emotional attention and nurturing experienced in maternal reverie, and the monster seeks for that attention from Victor. Despite psychoanalytic suggestions of the mother as the dominant force in child development, the Monster needed

“How Humans Deal With And Survive Extreme Cold.” Science of the Cold How Humans Deal with and Survive Extreme Cold, www.coolantarctica.com/Antarctica%20fact%20file/science/cold_humans.php.