Consumed by the potential achievement of one’s desires, an individual tends to be obsessed with the fulfillment, while disregarding every other valuable aspects of their life, such as family and self-prosperity. The overlooked journey, is only an obstacle in the way of obtaining the ultimate goal, usually centered around glory. In the novel, Frankenstein by Mary Shelley, Victor Frankenstein seizes his lifelong ambition of creating life from the nonliving. After the long awaited achievement, Frankenstein finds that the triumph does not live up to his glorified expectations of success. Thus, the time spent to attainment is misused, not being thoroughly enjoyed by Frankenstein. Unfortunately, most individuals like Frankenstein, praise minor instances …show more content…
Occupied by his project, Victor insists “to procrastinate all that related to my feelings of affection until the great object, which swallowed up every habit of my nature, should be completed” (Shelley 46). Victor continues to be unconditionally concerned with the progress of his objectives instead of the well-being of himself and his family. Individuals often ignore one’s own feelings and health because of a glorified goal, which can lead to a degrading life. The potential glory after the obtainment of a goal does not make up for enjoyable time lost in the hardships presented in the journey. Until the completion of the Creature, Victor does not associate with his family: “...the same feelings which made me neglect the scenes around me cause me also to forget those friends and family who were so many miles absent, and whom I had not seen for so long a time” (Shelley 45). The pleasure in attaining his desires persists in being the most important aspect for Victor, rather than family. During his journey, Victor deprives himself of his family and friends so he can advance his course to grandeur. The self-centered mind of Frankenstein, as well as many individuals, puts the achievement of their own desires before the compassion of others. This reality conveys the lonesome campaign individuals face when only finding pleasure in the attainment of their ambitions. Instead of this undesirable lifestyle without family, Victor’s journey could have been more satisfying with family and friends by his
All humans find themselves obsessively determined to succeed in gaining something, whether it be knowledge, a promotion, or someone’s love, only to find out that what they thought they were going to get is not what they actually wanted at all. In her novel Frankenstein, Mary Shelley describes this phenomena occurring within Victor Frankenstein’s internal narrative. He is obsessed and determined to discover the secret of life, and once he does he realizes its effects on not only his life, but others’ as well. Throughout the passage found on pages 30-31, Mary Shelley reveals the attitudes of curiosity, wonder, and determination through descriptive characterization of Victor Frankenstein and his thoughts, effectively bringing her own attitudes to fruition through language, symbols, and sentence structure.
In Frankenstein by Mary Shelley, Victor is fascinated by the creation and decay of life and is relentless to create him one, but turns out to be a horrifying nightmare by bringing a monster into the world. One's desire can be so great that it blinds people from the things in life they truly care about, but would not know till it is gone. Victor Frankenstein goes from an arrogant man who only thinks about his only desires to a guilt ridden man who wants to protect others after his mistake killed innocent people. Victor Frankenstein is an arrogant man who only thinks about his only desires and does not care about what people says. Since he is spoiled by his family by giving him gifts like Elizabeth “as his- his to protect, love, and cherish” (30).
”(Millhauser). This violent rejection is a repetition of Victor’s lack of acceptance for the monster and attention to his family. Victor knows that the monster will never be able to live within society and that his ability to create life is the only hope the monster has of achieving companionship. Victor's own aversion to companionship surfaces as he, “ fails to give him the human companionship, the Eve, the female creature, that he needs to achieve some sort of a normal life.” (Mellor).
Ambition as propelling it is, however can lead to the demise of the person influenced by it. Mary Shelley’s novel Frankenstein, informs the reader of the consequences of ambition, by telling a story of man named Victor Frankenstein who is overwhelmed by his ambition to see the atrocities he commits. In his ignorance created a monster who served to be Victor’s mistake as he slaughtered his family members. The novel illustrates the dangers of ambition because it is the main reason of Victor’s downfall. Pursuing a desire too strongly as to cause obsession is what destroyed Victor.
When Victor creates the creature he also abandons it. Once Frankenstein’s creature begins to murder off his family thus he begins’ to realize the importance of family. Caroline’s death contributes to Victor’s isolated nature.
In the process of creating the monster, Victor “does not see his family or correspond with them for six years” (Themes). As Victors thirst for knowledge grew, the more he drifted apart from his family. He did not know how to “balance his intellectual and social interactions” and it led him to favor his education (Themes). Throughout his time at his university, Victor “contemplates a visit home” but decides against it to study more intently. After he created the monster, he “forgot about the family who lovingly supported him throughout his childhood” (Novels).
Once noted, the parallels between Frankenstein’s fears and desires and the reality the monster experiences are many. Now that Victor is in university, he no longer has family and friends to fall back upon in the unknown territory of his university. Frankenstein voices is that “[he] believed [himself] totally unfitted for the company of strangers,” irrational as it may be, and believes himself solely dependent on his family and childhood friend for companionship. Without the love guaranteed to him by his family, Victor believes he is unfit to make companions by himself and destined to a life of loneliness. He places much importance on the fact that his father and Elizabeth love him and are concerned with his well-being.
Victor Frankenstein, through his actions, changed his destiny; sadly, his deeds led to the negative effects destiny had prepared for him. He failed to recognize the “hidden power” destiny holds when he sought to make nature accommodate to his superfluous creation. By disregarding the effects of providing life to a lifeless creature, fate, in the end formed a path of suffrage, and took those most dear to him. Unfortunately, Frankenstein’s recognition of destiny’s power was discovered to late and along with those whom he loved, his happiness and peace were also taken
By denying both main characters the sensation of domestic affection, or any other kind of social belonging, Mary Shelley highlights the importance thereof. The resulting isolation became the driving force behind both Frankenstein and his creation’s abominable actions which, in turn, shows that trying to avoid isolation and seeking the feeling of social belonging is the primary message of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and of
Victor would stop at nothing to finish his project and became so obsessed that he was isolated from his family and friends. His way of collecting lifeless matter for his creation is unethical and morally wrong. Eventually, he is punished for his actions: “I had worked hard for nearly two years, for the sole purpose of infusing life into an inanimate body.” (pg.56) Additionally, extreme devotion to the building of his creation caused Victor mental distress due to the fact that he neglected his own needs in order to work exclusively on the creature: “I had deprived myself of rest and health.”
The first major cause of suffering in Victor’s life was when he received a letter from his father and the letter entailed that his youngest brother, William has been murdered by being strangled to death. The Frankenstein family had been taking an evening stroll in Plainpalais and had extended their walk
Mary Shelley’s novel Frankenstein, shows how a character who is portrayed as a tragic hero, in the beginning, can become the monster in the end. Victor and the Monster in Mary Shelley’s captivating novel showed how rival enemies share striking similarities. The similarities between the two tragic characters are driven by their dreary isolation from the secluded world. A large difference is that they were both raised in two completely different environments but understood the meaning of isolation. Physical differences are more noticeable rather than their personalities.
Oftentimes people are too afraid of what people might think to show their full potential. This is not the case for Victor in Mary Shelley’s novel Frankenstein. In Frankenstein we see the journey of Victor and his creation as they separately get rejected and misunderstood by society. Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein supports Emerson’s ideas of self-reliance because Victor shows that fearless people can achieve greatness.
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
Such passion is seen in Victor’s ‘noble intent’ to design a being that could contribute to society, but he had overextended himself, falling under the spell of playing ‘God,’ further digging his grave as he is blinded by glory. His creation – aptly called monstrous being due to its stature, appearance, and strength – proved to be more of a pure and intellectually disposed ‘child’ that moves throughout the novel as a mere oddity, given the short end of the stick in relation to a lack of familial figures within his life, especially that of parents. Clearly, Victor Frankenstein had sealed his fate: by playing God he was losing his humanity, ultimately becoming the manifestation of Mary Shelley’s hidden desires, deteriorating into The Lucifer Principle by which the author Howard Bloom notes social groups, not individuals, as the primary “unit of selection” in human psychological