In Frankenstein, sickness was a constant issue with Victor primarily when he faced challenges or troubles. Sickness has always been an efficient way to temporarily remove yourself from society. Whether it is to keep people from being sick or just to get away from everyone, it will always be the best excuse to isolate yourself. Due to the fact that Victor only becomes sick during traumatic events, it is thought that he just did this to escape from the issues he faced. The issues always related back to his creation and the responsibilities that Victor never picked up on. He used illness as a way to escape the guilt he has for what he has done with the creature. These illnesses with Victor recur in several scenes. The first time that Victor
Victor has become obsessed with studying (something no one should ever be interested in) and has locked himself in his room studying for days on end. He "applied so closely, it may be easily conceived that my progress was rapid. My ardour was indeed the astonishment of the students, and my proficiency that of the masters... Two years passed in this manner, during which I paid no visit to Geneva, but was engaged, heart and soul, in the pursuit of some discoveries which I hoped to make". (7) This early application of himself is what drove him to become lonely and reclusive, shying away from all who attempted to come into contact with him. He is also inspired in this chapter to start his reanimation project. He becomes consumed in this one project spending many months alone in the top of his apartment assembling his creature. He raided slaughter houses, grave yards, and dissection rooms to furnish what he needed to create his monster. The lines between life and death became blurred
The problems with Victor behaved after he made the creature is that he abandoned the creature instead of owning up to his decides. When Victor started his experiment, he was so obsessed with the idea of creating life, but when he finally succeeded it he realise that he made a big mistake. He says in the book that “The different accidents of life are not so changeable as the feeling of human nature (Chapter 5 page 47).” He has spent nearly two whole years obsessing over trying to create life just for the beauty of the dream to die after he finished it. Nearly two years of depriving himself of sleep and health just to turn around and fill completed horror and disgust of his creature.
Victor knew that what he was doing was hurting his body physically and mentally, “My labors would soon end, and I believe that exercise and amusement would then drive away incipient disease” (Shelley 42) Victor felt this way when he was in the midst of the creation of his monster. Victor knows that his decisions were hindering his body and his ruining his limited time that Victor has on this Earth. The hindering of someone’s body and wasting of time is going to be a direct result of Victor’s demise. The actual creation of the monster also took a toll on Victor; Victor describes the monster by saying “No moral could support the horror of that countenance. A mummy again endued with animation could not be so hideous as that wretch” (Shelley 44) Another example of Victor’s description of the creation of the monster the night before “I trembled exclusively; I could not endure to think of, and far less to allude to, the occurrences of the preceding night” (Shelley 46) Even the next day, after the monster was created, Victor still was hurt by the creation of the monster which then led to Victor being very sick, only to be nursed back to health by Clerval. All of this could have been avoided by Victor if he would have not of created the monster. But because Victor decided to create the monster, the consequences of these actions were the ultimate demise of Victor with the person responsible for the demise being victor
He was depressed because he had no one to love or care for him and was enraged that his own creator threw him away. The problem with this assumption is that he didn't know for sure that Victor had thrown him away. The two parties didn't meet again until William was murdered by the monster and thus never had the opportunity to talk outside of the monster killing off Victor's loved
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”
Victor realizes he makes a mistake the night he brings the creature to life. Victor uses sickness as a way of escaping from the terror he has built based on the night the creature came to life. Victor wants to forget about that night, and sickness is the only way he will “forget” about
Victor thought “for this I had deprived myself of rest and health. I had desired it with an ardour that far exceeded moderation; but now that I had finished, the beauty of the dream vanished, and breathless horror and disgust filled my heart”(page). This quote demonstrates that once Victor had concluded his work of creating the monster, he realized that it may have been a huge mistake. He was not satisfied with his creation instead he was filled with terror. In result of his realization, he left the monster to fend for himself and suffer. Victor shows an evil side of himself by abandoning the monster and leaving him to be universally shunned by society. By Victor doing this one evil act, it causes the monster himself to go off and initiate evil acts of his own.
Victor consistently shows many negative characteristics such as the ones aformentioned. These problems in turn caused some of the most tragic events in the story. One of the clearest examples of this was when Victor made an unplanned decision to run from the creature when he was first alive caused the creature to hate Victor and subsequently cause William’s death as well as Henry’s and Elizabeth’s. When the creature meets with Victor on the glacier he discusses how his rage had festered into something out of control because of Victor, stating “This passion is detrimental to me, for you do not reflect that you are the cause of its excess”(p.125). The fact that Victor left the creature when the creature needed him most makes him angry that he was alone and without a
Finally, both Victor and the monster suffered isolation that had a major effect on there lives. Victor’s obsession with electricity and creating the monster eventually led him to become gravely ill. Victor’s illness is seen when he says: “Every night I was oppressed by a slow fever, and I became nervous to a most painful degree; the fall of a leaf startled me as if I had been guilty of a crime” (55). The effects of creating the monster made him ill, malnourished, and deprived of sleep. The existence of the monster has put Victor in a state of mind which pulls him away from everything.
At this point Victor is responsible for two deaths and must keep this all to himself. By suffering through the guilt and the illness it is clear that his decisions that were made in order to deepen his knowledge of the scientific world are becoming dangerous to himself and the people close to him.
Throughout the novel one gets the sense that Victor Frankenstein is insane. But clinically he can be diagnosed as having bipolar disorder. He shows all the symptoms without a doubt, that he is severely ill. Victor is unable to control his feelings and actions which cause his brain to make him have very severe mood changes or manic-depressive episodes. Bipolar disorder cannot be diagnosed physiologically (i.e. blood test etc.). It most likely passed down through DNA, so that is probably why he wasn 't diagnosed during his time. It is only recently that
Victor becomes ill sometime during the story after he leaves home and goes off to study at college. It is assumed by his father that he will feel better after being with his family and Elizabeth, the woman who he will later marry. But really all Victor wants is to take a breath of fresh air alone, showing how he truly feels about solitude and the environment. It makes the reader wonder what he really cares about, and if he even misses his family. "We passed a fortnight in these perambulations: my health and spirits had long been restored, and they gained additional strength from the salubrious air I breathed, the natural incidents of our progress . . ." Throughout everything that happens to Victor in the book. Including the death of his mother, brother, Elizabeth, and his father. All that seems to calm him is his return to nature. I discovered more distinctly the black sides of Jura, and the bright summit of Mount Blanc; I wept like a child: "Dear mountains! my own beautiful ale! how do you welcome your wanderer? Your summits are clear; the sky and lake are blue and placid. Is this to
Shelley explains how Victor has a great mental turmoil after he indirectly caused the death of people who were close to him by the actions he took to create the monster. Shelley’s description of Victor’s feelings show the deprivation of hope and fear in his soul and the emphasises the pain in which he was indirectly the cause of. Victor not only caused his own mental illness, but he also caused his own physical illness. Victor makes himself physically sick by his actions during the creation of his monster. Victor’s work unintentionally causes himself to decline in health and become vulnerable to illnesses. “When Victor is working on his experiment, he cannot love: he ignores his family, even his fiance Elizabeth, and takes no pleasure in the beauties of nature. Moreover, he becomes physically… ill, subject to nervous fevers”(Weiner 83). Victor is shown to focus directly on his work, causing him to forget most of the outside world and not be influenced by forces that usually comfort and heal him. His work makes Victor subject to nervous fevers, causing himself to become sick more often and need help from family and friends more often. Although the process of creating the monster was physically taxing on Victor, the end product caused him even more pain. The creation of the creature impaired
The audience can assume that Victor runs to his knowledge and education as his form of a friend. Victor works tirelessly to not only build, but perfect his creature to his liking for two long years. Believing that he has the solution to betterment of humankind, he loses sleep and cuts off all contact with family we see the effects of his madness while building his creation has not only affected him emotionally, but also physically as clearly stated: “Every night I was oppressed by a slow fever,