Victor's Pursuit Of Knowledge In Frankenstein

The power of knowledge has also affected Victor in a negative way. Ever since Victor was a child, he had always been interested in science. As he got older, he got even more interested in specific topics within natural philosophy, particularly the human body. After his talk with his professor, he believed he could create an animate object from an inanimate object, in which this case the object turned into a monster. “My labours would soon end, and I believed that exercise and amusement would then drive away incipient disease; and I promised myself both of these when my creation should be complete” (57). Victor has put a lot of effort into learning the anatomy of a human body and pursues the creation of one, yet he doesn’t realize how small the margin of error would be. Later on in the book, the monster demands Victor to create a

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

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

During adolescence, Victor develops a fascination for the mysteries of natural science. He goes to Ingolstadt to enhance his knowledge where he engrosses himself in his studies eventually developing a deep passion for science and human anatomy. After attending the university, Victor’s thirst for more knowledge leads him to take on the project of creating a living creature. He submerges himself in his work and refuses to give up, even sacrificing his health. “After days and nights of incredible labour and fatigue, I succeeded in discovering the cause of generation and life; nay, more, I became myself capable of bestowing animation upon lifeless matter” (Shelly 41). Victor’s obsession with learning the secret to life causes him to become isolated and unhealthy. He removed himself from his social life and never did anything else besides work on his creation. Victor’s thirst for knowledge is what urges him to make the creature, eventually leading to him

He is so consumed by keeping his secret safe; his loved ones are murdered as a result. For example, Henry Clervel has his life taken as an outcome of Victor’s betrayal to the creature. Victor’s failure to warn Henry creates increasing guilt which continues until the death of Elizabeth. He thinks of himself instead of logically warning his wife of the monster’s dangerous threats, “I shall be with you on your wedding-night.” (176) Right until Victor’s death, science is viewed as the only way of knowledge, as quoted, “the more fully I entered into the science, the more exclusively I pursued it for its own sake.” (77) This knowledge is ultimately used against him; the monster knows what Victor is capable of and uses his ability of creating life as a threat to make a new creature to acquaint the monster. As Victor contemplates this idea, he is also threatened by the possibility of new life being created, “… a race of devils would be propagated upon the earth” (174) which dictate his actions in destroying the wife of the creature. Knowledge ultimately consumes Victor.

Dictionary of Narratology). Because if we identify the character of Victor start from his happy childhood, university environment, but since he created the human-like, the complexity of his life getting worse and worse. He tried to struggle and beated down the monster to reconcile his mistake, and went back to his hometown to safe his family but ironically he couldn’t.

Victor experiences alienation throughout the entirety of his life. From his childhood and family, to his scientific work and society, he chooses isolation. Victor was an only child in a ‘perfect’ family. He acquires an attraction to science and begins to educate himself. Victor tells of his past to Walton, “I was, to a great degree, self-taught with regard to my favorite studies. My father was not scientific, and I was left to struggle with a child’s blindness, added to a student’s thirst for knowledge” (Shelley 26). To begin his scientific studies, Victor leaves his family. He hardly has any contact with his family, and his isolation from them seems to have no effect on him at all. He decides when to have contact with his family at his discretion.

Before Victor goes off to college, his mother dies which leaves him distraught. Subsequently he became infatuated with death and the idea of bringing life back. He said, "To examine the causes of life, we must first have recourse to death" ( Shelley Chtr 4). Slowly, he became a monster engulfed in his own subconscious with the help of his studies in science.

In the book, Frankenstein by Mary Shelley, the author illustrates similarities between both Victor and the Monster he creates. She draws parallels between the two regarding their feelings on family, nature, on exacting revenge, and how they both become isolated from society. Both are able to demonstrate extreme intelligence. As the novel progresses, Victor and the Monster become more similar to each other. Their relationship turns to one in which each is consumed with getting revenge on the other at all costs.

The desire of extensive knowledge is first seen through Victor Frankenstein. At the beginning of the novel, a young boy named Victor grows up in Geneva “deeply smitten with the thirst for knowledge” (20).

From the early chapters of the novel, Victor narrates a childhood, schooling, and career filled with an unstoppable thirst for learning. He pours over books in youth, and later attends university studying meticulously and eventually coming to a

Victor begins to possess an unnatural drive in his quest for knowledge where he begins intense study and experimentation, “These thoughts supported my spirits, while I pursued my undertaking with unremitting ardour. My cheek had grown pale from study, and my person had become emaciated with confinement” eventually isolating himself from his friends and family. As the seasons passed Victor’s obsession with his studies continued to grow, “And the same feelings which made me neglect the scenes around me caused me also to forget those friends who were so many miles absent, and whom I had not seen for so long a time” highlighting how his ambition is a fatal flaw, neglecting the outside world and his loved ones. Victor’s ambition to research and attempt to create life drains him of health and sensibility, “Every night I was oppressed by a slow fever, and I became nervous to a most painful degree” which is ironic to the goal he wishes to achieve. Shelly’s use of irony illuminates how Victor’s obsessive ambition has become a fatal flaw.

He had the privilege of learning from his youth and then attending university. The problem with Victor’s education, however, is that he reads outdated and condemned information that pertains to a forgotten science. While in the confines of his private quarters or in the company of the dead, Victor becomes obsessed with misguided pursuits. “The remainder of the novel shows how this forbidden knowledge leads him to disaster” (Backes). It is the moment when Victor devotes himself entirely to this forbidden knowledge

The monster believed that Victor would accept him, but after he realized that not only did Victor not want to assume his position in the monster’s life, but society also rejected him, it became a transitory thought, and instead became replaced with his bloodthirst towards Victor and his loved ones, which he knew would hurt way worse than just killing him; making him lonely like himself. Both Victor and the monster partook in horrid acts, in which held horrendous actions; the main one being Victor creating the monster in the first place which in result caused the both of them heartbreak, loneliness, and pain. If Victor wouldn’t have created the monster, then his life would not be filled with so much grief and emptiness; Victor is the true monster, although they are both the primal protagonists as much as they are the antagonists because of the display of the emotions they both portray as lamenting humans/monsters, and the power they give to nature in order to destroy one another. Victor used nature to his advantage, although it was wrong; Victor used nature to create and destroy the monster; he used the