Background In His PrLife is a journey that has its ups and downs, but for most of us the happy memories prevail more than those that are of our dislike do. Victor Frankenstein is one of those few persons that will not agree with me on this statement. As far as we know the story, we realize that there are plenty of moments that he is filled with joy, never the less, as time passes, he creates his own misery and every moment becomes his final doom.
Frankensteins childhood is, as we very well know, a wonderful and even an envied time. Life for him couldnt be more perfect, he had amazing experiences with Elizabeth, had good relationships with his parents, and most of all he was a kid who knew no limits or prohibitions. He says, No human being could have passed a happier childhood that myself1, which just couldnt state more clearly the amazing in fancy he had. Moreover, he continues saying that We Elizabeth and himself felt that they his parents were not tyrants to rule out lot according to their caprice, but the agents and creators of all the many delights which we enjoyed2. This sentence makes me think that he cant even complain about a single episode in his early times, they were just about perfection.
Life goes on and the older people get, the more knowledge they obtain, and so did Frankenstein. He began with self-instruction and continued studies in Ingolstadt, which may sound terrific, but we know that his thirst for knowledge was one of the reasons that led him to misery. He sets away that wonderful world of joy and friends for a filthy laboratory and a dream that is consumed of ambition. In my personal opinion I think that the opportunity he had in going away for college was worth gold, but it doesnt explain the fact that he ceases the relationship with his family and friends.
He know it and he reveals it when he says, 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 whim I had not seen for a long time3. Here is when he first begins to suffer from his own cause and his own fault. His misery was enriched when the monster was finally completed and further more, when his brother William dies and Justine is found guilty for a crime she didnt commit. His everyday seems like the last day and even the shiniest days seems like a never-ending storm.
He even considered suicide, how miserable could he really be? Further more, Frankenstein even feels as if I were walking on the edge of a precipice, towards which thousands are crowding, and endeavoring to plunge me into the abyss4, he is no longer worried or tormented in his life, he is traumatized. Analyzing his life we can notice that before he went to university, he was a person of principles and a very righteous man; he was a curious child who liked sciences, yet, a man of good and, most important, a happy man. When he is at Ingolstadt, everything changes: the family he had loved so much is totally left out, his social life out of the question, and he has no liberty or will, even his health is in danger. Now, this intelligent young kid became the most ambitious man of the world who cant care less about him or the people that surrounds him.
Creating the monster has made him a slave of his own wicked desires, he has no life. He lives, eats, and dreams for a monster and we can prove this because he says he hardly speaks to other human beings, he can barely distinguish when seasons change and there an enormous lack of love. Moreover, when he finally gives life to an inanimate body, he runs away, and hopes to escape from responsibility; which was the first time we could see that his principles begin to disappear, becoming a man he wasnt expected to be. Now, having set all his experiences, we should think more about how does this details affect his monstrous project.
Personally, I think that excessiveness always becomes evil; as we can see that sorrow, misery, and pain eliminated his total happiness. Im those who think that life is well determined by the type of education your parents give at home, so in this case, who can tell Frankenstein where to stop? Its like telling a kid he has committed a mistake if he doesnt know the meaning of right or wrong. I think his parents should have been somehow more controlling because his free will led himself to disaster. All humans are given the right of liberty, but this right end when the liberty of other is affected. For example, in the story Frankenstein always does basically what he wants, which as we can see, affects other people, even with deaths.
Although we shouldnt forget that his parents were stupendous, but what they didnt know is that his little child was going to abuse the liberty they gave him. Finally Id like to say that personally I, as a reader, got disappointed at Frankenstein, specially because after reading his childhood, his early desires for knowledge, and the people that loved him, there is no reason for what he did, and Im not talking just about the monster. He totally forgets all that was inculcated to him He had great examples of mother and father, he had wonderful friends, but that didnt keep him from being ironic in his actions and not being righteous as he was supposed to be. Victor Frankenstein is now more evil than his own creation. Endnotes*All from Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein1. Chapter II2.
Chapter II3. Chapter IV4. Chapter IX
