Mary Shelley's Frankenstein: The Pursuit Of Knowledge

Victor does not handle his monster, or his fears, well. When Frankenstein first sees his monster, he immediately “escaped, [from the room the monster was in] and rushed down stairs. p50” As the monster is an externalization of Frankenstein’s fears, this escape, this inability to so much as look at the monster, can be interpreted as Frankenstein’s inability to acknowledge his fears and anxieties. Like with anxiety, denying the monster’s existence only causes him to grow more destructive.

Victor Frankenstein's obsession with creating life is fueled by his desire to unlock the secrets of the universe, but he fails to consider the consequences of his actions. He becomes so consumed by his research that he loses sight of the humanity that should guide scientific inquiry. As a result, his creation becomes a monster that threatens the very fabric of society. Furthermore, the novel also highlights the dangers of the pursuit of knowledge without regard for the consequences.

Frankenstein wants the glorification and pride in being the first person to create life. Frankenstein sees himself in Walton, and Walton says, “ ...do I not deserve to accomplish some great purpose?...,but I prefer glory to every excitement that wealth place on my path”(10). Walton is a younger extension of Frankenstein and gives perspective to the ideas of the younger version of Frankenstein as he creates the creature. However, Frankenstein’s ambitions cost him dearly. The deaths of those around him make him suffer, but also the creation of the creature makes the creature suffer.

In Mary Shelley’s novel, Frankenstein (1818), Shelley shows her audience that while acquiring knowledge leads to survival for the Creature and power for Victor Frankenstein, the path to obtain this knowledge leads to the destruction of one’s self. Education and knowledge have major negative effects on both of the characters’ attitude, perception, and decisions. The life experiences of each character is dependent on the amount of knowledge that the character possesses. Knowledge gives Victor Frankenstein a superiority complex, and it changes the Creature’s perspective of the world and the people in it. The Creature, like a baby, is brought into the world with no prior knowledge of how society behaves.

Frankenstein, Dialectical Journal- Chapter 4- The End A theme that was very prevalent in these final chapters was, Creator and Creation, furthermore how the monster and Frankenstein are more alike than they like to think. Both characters had been wronged by the other and made it their missions to destroy each other, losing parts of themselves along the way. “You, who call Frankenstein your friend, seem to have a knowledge of my crimes and his misfortunes.

Since Frankenstein rejected the monster and was frightened by its appearance, several other people felt the same way and rejected the monster as well. This made the monster feel like an outcast and irrelevant to the world that surrounded him. Since he gained knowledge on his own, he was able to set up revenge plans against his creator. He begins killing each and every one of Frankenstein’s loved ones. Furthermore, the monster admits, “I have murdered the lovely and the helpless; I have strangled the innocent as they slept,” (page 1970).

It is often said that the more you learn, the more you realize you don’t know. Even Aristotle said, “The more you know, the more you know you don 't know.”. This can often lead to a yearning for more knowledge and sometimes, can be somebody’s downfall. In this case, it was Victor Frankenstein’s downfall. His love for science and his ever-growing quest to learn about the human body ultimately destroyed him, his family, his wife to be, and his best friend.

All three characters are on a search for knowledge and it plays a major part in their life and more importantly their fate. Here we can see both the journey and the end result, knowledge, posing danger. Victor Frankenstein is a perfect example of the consequences of knowledge. Victor sees the most loss and sadness associated with knowledge. He searches for the answers to create life and goes beyond normal human realm to inquire on them; “It was the secrets of heaven and earth that I desired to learn; and whether it was the outward substance ... or, in it highest sense, the physical secrets of the world” (21).

The monster continues by reassuring the creator of his independent intelligence and power over the creature by telling Frankenstein, “This you alone can do”. Here, the creature assumes a role of submissiveness and reliance on Frankenstein. Frankenstein’s monster gains the sympathy of the reader who, despite condemning the murder of innocent people, commiserate with the lonely creature who is in search of an acquaintance, which he will likely never find. The monster also displays power and aggressiveness over Frankenstein; “You are my creator; but I am your master; obey!” The monster wants to desolate Victor’s heart, not by killing him directly,

Mary Shelley shows the endless amount of revenge and that it is driven by pure hatred and rage. The monster was not created to be vengeful, he was kind hearted but when he was poorly treated by Victor and then by the Delacey family, he turned cold. In her novel Frankenstein, Mary Shelley displays the immorality and destructive effects that revenge can have through Frankenstein and his pursuit of the creature. Immediately after the monster had awoken, hatred thickened and would drive the plot to be all about revenge. The creature illustrates this hatred as he says to Victor, “Everything is related in them which bears reference to my accursed origin; the whole detail of that series of disgusting circumstances which produced it is set in view;

“I seek the everlasting ices of the north, where you will feel the misery of cold and frost, to which I am impassive. " That was the end part of Victor’s life, the curse of his creation compromised with Victor’s life. Even scientific innovations highly blessings to humanity if a person uses it wisely, but same knowledge can be a curse and can destroy a human race. For example, Nuclear bombs which destroyed Nagasaki and Hiroshima in Japan is an example of cursed knowledge. In the Frankenstein, curse generated by knowledge ultimately took the life of an ambitious, knowledgeable scientist, Victor,

Victor Frankenstein turns away from his responsibilities by ignoring the existence of his creation. Throughout the novel, Victor is constantly running away from the monster and not giving him attention, which resulted in the monsters change of personalities. For example, in page 71 the creation said, “All men hate the wretched; how must I be hated, who am miserable beyond all living things! Yet you, my creator, detest and spurn me, thy creature, to whom thou art bound by ties only dissoluble by the annihilation of one of us.” This quote suggests that because of the ignorance of Victor the monster began to become evil and have the urge to seek

Frankenstein and his monster begin with opposite lives: Frankenstein has everything and the monster has nothing. However, in creating the monster, Frankenstein’s life and feelings begin to parallel that of the monster’s life. Frankenstein is incredibly intelligent with a fascination for science, but ultimately his thirst for knowledge leads to his undoing. Similarly the monster is determined to understand the society around him. But once he does, he understands that he will never be able to find companionship, which leads him to pain and anger.

Throughout the novel, these characters toil with the pursuit of forbidden knowledge by suffering through the ramifications of their decisions to satisfy their desires. The author implies that blind ambition can lead to the downfall of beings who don’t limit their curiosity. These endeavors include determining the secret of life as well as its creation, discovering a passage in the North Pole, and learning to understand one’s place in the world. Victor Frankenstein suffers from the cost of knowledge by allowing his thirst for the unknown to exceed his limits. In like manner, he pushes his own limits and spends countless nights working to construct his creature even though he is cautioned that only God is capable of creating life.

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