FRANKENSTEIN TERM TEST II 2009

        After attaining the age of seventeen, Victor Frankenstein was sent by his parents to the University of Ingolstadt. There began his rigorous and sometimes obsessive study on natural philosophy leading to the discovery of his ability to bestow life upon inanimate material substances. Unfortunately, upon the completion of the monster, Victor is immediately repulsed by the creature’s horrendous features and abandons it. Enraged, the monster eventually returns, resenting his creator for causing him loneliness to the point where he avenged himself by taking the lives of his creator’s loved ones. Victor’s quest to give life and perhaps bringing happiness into the world ironically ends with him being robbed of the lives of his friends and family.

        To bestow life upon an inanimate object, Victor had to “prepare a frame for the reception of it”. In order to create this structural frame of the creature, he “dabbled among the unhallowed damps of the grave or tortured the living animal to animate the lifeless clay”. Victor was not afraid to use body parts of dead beings and also “collected bones from charnel-houses”. With the physical being of the dead, the monster could not truly be alive, only possessing a working mind. Using such immoral methods through disturbing the dead, Victor finally created the “frame” to bestow life upon, thus having the methods and material underscore and embody the grotesqueness of his quest.

         When he speaks of the Being he has created, Victor is at first fearful and attempts to deny any involvement in its creation. However as the plot progresses and Victor’s loved ones are murdered, he becomes enraged and curses its existence. This is clearly seen from his agitation when speaking to the magistrate near the end of the book because of his resentment towards the creature. “My rage is unspeakable, when I reflect that the murderer, whom I have turned loose upon society, still exists.” From then on, Victor thus devotes himself to pursuing the creature in the hopes of finally destroying it.