During Victor Frankenstein’s up bringing he was treated with a large proportion of attention from his parents, who treated him with plenty of love and care. Victor was centre of attention from the eyes of his parents, which was ironic, compared to how later in the novel Victor, rejects his creation. From Frankenstein’s upbringing you discover a sense than Victor has the potential to become a loving and caring father figure but decides not to use it because of the monsters physical appearance. At this time it doesn’t seem that Victor will be to blame for his own tragic fate. But as you read on into parts of chapter 2 you reveal a whole different side to his character. He begins to show more emotion and anger ‘ My temper was sometimes violent ’. But this temper was just an emphasis of his obsessive passion to achieve more than his father. From this you begin to feel a slight sense of blame towards Victor, as he forget the people around him to focus on science, but not enough to sway you vote to a total blame. Because of this true obsession with science Victor blocks out any thoughts or feelings towards anybody. This is repeated again and again as Elizabeth is blocked out when he begins to piece together the limbs and organs of the creature, this starts to sway your vote towards more blame on Victor for his own fate.
Another factor, which partially led to Victor’s tragic fate, was his ambition to create life. This turns him into a modern Promethean figure that oversteps the human boundaries. He developed this ambition during his time at a university in Ingolstad, were he created an immense interest in science (anatomy and biology). This interest soon turned into an obsession, which led to a fascination with the dead. This may have been as a result of his mother’s death after the birth of his younger brother, William. During Victor’s time at university his work on the human anatomy began to take over his life. He began to shut him self away from the real world, his family and friends. As a result of his obsession and the death of his mother he looses his sense of reality. His obsession revolves around his want for worldwide fame and glory, is eventually to set up to become his fate, ‘ A new species would bless me as its creator and source ’.
Victor created this creature as a result of certain aspects of his past life and his ambitions for the future. The first aspect of Victor’s creation of the creature was the arrogance and his hope for glory, fame and respect. He felt that he had been ‘chosen’ for the ‘noble’ task of re-creating human life. Frankenstein was a megalomaniac; he wanted to dedicate his life to rivalling God and his creations, this is shown as he uses lots of religious language during the creation, to emphasise his want ‘ I had selected his features as beautiful. Beautiful! Great God! ’. Victor sees himself as a mother giving birth to life and assumes that the creature will love him and thank him for its birth. Victor also uses imagery as a mother to show this love for his creature
‘ I had desired it with an ardour that far exceeded moderation ‘. During Victors eagerness to create the creature, and to make new scientific discoveries he never took enough care over the details of the creation of the being. He doesn’t consider how it will live in the modern world, in our society. Victor didn’t once consider the consequences of his actions or the moral issues surrounding them until it was too late to change anything. Once, Victor completes his creation of the being he finds him to be very repulsive and he feels it is impossible to love such a ‘ thing ’, ‘ His yellow skin scarcely covered the work of muscles and arteries beneath; his hair was of a lustrous black and flowing… but these luxuries only formed a more horrid contrast’. Instead of staying to understand why and how his experiment went so drastically wrong, or to take care of his creation, he runs away from his responsibilities with fear ‘ one hand wrenched out, seemingly to detain me, but I escape and rushed down stairs…’
During Victors encounters with his creation he treats his creation with disrespect and hatred even though it was he who created this monster. Victor feels his creation is disdain and malignant, he also feels that his creatures ‘ ugliness rendered it almost too horrible for human eyes ‘. During this time Victor is very childish in his opinions as he insults his creation ‘ it ‘ hasn’t done anything wrong. But on the other hand, his creation tries to be civilized and reasonable. Victor tries using his intelligence to fight against the creature, as the creature defeats him in any imaginable physical aspect. But Victor underestimates the creature’s true intelligence and understanding of life; the creature returns the fire back to Victor with his own degree of intelligence. This situation soon turns to Victor becoming seriously immature and irresponsible, as he tries to incorporate a verbal battle into the damage relationship between them unlike the creature who tries to civil.
Initially Frankenstein’s creature is seen as aggressive and violent but this is only shown in the eyes of Victor Frankenstein. The creation is no portrayed a thoughtful and caring creature but this is overshadowed by his aggression which he only uses to emphasise is want for a father figure and a friend, so he looks to Frankenstein, his creature. Because of Frankenstein’s rejection the creature becomes more and more bitter and rejected and as a result becomes more violent and aggressive which is his way of portraying hatred towards Frankenstein. At this point of the novel the creature created by Frankenstein acts more adult-like than Frankenstein himself. I feel that Frankenstein should take responsibility for his own action and consider the consequences, and then reflect on these consequences, but he totally rejects the creature because of its appearance. The creation has learnt a lot of advanced knowledge in a short space of time, and has become more lingual than his creator, which shows that the creature could live alone in the world but it just needs a companion or a father figure to help him on the way.
Victor’s tragic fate is sealed by his growing obsession to destroy his creation because of all the hurt it has caused him in the latter stages of the novel. As Victor’s obsession to destroy the monster grows he begins to have a role reversal as he becomes the outsider and the creature becomes the supremely intelligent one, now he experiences all the misery and hatred that the monster felt after he rejected him. This change is quite ironic as the creature and Victor switch roles. This ironic change also shows Frankenstein how he treated people at this time from this Victor learnt a very important lesson ‘ Treat others as you would like to be treated yourself ’. This change now begins to change Victor’s perspective on life, as he starts to feel guilty for what he has put his creation through, the torture and rejection. The guilt has now been emphasised by the hatred of Frankenstein of him self and his hatred of the creature.
In conclusion the tragic fate of Victor Frankenstein is brought about by his own careless actions. Mary Shelley is showing us that the causes of Victor’s death were down to himself and his own actions. Victor’s careless pursuit of scientific knowledge is partly to blame for his fate as he never, until his monster was created thought about the consequences. Victor’s overstepping of human boundaries by defying God and going against nature is also partially to blame as, he again never considers the moral issues surrounding the recreation of people.
Finally the main point of his fate was caused by his inability to love what he has given to live. Frankenstein only sees his creation for its inhuman looks and physical appearance, instead of the creature’s personality and feelings; he only shows a one-dimensional view of the monster.
Mary Shelley has given the novel a hidden message, this message is trying to put across the dangers of pride and egotism, as in the novel Victor feels that when he recreates life he will become world famous. The second message of this novel is that the careless use of science can become dangerous. Frankenstein not considering the consequences of his action is showing this careless use of science. Mary Shelley does not criticize this act of creation, but Victor is unwilling to accept responsibility, for his deeds. His creation only becomes a monster because of its rejection from humans and especially Victor Frankenstein.