Term Paper on "Frankenstein Victor Frankenstein Is the Main Character"

Term Paper 6 pages (1872 words) Sources: 1+

[EXCERPT] . . . .

Frankenstein

Victor Frankenstein is the main character of Mary Shelley's novel, "Frankenstein," published in 1818. He is a brilliant and over-ambitious young Swiss who delves in natural science and ancient medicine and aspires to achieve the sole divine prerogative of creating life. Victor reaches this peak level of ambition because he has been pampered in childhood and, because of this, everything seems possible to him. Alfred Adler, like Sigmund Freud, believes that one's personality or lifestyle is fixed as early as 5 years old and that at this age, new experiences do not change that prototype but that these new experiences are interpreted according to this prototype (Boeree 1997). Adler points to three basic child situations, one of which is pampering. Pampered children, like Victor, assume that they can take without giving and do not learn to do things by themselves, only to discover later that they are actually inferior. Victor is also the first child in the family and, according to Adler, first children are more likely to turn into problem children, or become precocious, solitary and more conservative than children in another birth order. Adler's personality concept is viewed as applicable to Victor Frankenstein in his pursuit and creation of a monster.

With a scientific knowledge and an overwhelming drive to play God, Victor is able to produce a creature from, and by means of, old and dead human tissue transplants in his old laboratory and all by himself (Huber, et al. 1989). But the circumstances and the resulting relationship between the creator and the creature does not match that which God and nature intend. The creator, Victor, brings this creature to life out of an unconscious desire to compensate for deep-seated inferiority characteristic of those who are pampered and strive to be like God. As a compulsive neurotic who puts himself above all human beings and faking God's sole prerogative, Victor instead creates a monster like himself and who reflects the same craving for power and self-centeredness. Rather than the loving and trusting relationship that God intends to develop between Him and each creature as His child, Victor turns himself into a neglectful parent who fashions the monster only out of his vanity and the unreality within him. Victor creates a monster, which is larger, stronger and more intelligent than other humans, the reverse of God's intention. Victor's creature is "born" a grownup, with offensive looks, for which people reject him. Rather than induct his creature into the world and endow it with the appropriate skills, as God does to His creature, Victor's monster is left alone to fend for itself and carve out whatever space it can for itself. It becomes Victor's neglected child who must now substitute its unfulfilled social need with violence and destruction. Victor promptly realizes his grim error and is filled with self-reproach and agony over his utter lack of social responsibility. He flees from this monster, now Victor's unwanted child (Huber et al.).

God intends that every parent should delight over his or her child and to accept and rear that child in love. But Victor is completely repulsed by the odious looks of his creature from the start so much that he falls sick (Claridge 2002). He is filled with fear and hate for his child-creature. He has achieved his goal of raising himself to the level of God and of duplicating His creative power, but Victor wants nothing else beyond. He has no intention of nurturing and seeing this creature through a purpose other than satisfying his creator's neurotic desire to be a god. Victor is brutally unconcerned with his parental duties and responsibilities towards the monster, not only in his rejection of its ugliness and other features, but also by depriving it of the very basic insights into its tormented psyche. Victor creates it without love and any consideration beyond fulfilling his mad dream and ambition. What happens to the creature is not within the purview of his ambition and yearning. He is a completely irresponsible parent, and he responds to his creature in the same way his parents responded to him (Claridge).

Victor's parents saw and treated him as a plaything, a toy, an object of their pleasure (Claridge 2002). His creation of a pseudo-man or a humanoid is also Victor's object of pleasure but only for a short time. As soon as he sees and realizes the ogre he has created, his pleasure turns into fear and hate and he abandons it. Endowed with much intelligence and fine sensations than ordinary mortals possess, the creature perceives its creator's repulsion. It is an unwanted child, becoming aware and agonizing over its parent's rejection. When Victor refuses to fulfill his proper parental role to the child-creature of his making, the latter condemns him as the author of both his existence and "unspeakable torments (Shelley as qtd in Claridge)."

The neglected and unwanted child-creature is also deprived of self-knowledge, in addition to social contact (Claridge 2002). But because his creator adorns it with high intelligence, it embarks into self-education. It stumbles upon the wonders of speech, which it soon recognizes as a "godlike science (Shelley as qtd in Claridge)." Through the lessons given by the character Felix, the creature learns that man can be so powerful and virtuous as well as vicious and base. Unlike Victor who manipulates meanings only in terms of power, the creature ventures into the psychological realm where a child asks its parents about its nature and purpose. Without the answer to questions on one's nature and purpose, the child cannot attain to maturity. The child-creature-monster has the courage to ask Victor about its nature but as a parent who does not intend to fulfill his role, Victor does not give the answer. He only groans and expresses despair. What else can be expected from an un-nurtured and rejected child-creature but to turn into a destructive adult? What people see is only the repulsiveness of the monster and not the deeper reality within it that seeks to overcome and negate his sense of nothingness and the gnawing effect of isolation. This it does by inflicting pain on others or destroying them, as it does William, Justine and Victor's father. That sense of isolation and nothingness leads the creature to destruction, not that it is intrinsically criminal or odious.

Victor is also unlike his creature-child in that Victor is accustomed to escape his place in society, while his creature desperately tries to find that place to fit in (Claridge 2002). Victor is inclined to leave his favored companions for another location in Ingolstadt where he can be more alone with his musings and experiments. His monster is quite the opposite from the start. It even demands Victor to make him a female companion.

Victor's lack of natural domestic affection for the creature has very dire consequences for both of them and other people around them (Waxman 2003). He has delved into the depths of the mystery of creation and removed the barriers between life and death, also by using body tissues of dead persons. The combination amounts to monstrosity in all levels. In procreating the monster, Victor also traverses and violates the boundary between the sexes and arrogates upon himself the procreative capacity of a woman in procreating and delivering a creature. When he sees the contemptible result of his ambitious experiment, Victor wants an abortion, instead. Only his violations of boundaries can bring this complete change of mind and those violations exact their price on him, his creature and the persons Victor loves - his younger brother William, Justine, his wife Elizabeth and his father.

Throughout the novel, Victor moves between rage and an inevitable kind of nurturing compassion at one point (Waxman 2003). This is when the creature urges him to provide it with female company. Victor begins to acquiesce to the plea, but only momentarily, because he soon comes upon himself that this creature will duplicate its race and he will have no part in it, so he destroys the second creature before he can finish it.

Victor is 17 when he leaves his home in Switzerland to study in Ingolstadt, full of optimism and conceit, and shortly, he discovers the secret to creating life (Thompson 2004). He aims at nothing less than a perfect life, a being immune to death and disease. He goes through the natural gestational duration of nine months in procreating that being from select but old body parts of abandoned corpses. Like a natural mother who feels excitement over a pregnancy, Victor goes through artificial pregnancy for the same length of time a fetus develops in the womb. But the difference is that the creature he is producing possesses the qualities of his choice and estimate, that is, immunity to death and disease and high intelligence. Another difference is that Victor cannot produce his creature as an infant, but as a full-grown man with no givens. He is merely reanimating what used to be alive. He is merely… READ MORE

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