Knowledge and Monsters

My immediate reaction of picking up Frankenstein was that this book was nothing like what I had expected. I had watched Young Frankenstein and the Frankenstein movie and the book was totally different! I really enjoyed it once I got passed the preface. I really liked the classification of the monster. Because he had no name or physical description other than being hideously grotesque, it was up to the reader to basically picture the most horrible thing he or she could imagine.

Victor himself could be classified as a monster. While on the outside he is normal, on the inside he is consumed with intense hatred for what he has done. He rejects his own creation and his secrets that he keeps from his family and friends alienate him from the people most close to him. The monster's words “You accuse me of murder; and yet you would, with a satisfied conscience, destroy your own creature...” seem to condemn Victor even more as an unloving maker. After the monster swears to kill the people that Victor loves, this isolates Victor even more and in turn this bars him from the once sublime and healing effect of nature.

The power of nature on mood is evident in both man and monster throughout the novel. This influence soon dissipates when Victor realizes the monster will haunt him wherever he goes. This leads the monster to isolate Victor and doom him to a life like that of the monster, one doomed by loneliness and eternal wandering. Their connection with nature is again reflected in this, the frozen Artic where Victor follows the monster, spurred by his hatred for what he has done. This desolate place has lost all of its beauty like monster and maker.

All of this boils down to Victor's conquest of absolute knowledge. Victor tries to find the secret of life. Walton similarly follows his obsession with knowledge to the North Pole. While Victor's creation destroys everyone he cares for, Walton is trapped between the ice floes. Victor's obsession drives him to his death but Walton falls back from his mission after learning from Victor's story and finding how destructive the quest for knowledge can be.