Victor Influence On Frankenstein

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It's a pretty safe bet that a man wandering around the Arctic has endured some recent tough times. When Robert Walton and his crew find the half-dead Victor Frankenstein in his sledge on the ice, it's clear that the latter had suffered both physically and emotionally. We like Walton must wait for Victor to tell his tale, but we can all feel relatively safe in predicting the nature of events that led him to such a cold and barren place. Based on the influence of the Romantic era on Shelley, as well as her decision to allude to the Prometheus myth in the title, I believe the narrative in Frankenstein will quickly become very grim and full of violent deaths, as Victor is punished for trying to play God. Shelley was a writer during the Romantic…show more content…
When we visited it the next morning, we found the tree shattered in a singular manner. It was not splintered by the shock, but entirely reduced to thin ribbons of wood. I never beheld anything so utterly destroyed…show more content…
In the Prometheus myth, Prometheus angers Zeus, the king of the gods. His punishment — having his liver eaten daily by an eagle — is eternal and violent. It's clear that Shelley is going to show some punishment as severe, because as Frankenstein acknowledges to Walton, "how dangerous is the acquirement of knowledge, and how much happier that man is who believes his native town to be the world, than he who aspires to become greater than his nature will allow" (34-35). The irony is that Frankenstein's loved ones will be the ones to suffer violent deaths, Victor will only suffer violent remorse and grief. He brings this fate on himself as he dreams about the "glory [that] would attend the discovery, if I could banish disease from the human frame, and render man invulnerable to any but a violent death!" (13). His mother dies peacefully in the first section of the story; based on the bits of evidence that Frankenstein gives us, I predict that the rest of his loved ones will die violently at the hands, of Frankenstein's creation. Redemption and grace are certainly possible options for Frankenstein. After all, the Romantics believed in celebrating emotions and creativity; why wouldn't Shelley save Frankenstein and his loved ones, and somehow turn the monster into a being that everyone might love and cherish? Shelley
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