Scientific hubris: wants to
defy the laws of nature
Blinded by his passion
Play God
AO4: Compare to Prometheus - title
'Frankenstein or The Moden
Prometheus'
Selfish
Creates the monster to
manipulate life, not learn
from the experience
"A new species would bless me
as its creator and source; many
happy and excellent natures
would owe their being to me"
Completely ignores his family
back in Geneva - expects
Elizabeth to wait for him
(postpones their wedding
while he goes to England).
Once he succeeds in
creating the monster, he
runs away, claiming he
was protecting his own
life
This shows how shallow he is
"unable to endure the aspect of
the being [he] had created"
AO3: Critic - As Lunsford points out:
"Upon discovering the secret to
reanimating dead corpses, Victor
endeavors to create a being like
himself."
He does not consider how his
actions will affect anyone but
himself
Wants to destroy
the monster to
clear his name
Isolated
Victor's downfall is his
lack of humaneness
He cuts himself off from society
and his family, and then runs
away from the only other person
he has in his life; his creation
Unreliable
Slow decent into madness:
"no one can conceive the
variety of feelings which bore
me onwards, like a hurricane"
He wants the reader to feel the same way he does about the monster
Attempts to manipulate the reader through his
use of self-pitying, self-deprecating language:
"But I am a blasted tree; the bolt has entered
my soul" - but his is not what the monster has
done to him, it is what he has done to himself
It is an epistolary novel - the monster
told Victor his story; Victor is now
retelling their combined stories to Walton
so it is impossible to know the accuracy