Examples Of Life Lessons In Frankenstein

Kate Stephens
Mrs. Helen Willick
ENG 3U1
Wednesday, April, 30th
Life Lessons of Victor Frankenstein
Mary Oliver once said that the instructions for living life are to “Pay attention, be astonished, tell about it.” This profoundly speaks about life lessons and that they key is to pay attention, learn from them and be astonished and then share our own wisdom to benefit others. In the novel Frankenstein by Mary Shelly, Victor Frankenstein learns many lessons throughout the course of the story. Victor learns three main lessons; that keeping scientific discoveries a secret is dangerous, that being prejudice has consequences, and that the thirst for knowledge and power is not always a good thing.
Victor Frankenstein comes across an amazing
discovery during his time at school in Ingolstadt; he discovers the secret to life. He chooses however to keep his knowledge and discoveries which forces him to learn a hard lesson; that keeping scientific discoveries a secret is dangerous. He becomes consumed by his schooling and intrigued in life and death. This pushes Victor to begin to experiment into unknown territory, in chapter four Victor says this:
“One of the phenomena which had peculiarly attracted my attention was the structure of the human frame, and, indeed, any animal endued with life.
Whence, I often asked myself, did the principle of life proceed?… I paused, examining and analyzing all the minutiae of causation, as exemplified in the change from life to death, and death to life, until from the midst of this darkness a sudden light broke in upon me-a light so brilliant and wondrous, yet so simple, that while I became dizzy with the immensity of the prospect which it illustrated, I was surprised that among so many men of genius who had directed their inquiries towards the same science, that I alone should be reserved to discover so astonishing a secret.” (Frankenstein
51)
In this section from the novel Victor actually brings a worm back to life, when he realizes what he has done he is amazed that he is the one to figure it out. He has just made a huge step in medical science and chooses to keep it to himself. In chapter 22, Victor is reminiscing on when he was wrongly accused and imprisoned for the murder of Henry Clerval, he remembers;
“My father had often, during my imprisonment, heard me make the same assertion; when I thus accused myself, he sometimes seemed to desire an explanation, and at others he appeared to consider it as the offspring of delirium, and that, during my illness, some idea of this kind had presented itself to my imagination, the remembrance of which I preserved in my convalescence.” (Frankenstein 185)
Victor is still keeping his creation and knowledge a secret, doing his makes people around him view him as crazy. Even his own father thought he was delirious; this upsets Victor because he still does not want to let the truth out but he does not want to be viewed as insane. Even though Victor is being viewed as crazy, he still does not tell the truth, and it starts to weigh upon him. Again in chapter 22 Victor talks about his secret being a burden on him, he says this:
“I avoided explanation and maintained a continual silence concerning the wretch I had created. I had a persuasion that I should be supposed mad, and this in itself would forever have chained my tongue. But, besides, I could not bring myself to disclose a secret, which would fill my hearer with consternation and make fear and unnatural horror the inmates of his breast. I checked, therefore, my impatient thirst for sympathy and was silent when I would have given the world to have confided the fatal secret. Yet, still, words like those I have recorded would burst uncontrollably from me. I could offer no explanation of them, but their truth in part relieved the burden of my mysterious woe.” (Frankenstein 185)
Now Victor feels that his secret creation and knowledge is a burden that cannot be relieved, he has a huge weight upon his shoulders while things get out of hand. Victor not revealing his knowledge or creation has now led to many unfortunate events that have just made it harder for him to come forward. Not telling the truth has created a very unstable base for lies, problems, and guilt to pile upon. At the end of the novel when all of Victor’s problems, lies, guilt and deaths have piled up he realizes that he should have told the truth about what he discovered. It is very obvious at the end of the novel that all of the unfortunate endeavors that Victor had to endure were because of his secrecy and lying. By the end of the novel Victor has learned a very difficult lesson the hard way; that keeping scientific discoveries a secret is dangerous.
Another lesson that Victor learns throughout the course of the novel is that being prejudice has consequences, a lesson he should have learned a long time ago. Victor spends months working on his creation and when it is finished he is disgusted by his actions, he has created a hideous creature that he is repulsed by. Once he realizes what he has done he abandons his creation, which forces that creation to fend for himself and learn on his own. With no nurturing or father figure the creature looks for companionship in others, he finds a group of cottagers that he secretly helps and stays in their hovel. The creature takes a chance and talks to the blind man that lives in the cottage who accepts him, but when the other cottagers return with one look at the repulsive creation they attack him. Felix, one of the cottagers, walks in and with one look attacks the creature; “Felix darted forward, and with supernatural force tore me from his father, to whose knees I clung: in a transport of fury, he dashed me to the ground and struck me violently with a stick.” (Frankenstein 135). Before even asking who he was the cottager judged the creature by his looks assuming he was evil. This then causes the creature to become very upset and betrayed thinking that the cottagers were his friends. Then in chapter 10 the creation also exclaims his feelings of prejudice, “All men hate the wretched; how then, must I be hated, who am miserable beyond all living things! Yet you, my creator, detest and spurn me, thy creature, to whom thou art bound by ties only dissoluble by the annihilation of one of us.” (Frankenstein 99). He shouts this at the devil asking why he is judged and why he is like this. He wonders why people hate him without knowing him, which makes him become depressed. It also pushes him towards the idea of revenge and destruction. After the incident with the cottagers the creation says:
“Cursed, cursed creator! Why did I live? Why, in that instant, did I not extinguish the spark of existence which you had so wantonly bestowed? I know not; despair had not yet taken possession of me; my feelings were those of rage and revenge. I could with pleasure have destroyed the cottage and its inhabitants and have glutted myself with their shrieks and misery.”(Frankenstein 136)
In this quote said by Victors Creation, he is extremely mad and revengeful at Victor.
At the end of this quote he even says he wans to destroy the cottage and the cottagers, but then sticks to burning the cottage down. The creation is full of revenge and therefore other things become collateral damage and lead to terrible outcomes. All this prejudice against the creature from Victor, the cottagers and society it pushes him to demand that victor makes him a companion. He confront Victor explaining how he feels, “I am alone and miserable: man will not associate with me; but one as deformed and horrible as myself would not deny herself to me. My companion must be of the same species and have the same defects. This being you must create.”(Frankenstein 135). The creation has now become delirious and very threatening all because people were prejudice against him. This leads the creation to next go on a rampage of killing Victors loved ones, by the end of the book Victor is in a delirious rage but the novel shows the reader that being prejudice has serious
consequences.
Almost every character in the novel Frankenstein have some thirst for knowledge, but Victor slowly learns that the thirst for knowledge and power is not always a good thing. Victor’s thirst for knowledge begins to skyrocket when he goes out to school in Ingolstadt. He begins to indulge himself into study of any kind and then comes across the study of life and death. Victor obsesses over this topic wanting more and more knowledge on it. We see Victors thirst for knowledge begin in chapter 3 when he says this; “So much has been done, exclaimed the soul of Frankenstein—more, far more, will I achieve; treading in the steps already marked, I will pioneer a new way, explore unknown powers, and unfold to the world the deepest mysteries of creation.” (Frankenstein 48). This already is taking Victor down a slippery slope of wanting to know everything. This thirst for knowledge and power leads Victor to develop an obsession with his work. He beings to loose his old values and obtain new ones, instead of his main value being his family and his love, Elizabeth he now focuses on his creation and work alone. His moral compass also become obscured and begins engaging in things like grave robbing and hanging around in morgues to benefit his research. When all things go down hill for Victor, (his loved ones die, he becomes depressed, and the creature still roams) he comes to the conclusion and realizes that the thirst for knowledge and power is not always a good thing. In chapter 24 Robert Walton has the narration again quotes Victor, “Seek happiness in tranquility and avoid ambition, even if it be only the apparently innocent one of distinguishing yourself in science and discoveries.” (Frankenstein 217). He writes these words that Victor had said to him because they apply to his own journey and also show that even Victor now knows that the thirst for knowledge and power is not always good because of his own endeavors. Circling back to the beginning of the book in Chapter four Victor is beginning to tell Walton his story and he says “Learn from me, if not by my precepts, at least by my example, how dangerous is the acquirement of knowledge, and how much happier that man is who believes his native town to be his world, than he who aspires to become greater than his nature will allow.” (Frankenstein 53) he tells Walton that the great thirst for knowledge and to know everything is not actually a good thing. He says that a man is much happier when he is ignorant than when he is compulsively consuming knowledge. He proves this by telling Walton his tragic story and they both come to the same conclusion; the thirst for knowledge and power is not always a good thing. It may have taken Victor a long time to learn this difficult lesson but he helps Robert Walton by sharing his new knowledge with him.
The novel Frankenstein by Mary Shelly is a tragic story of Victor Frankenstein and the lessons he learns. One of the most talented contemporary writers, Haruki Murakami, said “And once the storm is over, you won’t remember how you made it through, how you managed to survive. You won’t even be sure, whether the storm is really over. But one thing is certain. When you come out of the storm, you won’t be the same person who walked in. That’s what this storm’s all about.” This quote relates to Victor and his whole life, he learns many lessons though his own “storm” and changes as a person. He changes enough to tell others of his wisdom and help them with their own life lessons.
Work Cited
Shelley, Mary Wollstonecraft., and Michael Joseph Kennedy. Frankenstein or the Modern Prometheus: The 1831 Text. London: Oxford Univ., 2008. Print.
Murakami, Haruki. "Quotes About Life Lessons." Good Reads. N.p., n.d. Web. 26 april 2014.
Oliver, Mary. "Quotes About Life Lessons." Good Reads. N.p., n.d. Web. 26 April 2014.