The Role Of Isolation In Mary Shelley's Frankenstein
Characters with an obsession tend to segregate themselves from those around them, both physically and mentally. Isolation as a result of obsession aggravates the fixation because it creates an escape from one's important life issues, encourages insanity, and furthers the feeling that the obsession is normal or even beneficial.
The secluded environment one creates due to an obsession is understandably unhealthy, and thus a likely platform for mental issues. Victor Frankenstein is exemplary proof of this, as he started as an intelligent boy, but crumbled through lack of self-control into a despondent maniac. Victor goes away to school near the beginning of his story, and quickly becomes enthralled with science, and becomes sequesters when he …show more content…
Then a short way into the novel, he admits his drive to learn became abnormal. When Victor decides to build a human, he completely isolates himself from his family, friends, and teachers. He toils for hours without sleep or human contact. He often refers to his living quarters as a cell or asylum. When describing how he felt while making his creation, he says, “Every night I was oppressed by a slow fever, and I became nervous to a most painful degree; the fall of a leaf startled me, and I shunned my fellow creatures as if I had been guilty of a crime" (Shelley 49). By demonstrating both physical sickness and paranoia, it is clear that the seclusion was extremely unhealthy. As well, Victor is aware of this fact when he looks back upon his story, as he frequently mentions that if he could have seen himself at the time he would have, “looked upon it as the ravings of insanity." (Shelley: 71). After Victor has isolated himself and made himself mad, finishing his creation only makes things worse. He immediately loses the creature, and is then driven wilder when it kills his brother William,
The secluded environment one creates due to an obsession is understandably unhealthy, and thus a likely platform for mental issues. Victor Frankenstein is exemplary proof of this, as he started as an intelligent boy, but crumbled through lack of self-control into a despondent maniac. Victor goes away to school near the beginning of his story, and quickly becomes enthralled with science, and becomes sequesters when he …show more content…
Then a short way into the novel, he admits his drive to learn became abnormal. When Victor decides to build a human, he completely isolates himself from his family, friends, and teachers. He toils for hours without sleep or human contact. He often refers to his living quarters as a cell or asylum. When describing how he felt while making his creation, he says, “Every night I was oppressed by a slow fever, and I became nervous to a most painful degree; the fall of a leaf startled me, and I shunned my fellow creatures as if I had been guilty of a crime" (Shelley 49). By demonstrating both physical sickness and paranoia, it is clear that the seclusion was extremely unhealthy. As well, Victor is aware of this fact when he looks back upon his story, as he frequently mentions that if he could have seen himself at the time he would have, “looked upon it as the ravings of insanity." (Shelley: 71). After Victor has isolated himself and made himself mad, finishing his creation only makes things worse. He immediately loses the creature, and is then driven wilder when it kills his brother William,