The Existential Issues Regarding Our Beloved Victor Frankenstein
Dan Marcec
“if god controls the land and disease/ and keeps a watchful eye on me/ if he's really
so damn mighty/ well my problem is i can't see/ well who would want to be/
who would want to be such a control freak?” – Modest Mouse, Bukowski
A course of study could be conducted solely on the novel Frankenstein, as I
personally have realized in my attempts to make valuable assertions upon specific
meaning or purpose consistent throughout the novel. Unfortunately — or perhaps
fortunately for absurdist literary critics like myself, who believe that anything can be
asserted of a novel as there is no way of really knowing its true meaning — there are
more contradictions of meaning and discrepancy in character development in this novel
than there are in the Bible. In other words, providing a coherent, singular reading of this
novel is nearly impossible, in light of the multiple angles from which Frankenstein can
be viewed. So, I have decided to analyze various manifestations of Victor Frankenstein’s
character, which in essence, breaks down into several characters.
First, a few thoughts. . .
The function of story within a work of literature is a method through which an
author can convey meaning, especially in the case of portraying the nature of mankind.
This is a difficult subject to broach, as humans often are quite negligent of their own
shortcomings. To me, then, the major theme in Frankenstein that seems to be in play
from Mary Shelley’s point of view (i.e. the author’s tone that lies above the specific
events that transpire in the story) is that man is in conflict with his quest for knowledge.
Victor — on many occasions — champions said pursuit; however, interestingly enough,
as soon as he achieves the goal of what he considers “the study and desire of the wisest
men”, which was “now within [his] grasp” (38), he falls into despair underneath the
precept that he has overstepped his boundaries. Thus, the conflict overwhelming Victor is
his desire to know all and to be all (“all” in this sense being that concept of the infinite, or
more traditionally, God). In this sense, Victor represents this proto-typical Enlightenment
man, he who believes that transitory reason and knowledge are the secrets of the
universe. Contrary to this notion, Victor self-consciously reprimands himself for what he
has done, and falls into despair. Thus, I will assert that Shelley’s goal in this respect is to
note the detriment the human mind can cause itself, despite its possibility for worldly
advancement.
What we have to keep in mind here, too, is that Victor is relating these events as
the narrator within the story. Thus, he moralizes, thinking back upon his actions and
thoughts, and attempts to make himself the tragic figure in this horrible story of treachery
to his own life. This simple factor makes analysis very difficult, because Shelley not only
interjects her own interpretations of what this may mean to her personal life and plight
(as any author is inextricably tied to the subject about which she writes), but also she
creates a story within the novel told self-consciously from its main character’s point of
view (and a character that is beyond madness, at that). While this concept may seem
convoluted, that this is a necessary consequence of the intertwined nature of the novel
itself.
So, within Shelley’s novel, which relates Frankenstein’s story about Frankenstein,
Victor also is portrayed in light of his creation. Perhaps this is because the monster was
created in Victor’s image, so to speak; perhaps this is because Victor is one in the same
with his monster. Unfortunately, neither the text nor the narrator’s perception is
particularly clear on this subject. Regardless, the monster’s plight raises many interesting
questions upon the nature of man, as well as his relation to his creator — or what we in
the West traditionally call “God”. The monster, in this sense, is an interesting study,
because in Shelley’s voice, he represents an all-encompassing view of a man abandoned
by his creator; yet from the point of view of the narrator Victor, he is this wholly
abominable creature, one that projects the image of man, but is extricated from the realm
of the usual. The interesting part about both of these aspects is that the monster reflects
Victor nearly as a mirrored image, bringing to light insight to how Victor views himself.
So, within the realm of the story, there are three distinct Victors. Shelley’s Victor
— the conflicted Enlightenment man, who does not understand the limitations of his
quest for ultimate knowledge; the retrospective Victor — the narrator (the Victor of
Walton’s letters), who presents the Victor of his tale as a tragic figure of lost life and lost
sanity; and the monster’s Victor — he of intertwined plight, and a malevolent God.
Amongst these there is continuity only in name, as each representation of Victor is
wholly different in method and scope. Ironically, there is only one Victor Frankenstein (if
we are to suspend our disbelief), which brings everything together in a not-so-neat
package. So, without further ado (as the ado has been exhaustive to this point already),
the three Victors as I encounter them:
I.
Shelley’s Victor – A Modernist Paradigm, Minus the Whole “Making Use
of Reason” Thing That Was Championed By Enlightenment Thinkers
“I ardently desired the acquisition of knowledge” (30). Victor’s statement in this
moment, while simplistic and limited, sums up the manner in which he chooses to
conduct his life. Interestingly enough, immediately following this announcement of his
intentions, Victor explains, “I had often, when at home, thought it hard to remain during
my youth cooped up in one place and had longed to enter the world and take my station
among other human beings” (30). Here, he embodies the obsessive pursuit of an
addiction, whether it be knowledge in his case, or whether it be anything else one pursues
above that which is important to his well-being. The irony in Victor’s situation is that he
has longed for solitude so that he can gain knowledge, thus entreating him with a pass to
“enter the world of other human beings”; yet, what he does not realize is what his
endeavors will entail. Instead of reaching this goal, he falls into the depths of despair,
ironically cutting himself off from the world of humanity, to which he dreamt of
becoming a herald of knowledge.
The manifestation of Victor’s quest for knowledge highlights the problem that
man encounters when he oversteps his boundaries and disregards his limitations. The
problem with the Enlightened man — in Shelley’s model — is that he fails to recognize
the repercussions of his pursuit of knowledge. Like an American capitalist that has
worked his way from poverty solely in opposition to and in spite of the perpetually
wealthy (which, ironically, is an extension of this Enlightenment ideal), the fact that
knowledge had been withheld from the common man for many centuries at the time of
the Enlightenment made him desire it even more. In other words, since knowledge has
been withheld by God (i.e. the religious institution), the irony in Frankenstein is even
more overwhelming because Victor tries to take this knowledge back from God;
however, since this power was never God’s to give in the first place, and since,
regardless, man does not have the power of all-encompassing knowledge, Victor’s
attempts are futile.
How does this relate to Shelley’s protagonist, then? Well, Victor himself is a
representation of humanity during the Enlightenment, as he literally attempts to play God,
using all the knowledge that he has gained. In opposition to M. Krempe, Victor plans his
pursuit of a final goal. Krempe, professor of natural philosophy, decries his initial
pursuits, “You have burdened your memory with exploded systems and useless names.”
(31). In response, Victor surmises, “I was required to exchange chimeras of boundless
grandeur for realities of little worth” (32); thus, his utter disregard for reality is what
leads him to his ultimate demise. With this attitude in hand, Victor attempts to exploit the
‘boundless grandeur’ as he exclaims, “So much more 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” (33).
What follows, then, is that Victor is not God, and he cannot become God. Instead,
he creates a “monster” that destroys his life. From Shelley’s point of view — again, that
of the transcendent narrator; though she is not involved in the story, there remain
judgments in her tone — this monster is that which is unnamable, that notion of godly
desire that exists just below our intellectual surface (Freud called it the superego). In the
religious age (antiquity preceding the Enlightenment), this desire was quelled by the
belief in the existence of God, who had divine control over His beings. However, with the
onset of modernity and the Enlightenment, man recognized that he did not need to
attribute these qualities to God. However, if the attribution of worldly existence is not in
God’s hands, but in man’s, then it is not better for humankind; in fact it is worse, for we
are limited by the manifestations of earthly happenings. The darkness of the Romantic
worldview supports this cautious ideology; whether or not God exists and is the ultimate
controller of existence is not the issue. On the other hand, man is not in control of his
own existence regardless of whether or not God controls him, and this idea is manifested
in the creation of Victor’s monster; as Victor attempts to control his own and the
monster’s existences, only then does he understand the treachery of his limitations. His
attempt to play God is futile, because, as I said, whether or not God (as tradition sees
Him) exists, man is not God. This idea is supported by Victor’s actions. He retreats from
his family and his friends, disregarding that which makes him human in an attempt to
become God; in the moment of creation, then — ironically — his life is destroyed.
II.
The Narrator’s Victor – The Tragic Hero, If By Tragic You Mean
Completely Ignorant of One’s Own Shortcomings
Thusly, Victor the narrator delves into self-conscious moralizing regarding his
own story, in recollection of the darkness to which his soul had retreated. He preaches,
“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 the world, than he who aspires to be greater than his nature will allow” (39).
In this self-conscious recollection, Victor makes himself out to be a tragic figure,
contrary to the picture that Shelley paints of him (as a man ignorant of his lowly
humanity). In his retrospective ideology, Victor tries in vain to convince himself that
what he has done is wrong, yet even in spite of the deaths of his loved ones, his goal
remains selfish: to destroy the monster to rid himself individually of such suffering he has
created. His actions and attitude leading to the monster’s creation destroyed his life — of
which the physical monster is a manifestation — as eventually it literally kills the
members of his family, as well as Clerval. He is the destructor, the one who has created
the misery of his own world, not the tragic figure in whom he would have Walton
believe.
In between the time that he creates the monster and the time when he verbally
encounters it, Victor remains in a liminal state of denial. Though immediately he
understands that he has created a disease intent on destroying his soul, he is fearful, yet
dismissive of what the monster’s existence might mean, hoping that in some way
everything will go away. Thus, Victor the narrator recalls these events as they happened,
yet at the time they are told, he is still caught up in his quest to destroy the monster, as
opposed to examining what its existence might mean. Thus, Victor the narrator traps
himself in philosophizing about his plight, and in essence, this is his general downfall.
Instead of exterminating the problem (as, to be fair, we all make mistakes), his actions
only exacerbate the situation. He continues to perpetuate the monster’s existence by
ignoring it, and, as we shall see, his disregard and hatred for it only incites its rage.
However, in the intermediary, Victor explains, “Nothing is more painful to the human
mind than, after the feelings have been worked up by a quick succession of events, the
dead calmness of inaction and certainty which follows and deprives the soul both of hope
and fear.” For a man who wished to possess all the greatest knowledge in the world,
Victor is extraordinarily weak emotionally. He continues, “This state of mind preyed
upon my health, which had perhaps never entirely recovered from the first shock it had
sustained. I shunned the face of man; all sound of joy or complacency was torture to me;
solitude was my only consolation — deep, dark, deathlike solitude” (77).
So, let’s review: Victor wishes for supreme knowledge of the fundamentals of
existence; he neglects all family, friends, personal health and any other basic human need
to obtain it; he succeeds; immediately he recognizes the damnable offense of his
creationism; and he proceeds to whine about it until it slaps him in the face — i.e. it
begins literally to kill all his family members, which, ironically was what he had done by
closing himself to the world in order to create it in the first place. Again, the monster is a
manifestation of these ills.
Unfortunately, the narrator Victor is not so methodical in recognizing this
progression; in fact, he seems to ignore it completely. He doesn’t make any connection as
to why the monster is killing madly, just that he is and that it is “poor Victor’s fault”. For
example, he laments, “Alas! Why does man boast of sensibilities superior to those
apparent in the brute; it only renders them more necessary beings. If our impulses were
confined to hunger, thirst, and desire, we might be nearly free; but now we are moved by
every wind that blows and a chance word or scene that word may convey to us” (84).
Here, Victor seems to defer to the God he had abandoned; he basically is saying, “why
have I been allowed the capacity to create such a monster?”, instead of recognizing that
he had neglected that which makes him human (any sort of earthly happiness) in an
attempt to supplant God. Thus, his disregard for the creation that he has effected seems
natural following such an exclamation. In other words, as such a selfish man, one that
portrays himself as a tragic figure with utter neglect to the suffering and tragedy that he
has caused for those he considers “loved,” is quite consistent with a God that would
abandon his creation instead of treating it as an extension of himself. Again, Victor’s flaw
is that he continually attempts to extricate himself from his own life, and in the end it
causes despair and loathing.
III.
Victor and the Monster – Like a Boy and His Dog, Except With a Whole
Lot More Betrayal and Negligence
As he faces his monster, Victor faces his indictment. “You, my creator, abhor me;
what hope can I gather from your fellow creatures, who owe me nothing?” (87). To this
point, Victor has hemmed and hawed and treated himself as a victim, yet upon the
acquaintance of his creation, he cannot ignore that which it manifests. He offers to
destroy it, as he sees this as the only option. Even through the end, though, he is unable
because it represents that unending desire of man, that which is beyond his reach. The
monster snarls, “You accuse me of murder, yet you would, with a satisfied conscience,
destroy your own creature. Oh, praise the eternal justice of man!” (87). Immediately
Victor must reconcile his deeds, and recognize that which he has neglected. The monster
is the child of Victor’s intellectual desire, that which his “acquisition of knowledge” has
afforded him, yet he wants to shrug this past away as if it never happened.
In essence, the plight of both Victor and the monster mirror each other. As Victor
is a depraved, lunatic, self-absorbed creature, so is the monster. Since the latter is
constructed in the image of his creator, the monster necessarily must be this way. Thus, in
recognition of the monster, Victor is forced to identify his own debacle of a human
existence. He is brought up in a loving home, and has nothing but the best education and
the utmost support, yet he actively pursues throwing it all away. What does this say about
Victor’s personal tragedy and insecurity? Simply put, I think the metaphoric monster
within him is that which desires this transcendent knowledge. Victor, for whatever
reason, sees this form that he cannot touch (for him and for the Enlightenment thinkers,
this thing is knowledge; for the religious, this thing is God; regardless they are one in the
same), and he reaches and reaches until his life literally slips away, instead of enjoying
that which is presented to him. Yet by playing God, he only perpetuates this monstrosity.
As the monster comes to being (in the intellectual sense), Victor’s problem only
perpetuates itself, akin to what he himself had done in the first place in his attempts to
become a creator, i.e. God. The monster explains, “Increase of knowledge only
discovered to me more clearly what a wretched outcast I was” (119). This statement
alone envelops Victor’s plight as well, and how he views himself following the creation
of the monster, yet he neglects to recognize the parallelism in their existential dilemmas.
He only thinks of himself, and he continues attempting to project himself a tragic figure:
“I was cursed by some devil and carried about with me my eternal hell. . .” (194).
The monster obviously acknowledges Victor’s self-centered attitude toward him,
failing to recognize their intertwined existence. He exclaims, “Accursed creator! Why did
you form a monster so hideous that even you turned from me in disgust? God, in pity,
made man beautiful and alluring, after his own image; but my form is a filthy type of
yours, more horrid even from the very resemblance. Satan had his companions, fellow
devils, to admire and encourage him, but I am solitary and abhorred” (119). Had Victor
embraced his creation in lieu of shunning it, possibly Victor’s (and the monster’s) tragedy
would have been reconciled. However, the selfishness of Victor disallows him to provide
a positive existence for his creation. Since the monster is in essence a perpetuation of his
own life, Victor is an ineffective and disaffected god.
Epilogue — There’s Good News For Anyone Who Loves Bad News
Honestly, I’m not so sure I liked this novel, as I’ve looked into it a little more. I
believe that it would have worked well in a manner similar to Fight Club, i.e. if Victor
was literally the monster. Now, that’s not to say it’s still not interesting, but in fact,
contrary to what I said earlier, the fact that Victor and the monster are separate beings is
quite convoluted because it’s absolutely farfetched. I think the whole time I expected this
build-up to where they would be one in the same which, by many accounts, they appear
to be. But when the monster is physically seen by Walton near the end of the novel
(whereas before it was only visible to Victor), that really threw a nail into my tire.
Throughout the course of this collection of short essays, I have remained solely
within the realm of personal interpretation (i.e. not deferring to any sort of “respected”
literary criticism). Overall, though, the theme central to each of these characters
underlying Victor’s personal crisis is that humanity is wholly unable to achieve that
which it desires, and in the pursuit of these desires, individuals find themselves above
themselves, beside themselves and within themselves, all likely to personal detriment if
they are negligent of natural restrictions to these desires (i.e. sorry, we can’t control the
logistics of our existence). Regardless of the various ways in which Victor presents
himself, one thing remains clear: there is good news for those of us who love bad news
— life is tragic and invokes suffering, you can’t always get what you want, and there is
no escape except through death. As the monster finally laments, “I should have wept to
die, now it is my only consolation” (212). But it’s really not all bad; as Victor teaches us,
suffering chiefly comes when we try to reason with that which is unreasonable.