The Consequences Of Victor And The Wretch In Mary Shelley's Frankenstein

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In the novel “Frankenstein” by Mary Shelley, Victor Frankenstein decides to create his own species of living being. However, Shelley implies that disrupting nature has ineffable consequences, but Victor is a man blinded by his desire to be extraordinary. He does not understand that, in upsetting the balance of nature, he has sealed not only his own fate, but the fate of his creation. Mary Shelley’s portrayal of Victor and the Wretch, as well as her use of the conventions of Horror, Science Fiction and Gothic literature, underscore the theme that interfering with the laws of nature has untold consequences.
Victor is a man resolute on procuring admiration and esteem for himself. During his time at the university of Ingolstadt, he so pursued the knowledge he sought that he …show more content…
The
Wretch was fashioned out of both human and animal parts, sprang to life rather than growing up slowly, and was created with only one parent. His hubris causes numerous issues for him as time goes on, and his final refusal to perform another ‘god-like’ act of creation measures the ‘point of no return’ for his destiny. A Gothic-esque narrator, he is unreliable and has a grave tendency to make false assumptions of his creation and underestimate the severity of a situation. The most poignant example of his unreliability is his supposition that when the Wretch tells Victor “I shall be with you on your wedding-night,” Victor believes he will be the one to die
(123). What he does not seem capable of comprehending is that the night of his marriage brings up his violent past, which he has buried in his subconscious in favor of spending time with his bride-to-be.
The Wretch is a complex living being, both created and despised by his own creator. Victor fashioned his creation to be “as complex and wonderful as man,” a being capable of both astounding intelligence and emotion - the beginning of a perfect species (32). So entranced was he
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