Victor Frankenstein Coming Of Age Analysis

The novel Frankenstein by Mary Shelley is a bildungsroman, coming of age, novel because it recounts the psychological and moral development of its protagonist, Victor Frankenstein, from youth to maturity, when he recognizes his place in the world. Victor Frankenstein realizes in a single moment that man cannot alter death without consequences. Victor Frankenstein is a scientist from Switzerland who is obsessed with the creation of life. When he is seventeen, Victor 's family decides to send him to the university of Ingolstadt, so that he might become worldlier, but before his departure his mother dies. This loss drives Victor to start over and to become successful. As you can see, Victor 's departure from home is a dark foreshadowing of things to come. There is nothing affirmative in his departure from home: it is immediately preceded by his mother 's death, the journey itself is "long and fatiguing," and he knows no one at all at Ingolstadt. At university, the obsessive pursuit of knowledge will come to take the place of Victor 's friends and family; it will both substitute for human connection and make any such connection impossible. Frankenstein becomes progressively less human-that is to say, more monstrous ­ as he attempts to create a human being. He tortures living creatures, neglects his family, and haunts cemeteries and charnel houses. As his morals suffer, his health does as well: he becomes pale and emaciated. Frankenstein 's work is literally sickening the man