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Frankenstein Post Traumatic Stress Disorder Essay

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Macbeth. Othello. Lex Luthor. All notable characters; all notable downfalls. Important characteristics and attributes are essential to a well-rounded and dynamic character. Undesirable qualities, although unwanted, are necessary in the main characters for character development and advancement. Victor Frankenstein in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein has attributes that are still discussed, researched, and theorized about today. This fact is no small feat, considering Mary Shelley had no prior knowledge of modern psychology. He suffers from Post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD, and depression; these two disorders are evident throughout the novel. A reader can analyze through Victor’s actions and decisions. It is clear that he suffers from these …show more content…

Post-traumatic stress disorder is an anxiety disorder that may occur after going through an extreme emotional trauma. There are many causes of this disorder, including domestic violence, war, rape, and assault (Board). Victor’s PTSD first stemmed from the death of his mother, but fully developed at the first sight of the wretched creature he had created. At this moment, Victor exclaimed “the beauty of the dream vanished” and with this, “breathless horror and disgust filled [his] heart” (Frankenstein 138). The very sight of this fiend plagues Victor’s memories throughout the story. The four main symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder are also quite noticeable in Victor: reliving the event, avoiding others, hyperarousal, and negativity. (Board). Victor also had terrible nightmares after this altercation, stating that he “was possessed by a kind of nightmare,” feeling powerless to a monster whose “grasp was around my neck and I could not free myself from it” (Frankenstein 537). Frankenstein kept away from most people, another symptom, in an attempt to avoid activities, places, or people that arouse recollections of his psychological trauma (Paul’s Case). Alphonse, Victor’s father, also notices this in his son, questioning why he is “still unhappy and still avoiding our society” (Frankenstein 438). This detachment from everything in his life is a classic PTSD symptom, further proving the fact that Victor Frankenstein suffers …show more content…

Symptoms of which include fatigue, guilt, indecisiveness, insomnia, indifference, and suicidal thoughts and tendencies (Major Depression). After William’s and Justine’s deaths, Victor becomes more guilty, even being “torn by remorse, horror, and despair” over something he might not have committed but indirectly caused (Frankenstein 232). This led to a downward spiral of guilt and him wondering if he could have prevented these instances. Victor is not alone, with major clinical depression affecting 6.7% of adults and with 20-25% of adults suffering from depression at some point in their lives (Major Depression). According to a Japanese study, 11.6% of Japanese-Americans suffer from depression, and that anxiety is directly correlated to depression (Cheung). This theory makes sense in Victor’s case as well. With anxiety being nervousness and unease, depression is quite similar in that depression is an immense sorrow and dejection. Frankenstein admits he has anxiety, stating “With an anxiety that almost amounted to agony” (Frankenstein 137). Depression, even though some critics say is not a real phenomenon and is “all in their heads,” is clearly shown throughout

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Victor’s depression continues, for he loses many close friends and family to the monster, including Henry and his wife, Elizabeth. After Henry’s death, everything gets worse in his life. He is never happy at all, not even for a little while. The reader sees that Henry had a huge influence on Victor’s contentment with his life. It can also be inferred that these occurrences are just a sort of karma for everything that he did to create the monster.

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Psychoanalysis of Victor Frankenstein. Victor Frankenstein suffers from Pathological narcissism. Victor has a physical disregard for life and the feelings of others. Victory has a deep desire to be at “the center of things and is served by extreme self-confidence, a combination that makes narcissists attractive and even charming” (Vogel) .

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In Frankenstein, Victor creates a monster that he cannot control. The guilt has a huge impact on the events that occur. He gets into a headspace that he can’t get out of. This shows the psychological aspect because he goes too far and becomes numb to all the problems he has caused.

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The random mood changes that Frankenstein goes through are explainable. He can be completely fine and content, and the next minute he can be depressed or overly excited about something. This is what bipolar disorder is. The people who are actually bipolar live normal lives with its ups and downs that everyone experiences.. But the mood changes that Victor goes through are not normal.

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Victor Frankenstein turns away from his responsibilities by ignoring the existence of his creation. Throughout the novel, Victor is constantly running away from the monster and not giving him attention, which resulted in the monsters change of personalities. For example, in page 71 the creation said, “All men hate the wretched; how 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.” This quote suggests that because of the ignorance of Victor the monster began to become evil and have the urge to seek

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Victor falls ill with anxiety, and as a result of Victor’s neglect the monster begins to destroy his life. Even when the monster confronts Frankenstein, threatening that he “will glut the maw of death, until it be satiated with the blood of [Frankenstein’s] remaining friends, 102" Victor does not acknowledge the problem he has caused, the literal embodiment of his anxiety. He does not attempt to confront the monster head on or alleviate his loneliness, both a form of acknowledgement and thus a healthy way to respond to his fears. Instead, he once again pretends the monster doesn’t exist which only further enrages and empowers him. Once again, this mirrors the fact that when fears and anxiety go undealt with they will only grow and confirms that the monster is the embodiment of this

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Victor Frankenstein the main character in Frankenstein was going through depression, bipolar, and anxiety throughout the story because things in his life were going terrible for him. Victor never had a happy moment in his life after the creation of his monster. Once the monster became angry he tried controlling Victor into creating a love for him. Victor didn’t want to because he was afraid that he would create a violent species and they would take over. After the monster found out he wasn’t doing it, the monster wanted to kill Victors loved ones and not Victor.

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Victor’s parental figures in Frankenstein poison him by surrounding him with countless indulgences. From childhood, Victor was given all of his desires without question and this led to him becoming self-centered and dependent on the service of others. Victor describes his childhood with

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The monster views Frankenstein as a parent-figure and comes back to him again and again no matter how many times Victor mistreats him. Just like a child going to its parent for comfort, the monster seeks Victor out every time it realizes it has done something bad. And while within humans, the parent generally reciprocates the attachment, it is not necessary for the child to feel the way it does and so even if Victor doesn’t return the concern that the monster has for him, the monster continues to care about Victor. This is particularly evident when the monster holds Victor’s dead body and weeps in the end, despite the fact that it had spent the past couple of months evading Victor, who had decided to hunt it

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Once noted, the parallels between Frankenstein’s fears and desires and the reality the monster experiences are many. Now that Victor is in university, he no longer has family and friends to fall back upon in the unknown territory of his university. Frankenstein voices is that “[he] believed [himself] totally unfitted for the company of strangers,” irrational as it may be, and believes himself solely dependent on his family and childhood friend for companionship. Without the love guaranteed to him by his family, Victor believes he is unfit to make companions by himself and destined to a life of loneliness. He places much importance on the fact that his father and Elizabeth love him and are concerned with his well-being.

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For instance, after the Mariners crew was taken from him because of his decision to kill the albatross he was forced to “look upon the rotting deck,” where all of his “dead men lay” (Coleridge 7). The Mariner is tortured by his isolation whenever he looks back at his mistakes. His choice to kill the albatross forced him into isolation which slowly eroded his will to live. Similar to the way the Mariner was tortured by his mistake, Victor is led to his demise after he “swears...to pursue the demon who caused this misery” (Frankenstein 193). Victors isolation corrupted his mind into thinking that the only path left to take was to hunt down his creation until it ended in his own or the creature’s death.

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Guilt is a very important theme in the story of Frankenstein. Victor Frankenstein, the protagonist of the story is deeply affected by guilt and his health and well-being is constantly struggling because of this. One reason that guilt is affecting Victor’s health and well-being is that he is continually contemplating about committing suicide. After the death of Justine and William, Victor felt like it was his fault and his mind was consumed with guilt. One example of Victor’s thought of suicide is when he went sailing at night.

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Throughout the book the death of Victor's family has taken a toll on his mental state and he starts showing signs of mental illness. Much like Mary Shelley had mental illness because of the horrors that happened in her life. The illnesses that Victor starts showing signs of depression, paranoid schizophrenia, and anxiety. Depression is something that

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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.

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Frankenstein by Mary Shelley is a gothic novel that tells the story of scientist, Victor Frankenstein, and his obsession with creating human life. This leads him to creating a gruesome monster made of body-parts stolen from grave yards, whom upon discovering his hideousness, the monster seeks revenge against his creator, causing Victor to regret the creation of his monster for the rest of his life. Shelley uses the literary elements of personification, imagery, and similes to give a vivid sense and visualization of Victor Frankenstein’s thoughts and feelings as well as to allow us to delve deeper into the monster’s actions and emotions. Throughout the novel, Shelley uses personification of various forces and objects to reflect the effect in Victor’s actions.

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