How Is Victor Frankenstein An Unreliable Narrator

Unreliable narratives can be seen everywhere, whether a person hears it in the news, reads an article, or listens to their friend’s stories. The book Frankenstein by Mary Shelley is no exception. Her character Victor Frankenstein exhibits many signs of unreliable narrative, including his emotions overpowering the story, skipping information that could be seen as important, and making comments that may influence the reader’s perspective of the story. By displaying his biases while sharing his story, Victor Frankenstein is seen as an unreliable narrator. Victor is shown throughout the book as being a very self-centered individual, resulting in his narration focusing on how he feels about his story instead of direct facts. Victor sharing the story through his very emotional perspective, causes critical information to be skewed or misinterpreted. When Elizabeth is murdered by the creature, Victor describes the event very theatrically. He recalled crying over Elizabeth, looking up at a dark, “hideous” and “abhorred figure, with a grin on the creature's face, pointing at Elizabeth(149-150). With the assumption that the creature was going to kill Victor, he could not believe the creature would go in this direction. Along with this very

This suggests to the reader that something awful would concur after the wedding, causing feelings of uneasiness and expectation. These lines of feeling influence the reader to see Victor as more of a victim in a sense because he sounds regretful and remorseful even though he caused this whole ordeal. By attempting to influence his readers to think a certain way about what he has gone through, Victor Frankenstein is proven to be an unreliable