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The Struggle For Friendship In Mary Shelley's Frankenstein

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„I desire the company of a man who could sympathize with me; whose eyes would reply to mine. You may deem me romantic, my dear sister, but I bitterly feel the want of a friend” (Shelley 163-164). This is the wish of the scientist Robert Walton whose letters start Mary Shelley’s novel Frankenstein. Unlike the first thoughts coming to mind when hearing the title, friendship is one of the main topics in the story and the wish Walton expresses in the beginning stands for the desires of all the main characters. Not only Walton feels to be in need of companionship, the central character Victor Frankenstein does so too and even the Creature he brings into being expresses its strong wish to belong to someone. They all have various reasons for that desire, which will be further explored in the following, but the desire itself seems to be very similar, even if the characters are so different in their background, life and behavior. Victor Frankenstein, the main character in Shelley’s novel is used to having friends around him. He has a loving family with two brothers, his cousin Elizabeth and his best friend Henry Clerval. In his childhood, he does not have many deeper friendships, so he feels “totally …show more content…

All of the main characters fight for friendship even if they do so in different ways and for different reasons. All of them feel in need of someone to talk to if it is about science, about what horrible things one has done or about being different and alone. Another feature is the loss of friendship in all cases. Victor loses his friends to death, and so does Walton while the creature never really “fulfilled his dream of being anyone’s true friend” (Jeray 69). This way the novel not only shows the importance of friendship and having companions but also the possible consequences of either being rejected by everyone or of losing beloved people partly even due to own

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