Theme Of Ambition In Mary Shelley's Frankenstein

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We often don’t realize the negative aspects that come along with being ambitious. Mary Shelley’s novel, Frankenstein, elaborates on this idea and conveys how these aspects can affect us. In her novel, the main character, Victor Frankenstein, is a scientist who finds the secret of animating dead flesh back to life. He uses this secret to create a superhuman giant, yet soon runs away from his creation, after realizing how hideous he looks. As the creation makes his way out into the world, he receives hatred for his repulsive countenance. As a result, the creation decides to get revenge on Victor by killing all of his loved ones, consequently causing Victor and the creation to devote their lives to obtaining vengeance upon one another. By giving her characters the trait of ambition, Mary Shelley uses her novel, Frankenstein, to express that going beyond the limits of ambition can cause people to negatively change who they are in society. Early in the book, as Victor starts to construct the creation, he becomes passionate in his work, …show more content…

After realizing that his diabolical plan to torture Victor has now led to Victor’s own death, the creation pities himself on how he will never satiate his own desires for companionship. The creation perceives that although he crushed Victor’s hopes, he did not satisfy his own, thus causing the creation to view himself as an abhorred wretch. The creation tells Walton,
“The completion of my demoniacal design became an insatiable passion...When I run over the frightful catalogue of my sins, I cannot believe that I am the same creature whose thoughts were once filled with the sublime and the transcendent visions of the beauty and the majesty of goodness...he could not sum up the hours and months of misery which I endured wasting in impotent passions”