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Mary Shelley’s novel Frankenstein includes a protagonist, an antagonist, and several foil characters. For the reader, these minor foil characters highlight certain characteristics of the main character, Victor Frankenstein. This can be used to either show contrast or comparison between the characters. One very important foil character in this novel is Victor’s friend, Henry Clerval.Clerval first appears during Victor Frankenstein’s story-telling of his life to traveler Robert Walton. After Victor describes creating his monster, the reader can see that he is extremely disappointed with his results and falls into a deep depression. One day, Victor is out walking and runs into an old friend—Henry Clerval. As the reader continues to read, he or she can see that Victor’s entire aura changes for a little while, but it does not last very long,
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This is where it becomes visible that Henry Clerval is a foil to Victor. Frankenstein depicts Clerval as a happy, delightful, and just overall positive man, while he himself is sad, bitter, and very negative. The two men are completely opposites of each other. Although they do not spend much time together after their previous encounter, Victor Frankenstein speaks highly of Henry throughout the rest of the novel. All of the words that he uses to describe his friend highlight to the reader how much they contrast each other. 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. Victor defied the natural laws of life by creating a living person entirely by himself. He also used other people’s dead corpses without