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Who Is Victor Flawed In Frankenstein

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Flawed Divinity
Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein mirrors both the Bible and John Milton’s epic poem Paradise Lost, a re-telling of the biblical tale of the fall of mankind through Adam, Eve, and Satan. Shelley uses a quote from Paradise Lost as the epigraph for Frankenstein: - “Did I request thee, maker, from my clay to mold me man, did I solicit thee from darkness to promote me?” This quote emphasizes how God solely had the power to create Adam; Adam had neither any power or input in the process. It also immediately sets up the analogy that Victor, the protagonist and creator of the monster, represents God, and that the monster represents God’s creations. It seems notable that since Shelley brought this singular quote as an epigraph, the readers …show more content…

God, paralleled by Victor, is not able to create, sustain or control a perfect being, revealing that He is flawed.
The comparison between Victor and God is apparent in the novel; Victor is depicted as a flawed creator, which leads to the argument that God is flawed. Victor is an exceedingly ambitious man who greatly admires science. To him, the world is a secret that he “desired to discover” (23). Interestingly, in Shelley’s re-written 1831 edition of Frankenstein, she chooses to write that Victor “desired to divine.” The specific use of the word “divine” as the verb to describe Victor’s desire seems notable. While it can be understood to mean “to discover,” the connotation of this word emphasizes his true desire to be “divine” or God-like. This desire to be God-like is additionally apparent in …show more content…

After Victor creates the being, it is instantly referred to as a monster. Victor immediately runs away from his creation out of fear, and society continuously rejects the monster after people take only one glance at him. Even when the monster attempts to be charitable by helping out a poor family he has been observing, they still immediately mark him as a monster when he reveals himself to them. The monster exclaims how hurt he felt from “their horror and consternation on beholding me” (99). Although the readers are exposed to a humane side of the monster, he is still labeled as a monster – evil and imperfect. He does not have to do anything to prove or disprove his humanity; he simply is a monster. Additionally, after the monster reads Paradise Lost, he says to Victor, “I am thy creature; I ought to be thy Adam; but I am rather the fallen angel, whom thou drivest from joy for no misdeed” (72). The monster concludes that he is not being treated as Adam, but rather as Satan. Shelley chooses to display the monster in this way to further reveal the inherent imperfections of human beings. In contrast to Adam, the monster did not have to sin to become imperfect; rather, he was created that way. This analogy of the monster representing mankind establishes that man too was born imperfect. A perfect God would be able

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