“Disgusting.” “Hideous.” “Repulsive.” “Horrid.” “Appalling.” “Deformed.” “Breathless horror and disgust filled my heart” (Shelley 59) Mary Shelley used all of the aforementioned to describe Victor’s creation in her novel, Frankenstein. Shelley tells the story of Victor Frankenstein who, due to the loss of his mother, attempts to create life and succeeds; however, his creation does not turn out quite like he had hoped. Since Victor abandons the monster, the monster seeks revenge, leading to a downward spiral of vengeance and the eventual demise of both Victor and his creation. Victor was put in a position of great power and, as the well-known saying states, “With great power comes great responsibility.” Although the speaker of this quote is …show more content…
Although he did manage to gain enough knowledge to be productive, the important point is what Victor did with his knowledge, namely, he attempted to gain power. “Frankenstein himself, a wealthy, indulged young man whose cognition of the norms of his society leads him to want, like a monarch or a God, absolute power…” (Bennett 110). In seeking this “absolute power,” Victor attempts to create life after the tragedy of his mother’s death. Victor indeed creates life, but he creates something that is so ugly that, “No mortal could support the horror of that countenance” (Shelley 59). Using this creation as a symbol of his obsession, Shelley portrays the importance of how knowledge is handled, and the dangers that can come if it is handled incorrectly. Since Victor’s “quest” to create life is mainly based on gaining knowledge and thus power and since, “Systems based on power are imbued with a fundamental expectation of danger and attack, which leads to a prevalent fear of the ‘other’” (Bennett 111), Shelley foreshadows that Victor’s quest is destined to be full of these “dangers.” In order to personify the dangers, Shelley uses the creation of the monster. The creation of the monster can be further broken down into two subdivisions: the work that Victor put in to create the