For the most part, his childhood is quite idyllic and peaceful; he reflects fondly on this time in his life. However, even in these chapters, there is a good deal of foreshadowing about Victor's unhappy future.
Foreshadowing is when the author hints at something to come. Several times, Victor refers to events that led to his "fate," his "ruin," or his "misery. The change occurs in chapter 3. At seventeen, Victors goes off to study at university. However, before he leaves, Elizabeth catches scarlet fever. His mother becomes ill as well while nursing Elizabeth. On her deathbed, she pleads for Victor to marry Elizabeth. Following her death, Victor leaves for university anyway. Elizabeth, determined to at least partially fill the void left by Caroline's death, devotes herself to caring for the surviving family.
Clerval comes to visit Victor on his last evening at home. Though Clerval is desperate to accompany Victor to university, his prosaic merchant father will not allow him to do so. Victor is certain, however, that Clerval will not remain bound to the crushing dullness of his father's business. Upon his departure from Geneva, Victor reflects on the fact that he knows no one at Ingolstadt; he has always been unable to enjoy the company of strangers.
However, his spirits are lifted by the thought of acquiring new knowledge. The first person he encounters at Ingolstadt is Krempe, a professor of natural philosophy. At first, the narrator is indifferent to the idea of returning to science: he has developed a deep contempt for natural philosophy and its uses. This changes, however, when Victor attends a lecture given by a professor named Waldman. Victor is completely enraptured by the ideas of Waldman, who believes that scientists can perform miracles, acquire unlimited powers, and "mock the invisible world with its own shadows.
Caroline's decision to nurse Elizabeth, even though it means losing her own life, serves to indicate both Caroline's own selflessness and the high value placed on self-sacrifice in the book as a whole.
Caroline on her deathbed is described as being full of "fortitude and benignity"; the irreproachable manner in which she has lived her life means that she can die peacefully, certain of her eternal reward.
In telling Victor and Elizabeth that her happiness was dependent upon their union, Caroline makes their marriage a consummate symbol of earthly order and joy. The centrality of this event to the novel's trajectory thus becomes clear.
Victor's departure from home is both a coming of age and a dark foreshadowing of things to come. There is nothing affirmative in his departure from home: it is immediately preceded by his mother's death, the journey itself is "long and fatiguing," and he knows no one at all at Ingolstadt. At university, the obsessive pursuit of knowledge will come to take the place of Victor's friends and family; it will both substitute for human connection and make any such connection impossible.
The epic rhetoric of Waldman's lecture is quite striking, in that he makes the scientist out to be a god:. They penetrate into the recesses of nature and show how she works in her hiding-places. They ascend into the heavens They have acquired new and almost unlimited powers; they can command the thunders of heaven, mimic the earthquake, and even mock the invisible world with its own shadows. That this rhetoric inflames Victor is telling: what seduces him back to the world of natural philosophy is the hope of becoming a god, free of earthly law and limitations.
He has become mad with the desire for not only discovery, but also for omnipotence the state of being all-powerful and omniscience the state of being all-knowing. Victor tells us that Waldman's words were the "words of fate"; it was at this moment that his destiny was decided. Here, again, Victor absolves himself of guilt and locates the source of his ruin squarely outside himself, outside the purview of his own will: the fault lies not with him, but with fate, or destiny.
This serves to depersonalize him and to distance him from the reader, thus signifying the abyss of experimentation into which he will soon fall.
Natural philosophy and chemistry become Victor's sole occupations. Laboratory work particularly fascinates him, and he soon finds himself secluded there for days at a time.
Victor's great skill and unusual ardor impress his professors and classmates alike. Two years pass in this manner; the lure of scientific pursuit is so great that Victor does not once visit his family at Geneva. Victor develops a consuming interest in the structure of the human frame: he longs to determine what animates it, what constitutes the "principle of life.
He rapidly verses himself in the rudiments of anatomy, and begins pillaging graveyards for specimens to use in his dissections. Victor discovers the secret of how to generate life through a sudden epiphany. He does not, however, share the content of this revelation with Walton and, by extension, with the reader , because his own knowledge resulted in misery and destruction. Shelley employs other literary devices from time to time, including apostrophe, in which the speaker addresses an inanimate object, absent person, or abstract idea.
Ace your assignments with our guide to Frankenstein! SparkTeach Teacher's Handbook. Why does Frankenstein create the Monster? Why does the Monster want revenge? How does the Monster learn to speak and read? Why does Walton turn the ship around? Why is Walton trying to reach the North Pole? Why does Frankenstein run away from his Monster? Why does the Monster kill William? How does Frankenstein figure out that the Monster killed William?
Why does Frankenstein first agree to make his Monster a companion? Why do the townspeople accuse Frankenstein of murdering Clerval? The care for the poor and the uneducated was a theme in Mary Wollestonecraft's life.
Also, note that Elizabeth's mother and Mary's died during childbirth. While on a summer visit to Lake Como, near Milan, Italy, Caroline comes upon a poor family who has five children to feed and little income. Mary's own mother was a champion of the poor and this autobiographical concept of her own life made its way into this novel.
Caroline offers to take a girl child and adopt her for their own. The poor family reluctantly gives this adopted child, Elizabeth Lavenza, to the Frankenstein family. Elizabeth is almost the same age as Victor and described as "none could behold her without looking at her as a distinct species, as being heaven-sent, and bearing a celestial stamp in all her features.
Elizabeth is a beautiful and striking child. Elizabeth is seen not as a mere orphan, but as a child the Frankenstein's had wanted for their own. Victor sees Elizabeth as a "pretty present" from his parents.
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