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  • Essay / Dr. Frankenstein as a Personification of His Environment

    In Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, Shelley illustrates how the environment tears the life of a scientist, Victor Frankenstein, apart. Victor's generation, a creature of dead matter, apparently considers him an immoral man. However, we often forget that Victor is simply a product of his environment. The social and scientific environment in which Victor evolves induces his desire to create the monster and forces him to continue its construction. The only environment that comforts Victor is that of nature and his family. By revealing the manipulative side of society, Shelley shows that although the monster is Victor's creation, Victor is also the creation of his own environment. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get an original essay In Victor's world, the value society places on science ultimately drives his obsessive behavior. Throughout his life, people condition Victor to abandon his interest in old philosophies for the more important concepts of natural philosophy. This scientific society first comes to Victor through his father. Even though Victor's father has no personal experience with science, he knows that these concepts are important to society. Victor explains that his “family was not scientific” (23), but his father “nevertheless expressed the wish that [Victor] take a course in natural philosophy” (25). His father is also aware that the works of the philosophers Victor first reads are obsolete. When Victor attempts to share his interest in Agrippa's philosophy, his father “looks casually at the title page of the book and says, 'Ah! Cornelius Agrippa! My dear Victor, don’t waste your time on this; it’s a sad piece of trash” (23). In this way, Victor's father discourages interest in philosophy in order to encourage interest in science – the subject that society considers most important. After entering college, Victor's teachers continue to condition Victor for the unnatural act he ultimately commits. Professor M. Krempe belittles the works of ancient philosophers from the first time he meets Victor in order to abolish any interest Victor may still have in their works. After Victor confesses to reading ancient philosophy, Krempe responds: "'Every minute...every moment you wasted on those books is completely and utterly wasted. You have loaded your memory with exploded systems and useless names” (29). Later, Professor M. Waldman leads Victor to believe that science is the most rewarding study by asserting that natural philosophers “have needed new and almost unlimited powers; [that] they can command the thunders of heaven, imitate the earthquake, and even mock the invisible world with its own shadows” (31). With this statement, Waldman speaks of the natural philosophers as if they were God and thus arouses a feeling of respect in Victor. Victor expresses his new enthusiasm for science after his interview with Waldman when he says: "From that day on, natural philosophy, and especially chemistry, in the broadest sense of the term, became almost my only occupation." (32). Victor's father and his teachers extinguish his interest in early philosophers because society considers them rudimentary and claims that ideas of natural philosophy are more important. Once Victor begins his studies, we can see how society's wishes begin to take over his life. Victor's obsession with his research proves that the influence he receives fromhis father and his teachers work. He explains how once arbitrary and monotonous tasks become exciting and, as a result, "the more fully [he] became interested in science, the more [he] pursued it exclusively for its own sake" (32). As his research continues, science slowly begins to take control of his life, so much so that his research, "which at first was a matter of duty and resolve, now becomes so ardent and eager that the stars often disappeared in the morning light while I was still busy in my laboratory” (32). In Victor's world, science is a drug that feeds on itself. He states that: “Only those who have experienced it can understand the attractions of science. In other studies you go as far as others have gone before you, and there is nothing more to know; but in a scientific quest, there is continually room for discovery and wonder” (33). Therefore, once society sucks Victor into scientific research, it is almost impossible for him to escape. The influence of his father and his teachers allows Victor to follow a science-obsessed society on a path to destruction. Victor, himself, argues that the power a scientific society holds over man is responsible for many of the world's ills, not just his creature. . He admits that his intoxication is unnatural: "If the study to which you devote yourself has a tendency to weaken your affections and destroy your taste for those simple pleasures with which no alloy can mix, then this study is certainly illegal , that is to say, does not suit the human mind” (38). Furthermore, he claims that this unnatural state of mind is ruining men all over the world. According to Victor, “if no man allowed any activity to disturb the tranquility of his domestic affections, Greece had not been enslaved; Caesar would have spared his country; America would have been discovered more gradually; and the empires of Mexico and Peru had not been destroyed” (38). Victor is able to place the blame on society for his creature by shedding light on other evils in the world that stem from the same drunkenness that Victor felt during his research. This socially induced obsession causes Victor to isolate himself from everyone else - an isolation. this only makes Victor more troubled and sickly. Before the scientific environment fully absorbs Victor, he considers returning home. Victor states that “[He] thought about returning to [his] friends and [his] hometown, when an incident occurred that prolonged [his] stay” (33). This “incident” demonstrates Victor’s new interest in the human body. Additionally, before leaving for college, Victor promises his father that he will write to him often, but Victor ends up becoming so involved in his research that he knowingly abandons his family. Victor says: “So I knew well what my father’s feelings would be; but I could not tear my thoughts away from my employment, repugnant in itself, but which had taken an irresistible hold on my imagination” (37). Eventually, Victor's imprisonment worsens his troubled mind and deteriorates his health. After all the time Victor spends with the creature, "[his] cheek had grown pale from study, and [his] person had become emaciated from confinement" (36). Because society tells Victor to devote all his efforts to building the creature, Victor must isolate himself from society and bring illness upon himself. Unlike society's unnatural technology making Victor sick, the natural environment soothes his troubled state. During his illness, he noticed his inability to identify with the things that.