Similarities Between Victor And Henry In Frankenstein

At the young age of nineteen, Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin Shelley wrote a novel that would shake the world. Frankenstein confronts many deep emotional questions via the trials and tragedies of the novel’s protagonist, Victor Frankenstein. Shelley fabricated the world of Frankenstein to be full of characters that each would be a driving force in the novel. Shelley’s life was riddled with scandals and tragedies, and she would use her writing to vent her emotions that she had kept to herself. Unconsciously, Shelley encoded her pain and anger into her novel as it addressed some of life’s darkest questions. The parallels between her own life incidents and those that occur in the novel are often quite similar, which shows how she took parts of her …show more content…
Love of family, love of friends, and romantic love. In the beginning of the novel, Victor had all of that. His family loved and supported him, he had his best friend Henry Clerval, and he had Elizabeth. By the end, due to Victor’s actions, he would lose it all. Victor said in of his youth, “I feel pleasure in dwelling on the recollections of childhood, before misfortune had tainted my mind,” (Shelley 21.) There are strong themes of friendship found in the relationship between Victor and Henry. Henry is very similar to Victor, but does not share Victor’s passion for the dark scientists. Henry is the man Victor could have been, but due to Victor’s lust for knowledge, Henry is murdered. (Dussinger). Elizabeth is also killed because of Victors actions, which finally breaks Victor. The Creature knows that the way to make a person suffer most is not to kill them, but to take all they hold dear and make them live in a world without happiness. Victor assumes the Creature’s threat is aimed at him, but actually it was aimed at his happiness. Perhaps Mary was trying to show what damage a relationship (the Creature) can cause if the person (Victor) who created it does not take …show more content…
It is so much more than the films that have been made and what pop culture has made it out to be. To fully appreciate the depth and wisdom behind this novel, you have to look at it through the eyes of a tragedy-stricken girl. Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein to express dark emotions such a young person should never have to face. She unraveled what it means to be a hero and tore away the masculine shroud that hides suffering and destruction. (Pon 42). Victor Frankenstein is so much more than a knowledge lusting scientist, and the Creature is more than a mindless beast. Mary Shelley is trying to tell us something, but to fully understand what she wrote in Frankenstein, you have to know her