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Chapter 2
The world was to me a secret which I desired to divine.
In this Chapter 2 quote, Frankenstein explains why science was so appealing to him. He is driven by a desire to discover secrets, but that is not the only way in which he is a secretive character. He works to create the monster in secret, and he doesn’t tell anyone about the monster until he is on his deathbed. At least two of the monster’s victims, Justine and Elizabeth, might have lived if Frankenstein had not kept the monster’s existence a secret.
Read more about The Destructive Nature of Secrecy as a theme.
Chapter 4
Unless I had been animated by an almost supernatural enthusiasm, my application to this study would have been irksome and almost intolerable.
Throughout his story, Frankenstein tries to persuade Walton that he is not to blame for the monster’s crimes. In this Chapter 4 quote, he insists that he thought he was doing the right thing when he created the monster, but sometimes he seems to realize that his argument is not entirely convincing. In order to explain the nights he spent in “vaults and charnel-houses,” Frankenstein suggests that there was something “supernatural” about his enthusiasm for studying corpses. In other words, it wasn’t his fault.
A new species would bless me as its creator and source; many happy and excellent natures would owe their being to me. No father could claim the gratitude of his child so completely as I should deserve theirs.
Before creating the monster, Frankenstein imagines that his relationship with the monster will be even closer than the relationship of father and child. This Chapter 4 quote suggests that Frankenstein knew he was doing something terrible when he abandoned the monster. However, he later refuses to apologize to the monster or to admit responsibility for the monster’s suffering.
Read more about Family & the Role of Parental Responsibility as a theme.
‘I know that while you are pleased with yourself, you will think of us with affection, and we shall hear regularly from you. You must pardon me if I regard any interruption in your correspondence as a proof that your other duties are equally neglected.’
In Chapter 4, Victor recalls his father’s words warning him that if he grows distant from his family, he should take it as a sign that he’s not happy with himself. It could be argued that here, the novel suggests that the root of Victor’s alienation is self-hatred (despite his words which often seem to suggest that, if anything, he is overly pleased with himself). Victor’s alienation is something he shares with the monster, who is also alone, and who unambiguously experiences self-hatred.
Read more about The Consequences of Alienation as a theme.
Chapter 9
Sometimes I could cope with the sullen despair that overwhelmed me, but sometimes the whirlwind passions of my soul drove me to seek, by bodily exercise and by change of place, some relief from my intolerable sensations. It was during an access of this kind that I suddenly left my home, and bending my steps towards the near Alpine valleys, sought in the magnificence, the eternity of such scenes, to forget myself and my ephemeral, because human, sorrows.
Victor loves the natural world and often finds comfort in the beauty of nature. It is one of the ironies of the novel, however, that Victor took this love of the natural world too far when it inspired him in Chapter 4 to try to discover the secrets of life and death by creating the monster in Chapter 5. This is echoed in Chapters 9 and 10 when Victor’s trip through the Alpine valleys literally goes too far, and he ends up in a “sea of ice” where the monster can ambush him.
Read more about Sublime Nature as a theme.
Chapter 10
There can be no community between you and me; we are enemies.
In Chapter 10, Frankenstein’s insistence that there “can be no community” between him and the monster is highly ironic: in a sense, the monster and Frankenstein are the only community either of them has. The monster is the only person who knows Frankenstein’s secret, and Frankenstein is the only person who will listen to the monster’s story. The setting underscores this point: they are alone in the mountains, far from any other people.
Chapter 23
As the memory of past misfortunes pressed upon me, I began to reflect upon their cause—the monster whom I had created, the miserable daemon whom I had sent abroad into the world.
Frankenstein is determined to argue that the monster is responsible for all the novel’s suffering. However, even as he makes this claim in Chapter 23, he undermines it, acknowledging that the “cause” of his misfortunes is something he himself “created.”
Read more about Frankenstein as the protagonist of the novel.
Walton, in Continuation
[H]e believes that when in dreams he holds converse with his friends and derives from that communion consolation for his miseries or excitements to his vengeance, that they are not the creations of his fancy, but the beings themselves who visit him from the regions of a remote world. This faith gives a solemnity to his reveries that render them to me almost as imposing and interesting as truth.
In the book’s final chapter (“Walton, in Continuation”) Walton writes to his sister about Victor after he has finished telling the main part of his story and is nearing death. Walton says that Frankenstein believes his dead friends talk to him in his dreams. This underlines one of the novel’s central themes: the importance of having companions. Frankenstein cannot bear being without his now dead family and friends; it drives him to delirium.
All my speculations and hopes are as nothing, and like the archangel who aspired to omnipotence, I am chained in an eternal hell.
In the chapter called “Walton, in Continuation,” Victor compares himself to Satan in Milton’s Paradise Lost. He recognizes that, like Satan, he is guilty of too much ambition. Ambition is Victor’s fatal flaw, but he cannot give it up. Even his determination to destroy the monster at all costs—especially the way he builds it up as a kind of noble quest—is a kind of ambition. By comparing himself to Satan, Victor also reveals a similarity to the monster, who often compares himself to Satan.
Read more about The Consequences of Ambition as a theme.
Yet why do I say this? I have myself been blasted in these hopes, yet another may succeed.
These are Victor’s last words. Throughout his conversations with Walton, he has warned Walton about the dangers of ambition, but at the last moment he appears to change his mind. This suggests that he hasn’t really learned or changed as a result of his experiences.
Read more about whether Victor Frankenstein learns from his mistakes.
