More Frankenstein Notes.

The monster decides he wants a mate. So Victor starts the task of building one, but upon realizing the potential danger, destroys his work. The monster then threatens to kill someone on his wedding night. Yet, at any one meeting the monster could have killed Victor. Why didn't he? Are Victor and the monster one and the same person? Is this all hallucination in the form of the monster? Is Victor a self-destructive person? A Jake Lamotta? And if you've never seen Raging Bull you probably won't get that reference.



If they are in fact the same person, why would Victor want to kill his loved ones? It seems as if Victor uses wretched to describe all that is bad in his life, or perhaps all that does not live up to a certain level of expectation, in regards to happiness for him. He also curiously used the word to describe his homestead after the devastation of his brother's death. Shelley seems to allow the character Walton to use this word when describing Victor upon seeing him in the Arctic, much in the same way Victor will continually describe himself throughout the rest of the novel.

The only other example of wretch being used to describe anything other than the monster or Victor himself is in the description of Victor's father's friend, Beaufort.

A wretch looks in the mirror and sees a wretch...





The "one" who achieves life, the "one" who prevents death..
Are the death's of Victor's family members and friend part of Victor's worry that they could potentially hurt him too much?

The Romantics valued Milton's Satan over Milton's God. Our tendency to sympathize with the villian, perhaps because we see so much of ourselves in him, certainly comes into play here.