Victor is (as we have hashed over in class on multiple occasions) a self-involved, self-serving egotist intent on realizing his genius in a Great way - as in, he wants to be thought of as Great, on a level with Shakespeare and Julius Caesar. To do so, he is willing to put everything at risk - even the things and people he loves. He justifies this with monologues on Fate, Destiny, and a Tragic Flaw - the similarities between Prince Hamlet and himself are remarkable. While he does express enormous guilt and responsibility for the consequences of his reckless experiment, he terms that guilt and responsibility as things that were predestined for him. He was meant to suffer (like Jesus Christ). His enormous genius could only bring either greatness or destruction on him. To listen to him speak is to ignore all the times he had to pause and reflect on whether or not what he was doing was in his best interest. There were plenty of red flags, and even more opportunities to stop and consider what he was doing, but he ignored them. Even at the end of the novel he conducts himself, not like a man who failed because of plain human stupidity, but like a disgraced emperor.
Which brings me to the main point - not only does Victor behave like dethroned royalty, but Walton encourages and engages in supporting this fallacy. He, also, wants to be Great, an equal to Shakespeare, etc. He respects grand feats of intelligence and ability, and despite the horror of the experiment Victor's monster is a feat Walton respects. He is currently pursuing a hopeless, dangerous career of his own purely because he burns to do something big, something no one's attempted and succeeded at - he wants to clear the path first. And all during the telling of the story, Walton appears to worship Victor, as a close friend and like mind. Walton submits to a kind of hero worship. The two are like the much-repeated "two peas in a pod".
No comments:
Post a Comment