How does Mary Shelley represent Victor Frankenstein’s education in modern science?
You might:
Compare Victor’s scientific view of nature with Wordsworth’s attitude towards nature in “Tintern Abbey.”
Compare Victor’s education at University with the education that he receives in early life in Geneva.
This entry is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license.
Tedious. Victor Frankenstein went into college with imagination and wonderment. But he was quenched with the modern scientific process. He struggled and adapted but never gave up his fascination with the ancient studies. After Victor received guidance, he said, “I expressed myself in measured terms, with the modesty and deference due from a youth to his instructor.” Wordsworth attitude towards nature is full of admiration and longing. But while victor anticipated the potential of science, Wordsworth mourned for the nature he remembers.
Mary Shelley represent Victor Frankenstein’s education in modern science to convey to readers that you can’t get accuracy in in anything if you don’t apply science in it. In the second chapter Victor was reading some books and believed that they were telling the truth about what was going around in the world. His father later told him that the books were trash and if he wanted real answers he should rely on science. This relates to the modern world because people rely of science on problems that we have. For example, a large sum of people have chicken pox and you want to find a cure you can’t just put anything together and make a vaccine. Instead you have to run test and use science to find a solution to this problem.
I agree with this and love the use of the chicken pox example as I think that it is a great way to connect Frankenstein’s beliefs in science to the modern world.
I really like the example you used of chicken pox, connecting it to Victor’s beliefs in science, helping it come to life and connecting it to a virus in todays modern world.
Agree with the chicken pox example! If only we can convince some of the people who still relies on old eastern medicine to switch over to modern medicine.
Mary Shelley represent Victor Frankenstein’s education in modern science to show us how he uses science as a backbone of his life. From a young age Frankenstein learned to depend on science for any answer he would have because that was the only accurate thing he can rely on. Frankenstein went to college with an open mind, but soon realized that science was the simple solution to accurately solving any problem. In his early life we also see how his Dad promoted science as well and promoted that science is above all and is the only thing that is certain.
Mary Shelley represents Victor Frankenstein’s education in modern science to show us readers life can not exist without science and all aspects of it. Victor explains how science is uncontrollable, and how he is attracted to the power and potential that science brings him ever since a very young age. His dad was a big influence on his love for science, as he encouraged science into his life and emphasized that science is the above all answer to everything. Victor’s early life in Geneva is very similar to his education at University, because there, Victor obtains the desire to discover the secret life and what he learns is that he can do so with science, just like his father told him in his early life in Geneva. Further discovering, Victor did not stop with his hope and desire to unlock this secret life he thought he could create, gaining guidance along the way.
I agree that Victor’s father supported his interest in science, we can see this in the example of how once during a thunderstorm Victor was amazed and surprised at how an old oak tree was destroyed by lightning; since Victor questioned him about this phenomenon, his father decided to explain to Victor the power of electricity by building electrical machine. Thus, again emphasizing that through science it is possible to achieve an understanding of many issues and the acquisition of new knowledge.
Mary Shelley conveys to the readers that modern science is constantly evolving and that to fully understand it, you must go beyond what is shown to you. For example, Victor Frankenstein’s education in Geneva came from outdated texts while his education at university was more modern. Victor’s thirst and love for knowledge enabled him to go beyond his outdated knowledge and pursue his studies in the sciences at the university, which led to him earning recognition from his peers and teachers. He also went beyond his education at the university by making innovations, including improving some scientific tools and “bestowing animation upon lifeless matter”, emphasizing the theme of evolution in the science world.
The difference between his early education Geneva and the University is that, while he was young, he became interested in physical philosophy. A tree struck by lightning near his house caught the interest of Victor. He also stumbled on some books written by Cornelius Agrippa. Later on, when he went to university, he was told my his professors that the things he had read was a waste of time because the books were outdated. It is an university where he learned modern science and which eventually led to his interest in the “Mystery in the creation of life”.
I like your example of the tree struck by lightning. After the storm his father showed his some experiments to satisfy Victor’s curiosity in electricity, which I though showed what a great teacher his father was, even if he didn’t approve of his interest in the early philosophers.
In the first chapter, Mary gives a detailed description of Victor’s early education, which illustrates his interest in the scientific literature. His fascination with the ancient works of Agrippa, Magnus, Paracelsus finally inflamed interest in science, even though his father considered the information in these books outdated and useless, thereby trying to push Victor to study modern science. Victor’s entrance to the university is one of the highlights of Chapter 2, where he, inspired by the lectures of Professor Waldman, begins his path to modern scientific knowledge, which he later uses to implement his idea. From this, we can conclude that his early education was exclusively based on the theoretical part, and his studies at the university were accompanied by immersion in the study of the structure of the human body so much that he forgot about simple life needs. He becomes obsessed with his idea, which he will later regret.
Just like science is constantly changing, Victor Frankenstein’s education in modern science evolves as he ages. During his early life in Geneva he was educated by his father but his father dismissed his interest in the outdated principles of Agrippa, Paracelsus and Magnus as a “waste of time” and “sad trash.” When he reaches University, his views on modern science begin to change. His teacher and mentor, M. Waldman tells him “a man would make but a very sorry chemist, if he attended to that department of human knowledge alone” and under M. Waldman’s tutelage, Frankenstein drops his prejudices against modern science and studies natural philosophy more comprehensively.
In Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, she portrays Victor Frankenstein as an educated man. From the very beginning, she shows the readers that Victor’s beliefs, spurred on by his father in his earlier years, is that modern science is extremely important to life. In Geneva, where Victor lived as a child, Victor obsessed over learning the ‘truth.’ He wanted to get to the bottom of all of the mysteries life had to offer, and he realizes that the only way to do that was to be a man of science. Thus, Victor made sure to be as educated as possible, and went off to University to quench his thirst for more knowledge. Not only does Shelley portray Victor as an educated man, Shelley also shows her readers that Victor is an obsessional man. In Chapter Three, she writes as Victor to explain “Two years passed in this manner, during which I paid no visit to Geneva, but was engaged, heart and soul, in the pursuit of some discoveries, which I hoped to make” (Shelley, Ch 3). Victor is so obsessional with his studies that he does not care about anything else, besides what he is working on. This shows that Victor’s earlier childhood ways followed him to adulthood, and he is always trying to chase more knowledge.
Mary Shelley represent Victor’s education in modern science by displaying how the accuracy and understanding of everything around us has to have some elements of science. Victor is introduced to this concept when he is told by his father that the books he was reading were not telling him the truth about the world as he so thought, and that the only way to gain truthful knowledge is to base his education and reading in science. Readers are shown how in Victor’s early life he was intrigued by scientific literature. As he ages he beliefs and interests shifts and he becomes less focused on philosophy and believes those readings to be a waste of time.
Much like Wordsworth’s thoughts on nature noting the disparities from a child-like mind to that of an adult, Victor Frankenstein shows a transition from an experiential adolescent mind to one substantiated with science and modern philosophy. These realizations, both of Wordsworth and Frankenstein, might suggest one state of mind is better than another however it may be of worth to acknowledge the value of the process. Wordsworth shows an affinity for an innocent and pure mind whereas Frankenstein starts to favor the future and where a mind can go.