Frankenstein

10 Pages 2553 Words

We felt that they were not the tyrants to rule our lot according to their caprice, but the agents and creators of all the many delights which we enjoyed. (page 37)

But even though he was growing up in what could be perceived as an idyllic family, he comments to Walton that, "My temper was sometimes violent and my passions vehement" (page 37). He was also prone to, "become sullen" (page 37), but Elizabeth seems always to have been ready to soothe and comfort him, to, “subdue", him, "to a semblance of her own gentleness." (page 37) , and whilst Clerval is enthusiastically learning all he could about life, and the world around him, Victor is interested only in "the physical secrets of the world." (page 37.
We can see that Victor is very much left to his own devices without much direction from his parents, when he retells the events when, at the age of thirteen he found a book by Cornelius Agrippa which sparked his interest in alchemy. Even he recognizes that his father should have given him more guidance when he tells how his father, "looked carelessly at the title page" (page 38), and merely dismissed the work as, "sad trash." (page 38) . He states that, if instead, his father had taken the time to explain that the material had been disproved, then, "It is even possible that the train of my ideas would never have received the fatal impulse that led to my ruin." (page 38-39). It seems that his father is not interested enough in what his son is studying, and takes little notice of what he is doing. Frankenstein says of himself, "I was to a great degree, self taught" (page 39), and that, My father was not scientific, and I was left to struggle with a child’s blindness added to a s!
tudent’s thirst for knowledge. (page 39).
So without any supervision, he engrosses himself in his studies, concentrating on the more altruistic side of alchemy - the secret of eternal life. Frankenstein’s first experience of real sadness comes when...