Chapters 4-6

Frankenstein - Mary Shelley

Obsession: the great destroyer of man. Shelley uses pages upon pages of description to allow the viewer a glimpse into the tortured mind of Victor as he deals with an obsession with his creation project. Although he succeeds in the end, the obsession has already wormed its way so deep into his mind that he can't escape it. Paranoia sets in and Victor experiences hallucinations. "I imagined that the monster seized me; I struggled furiously and fell down in a fit," (Shelley, 38). His obsession makes him literally sick and almost incapable of functioning. Moreso, he can't get past his obsession with the creation because it is everything he expected. He knew he would succeed scientifically, but his drive for discovering something never before discovered blinded him from thinking past succeeding in his creation project. He didn't (or maybe couldn't) think about the effects of what he was going to do with it once he had given life to the random body parts he had stitched together.