Playing God

In class we discussed the idea that Victor enjoys playing God. Some things we didn’t discuss in class that I thought was interesting was the aspect of his mothers death and his fear for Elizabeth’s death as well. Only now do I realize that Victor’s entire want and desire to create life, is not even so much to create life, but rather to prevent death. He only began his life in science after his mother passed. I didn’t really realize the selfishness that came with Victor’s creation until the end of the book, after he refused to take action for his mistakes, ignored the problem altogether, and on his deathbed watched his creation still alive. He made himself believe that he was to create something that would make the world better, but instead feared his creation and allowed it loose, forgetting the consequences. He is morally at war with himself, his selfishness constantly getting in the way of his actions. 

One thing I did question in the story is even though Victor created life, I wonder if he anticipated it staying alive. The organs he had harvested were old and already not in great shape. I wonder if ignoring the creation was because he thought it wouldn’t last long. He feared it so much that he didn’t want to deal with it, but also didn’t have enough hope in his creation to believe it would last. Not in any way defending his ignorance of the subject, I think it’s important to note that he was in fact a scientist and most likely had theories and hypotheses as to how long the creature would survive. It is not mentioned in the story but I think it’s something to think about. In class, we talked about Deism, a clockmaker God which I think is important to note in this instance. Setting up a universe creates the clock, winds it up, and lets it go even if he doesn’t know what the outcome will be.