 Now, when it comes to Mary Shelley's story, Frankenstein, the main character is Victor Frankenstein. Indeed, the novel is named after him. Now, please do bear in mind that a very common mistake is the creature is commonly misunderstood as being called Frankenstein and his creator has a different name. Always remember that the story is named after Victor Frankenstein and the creature that he makes never actually gets a name because he is so disgusted by what he creates that he runs away. He never even gives it the dignity of naming it, okay? Now, Victor Frankenstein, of course, is a very important character. He's almost used as a cautionary tale against having excessive human ambition, against also using science to almost play the role of God. Do you remember that during the Victorian era? There were lots of different advancements in science. Of course, the biggest scientific figure to arise out of the time was Charles Darwin, who basically refuted the idea of the creation myth, the idea of Genesis. People being created in, and the whole world being created in seven days. Charles Darwin actually came up with a scientific idea of evolution where we evolved over millennia. And of course, there were a lot of people at the time that Mary Shelley was writing who feared the notion that we as humans are overreaching, we're using science to almost discount the role of God and ourselves playing the role of God, okay? Now, as you can see behind me when it comes to understanding and writing about Victor Frankenstein's character, you need to be able to not only intricately understand his character, but of course, remember key quotations. So I've selected from the entire novel all the relevant quotations to remember for his character. Now, one thing to remember is the subheading of the official title of Frankenstein, written by Mary Shelley, is the modern Prometheus. Prometheus, bear in mind, is meant to represent Victor Frankenstein. In other words, Prometheus, hopefully you know the myth of Prometheus. He was a Titan. He stole fire from the gods. The gods were keeping knowledge and fire which represents knowledge from humans. Prometheus as the Titan decided to offer humans lots of gifts including the gift of fire. When Zeus, the god discovered what he did. He was so angry that he decided to punish Prometheus for basically giving this knowledge to human beings. This knowledge that should only be reserved for the gods. Therefore, Zeus decided that his eternal punishment would be to chain him to a rock whereby every morning an eagle would come in to eat his liver, a very painful process of eating his liver and then overnight his liver would grow back and basically perpetually every single day Prometheus would go through the painful process of his liver being eaten by an eagle and then growing back, okay? So basically this is just another way of stating that Victor Frankenstein, his punishment of course was his entire family was annihilated by his creation and it's because he used what should be seen as God's only reserve basically using science to create a new human being. So him creating the creature is similar to Prometheus giving fire to human beings. Hence for this, the creature punishing Victor Frankenstein was basically God's way of punishing him for giving this knowledge to other human beings, okay? Now the first quotation to bear in mind when it comes to Victor Frankenstein's character and of course him being incredibly ambitious is he explains that it was the secrets of heaven and earth ellipsis I desired to learn. Now here he is explaining to Captain Walton basically what drove him to create this creature, okay? He basically wanted to learn everything that is seen as a reserve of God. He basically wanted to learn how ultimately he could use science to create new life. Now the word level analysis you want to do here with this quotation is firstly the personification of secrets. So heaven and earth are personified as having their own secrets which should only be reserved for God but he's basically saying that he's going against this and learning these secrets. And then the other word level analysis you want to do is the mention of heaven and earth. This is what we call celestial language, okay? So basically Victor Frankenstein is confessing that he wanted to know the same stuff as God and essentially play the role of God by creating a new human being. The second quotation for Victor Frankenstein's character is when he is telling Captain Walton he recognizes then Walton the same ambition that he has and he tells him, learn from me how dangerous the acquirement of knowledge, okay? And of course here I've put ellipsis. Now the first thing to bear in mind in terms of analyzing this is remember that learn from me is an imperative sentence. Bear in mind that an imperative sentence is a sentence that states a direction or an action. So basically he's telling Captain Walton, make sure you learn from a cautionary tale. The second thing to do in terms of word level analysis is the mention of knowledge being dangerous. This is an adjective and finally of course you want to focus on the abstract now knowledge. This notion that actually contrary to what people think this notion of being enlightened, using science to discover ways in, you know in which human beings can basically play the role of God. Actually this is something that's been depicted by Victor Frankenstein as really dangerous. The third quotation to bear in mind for his character is when he talks about how he was really ambitious and he wanted to create a new species which would bless me as its creator and source, okay? So the quotation is a new species would bless me as its creator and source. Now of course here basically what he's confessing is he was really ambitious. He wanted to create almost like a new human race maybe a whole new species. And of course today when you think about things in science such as cloning, even artificial intelligence and robots, perhaps arguably we as humans are kind of creating our own new species. Is this perhaps something that's dangerous, okay? Now the word level analysis you want to do here with this quotation is firstly the semantic field of creation, species and creator, okay? That belongs to the semantic field of creation, essentially him playing the role of God. The other thing you want to focus on is the verb bless. Now here of course this is showing how human beings sometimes they're very ambitious but mainly not so much to advance everybody else. It's more to do with advancing just their own agenda than being really selfish and just basically wanting to be elevated, okay? So basically Victor Frankenstein is saying, look I just wanted to create new creation so that I could basically be a God. Not necessarily he wasn't creating this new creature so that maybe to cure something. It was just purely for his own selfish intentions. The other quotation to remember for Victor Frankenstein's character is when he is horrified when he's reflecting and he's being really honest in telling Captain Walton how basically he would go to graves, dig out all of these bodies, okay? So it's a really horrendous process of him digging up bodies, you know, taking arms, legs and so on to put the creature together and he states, who shall conceive the horrors of my secret toil as I dabbled among the unhallowed damps of the grave, okay? So he's basically saying look, I did some really horrible stuff to get all of these body parts together for this creature. Now, word of love analysis wise, you want to first focus on the pronoun who and of course this is also a relative pronoun. He's basically asking a rhetorical question, essentially saying, you know, who can imagine all the evils that I did in order to create this creature and to put it together. The other word of love analysis you want to do here is the word horrors and grave belong to the semantic field of death. Of course, what this is essentially showing is the more Victor Frankenstein was indulging his ambition, trying to discover the secrets of the world and of course the secrets of God and creating a new human being. He was taking himself closer and closer to his own premature death. The other word of love analysis you want to do here is the verb dabbled. This is when he's talking about, so dabbled right here. This is when he's talking about how he was basically on digging and unearthing graves, okay? And this notion on this verb of dabbling also has some sexual connotations. It's almost like he's raping the earth in order to pillage it and to take what he wants from it. The other word of love analysis you want to do here is the adjective unhallowed. Bear in mind that the word unhallowed means not consecrated, not holy. So in other words, he's basically saying people always see something like death and dead bodies are very sacred. And essentially what he was doing was basically something that was very evil, cruel and he was really removing the sacredness of these dead bodies, okay? So unhallowed means something that is not sacred. So he was doing a really evil and unsacred action. The other quotation for Victor Frankenstein's character is when he talks about him finally achieving his ambition, okay? The creature comes to life, he uses electricity to bring it to life and he states, I'd finished, the beauty of the dream had vanished. So here he realizes once the creature comes to life and he's horrified at what he sees, his whole dream has vanished. What he did is a mistake. And of course here, you want to focus on the idea of the beauty of the dream, his aspirations, his ambition. This is a metaphor for his ambition. The other quotation to bear in mind is when he's describing the creature, the filthy demon to whom I had given life. Now, the word of analysis here, of course, he's the creator, he's the mother and father. A mom and dad should not talk about their child in that way, okay? He's describing his child basically as a filthy demon. Of course, you want to focus on the adjective filthy and the hellish language, the hellish connotations tied to demon. He sees this creature as demonic. And of course, obviously his intentions of creating a new creature is demonic. Also, the other word, love analysis you want to do here is when he's talking about how he's given life to this creature, this is maternal language. And again, as a mother, it's wrong for a mother to run away from her child. She's created this creation, however he does so because he's so disgusted by what he sees. The other quotation to bear in mind is when we realize, of course, now the tables have turned, at first it was a creature that was pursuing him, was trying to find him, was trying to get him to really acknowledge his role as its creator. However, the creature ends up destroying all of Victor Frankenstein's family. And then Victor Frankenstein basically confesses, revenge kept me alive. It's basically what kept him going, trying to find this creature. Now the word love analysis you want to do here is abstract now in revenge. And of course, this is a declarative sentence. Now we can see here the Promethean story coming to full circle, this idea of God basically now punishing Victor Frankenstein for wanting to essentially use knowledge in order to make humans play the role of God to remove God from the equation in creating new life. And now it's humans that can use science, okay? I'm saying that because essentially Victor Frankenstein has gone from being really hopeful, wanting to have all of these secrets, having lots of ambition, to now becoming really destroyed by his anger and feeling of revenge towards his creation. So of course here, he wants to focus on the abstract now in revenge. And of course, this is a declarative sentence. And finally, the final quotation to bear in mind of Victor Frankenstein's character is when he cautions Captain Walton. He tells him, stop what you're doing. Stop being so ambitious. And he states, sorrow only increases with knowledge. So of course here, this is hyperbole. This is over exaggeration. He's basically saying the more you know, actually ignorance is bliss rather than you wanting to find new knowledge. Actually you should be happy with your limitations. Please stick to your limitations because sorrow only increases with knowledge, okay? So that's it. When it comes to Victor Frankenstein's character, the key words to remember the key quotations but equally how you can link him into this Promethean figure because do bear in mind that the subheading for this official title that Mary Shelley gave it is Frankenstein, colon, the modern Prometheus, okay? Thanks so much for listening and make sure you come back for my other character analysis videos. And of course, do make sure you download the model answers which I have prepared which answers past exam paper questions. Thanks so much for listening.