Sunday, January 11, 2015

Before he leaves for the university, what does Victor hope to accomplish with his scientific studies?Frankenstein by Mary Shelley

As a youth, Victor Frankenstein has studied the works of
Agrippa, Magnus, and Paracelsus.  This study indicates Victor's interest in the natural
sciences and alchemy, an ancient science dealing with the transformation of base metals,
such as lead, into gold.  The alchemists sought cures for diseases as a way to prolong
life. Interestingly, in keeping with the Romantic tradition, alchemists held that
practitioners should be highly ethical, pure in spirit, and devoted to worthy
causes. 


However, after witnessing a most violent
thunderstorm when he is fifteen, Victor watches an old oak tree virtually disappear
after a most brillant flash of lightning; he is amazed by the power of this energy. When
a "man of great research" who is with them observes this, also, he explains to the
Frankensteins his theory on the subject of electricity and galvanism, a theory that
astonishes Victor to the point that he rejects what he has learned from Agrippa and the
others. "By one of those caprices of the mind," he says he took up mathematics and the
areas that pertain to this science.  However, "Destiny was too potent," and Victor's
interest in his experience of lightning and galvanism remain with
him.


At the university of Ingolstadt, Victor's statement to
M. Krempe, professor of natural philosphy that he has studied the alchemists is met with
contempt.  Krempe writes the titles of books dealing with natural philosophy and tells
Victor of M. Waldman, a fellow-proessor, who lectures upon chemistry.  When Victor
attends the lecture of M. Waldman, he feels that he has listened to fateful words as he
changes his mind about this goals and determines to become "a man of science" with
natural philosophy and chemistry as his occupations in life.  Thus, Victor has moved
from the Romanticist to the pure scientist and it is here that Shelley begins to develop
her theme of the natural in conflict with the scientific.

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