Mary Shelley’s Self-help Guide To Life

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and enjoying life and
nature through Victor Frankenstein and his monster’s actions.
Mary Shelley begins by telling of the dangers in being overly-
ambitious through Victor's obsession with creating life. As Victor toils
on a physically and mentally laborious project, he completely neglects the
other significant areas of his life, such as his family and his friends.
Victor speaks of this when he states that his obsession "caused me to
forget those friends who were so many miles absent, and whom I had seen for
so long a time" (40). Soon, he begins to think of this project, which is
supposed to fill his emptiness, as an affliction or punishment. Even as he
is progressing in his creation, he realizes that "my enthusiasm was checked
by my anxiety, and I appeared rather like one doomed by slavery to toil in
the mines" (41). This obsession even begins to affect his health, as his
work leaves him with little time to sleep and exercise; obsession causes
Victor to be "oppressed by a ...

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Even as Victor travels with Clerval,
he confines the truth from his best friend and remains in a perpetual state
of disillusion. Victor says that "the only check to Henry's enjoyments was
my [his] sorrowful and dejected mind. I [he] tried to conceal this as much
as possible" (144). His concealing of the monster creates a barricade in
the two's camaraderie and eventually leads to the death of Clerval, who is
murdered unexpectedly by the monster. After observing the motionless body
of his best friend, Victor "could no longer support the agonies that I [he]
endured, and I [he] was carried out of the room in strong convulsions"
(161). The concealment of the monster continues to affect ...

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