When choosing to tell a story, one must make many decisions in order to get their point across. Of the many choices that must be made, deciding on what point (or at what event) to start the story is arguably the most important. When telling his story of how he built his living human figure, Victor decides to start off by telling Robert about his upbringing in extreme detail. Victor includes his mother’s tremendous hardships and his father’s generosity in what seems to be irrelevant background information. As the story progresses, Victor mentions his family life, his mom’s death, and him traveling to study at Ingolstadt- providing details that would usually be of little relevance, but nonetheless do show Victor to have a rather routine upbringing.
Victor finally gets to the ‘meat and potatoes’ of his story towards the end of chapter four when he refers to himself as a mad scientist. When reading the second full paragraph of page 54, I couldn’t help but want to investigate a bit more into how and why Victor became so focused on his peculiar, unnatural work. Having grown up in a rather lavish setting, in a world constantly surrounded by his family, the idea of him secluding himself and completely changing his way of life seemed strange to me.
After some close reading, I found a few similarities in how he describes his life as a child with his life as an adult. When comparing the two, I realized that Victor is doing everything he can to get over the death of his mother. This is clearly shown based off of Victor’s medium of comparison- the natural around him.
Growing up, Victor says he always found himself spending time observing the natural world the he lived so close to. Victor describes his early life as one filled with peace, tranquility and a number of intimate relationships- an almost typical life for a little boy growing up in Geneva. He mentions how he always enjoyed watching the seasons change, and seemed to really love the natural processes of mother nature. Based off of his description at this point, to me, Victor seemed like the type of person who would accept things for what they are, and focus on studying their natural processes. In addition, being that Victor lived around nature, the setting seems to represent family to him.
After moving to Ingolstadt, however, Victor describes himself to be solely focused on his endeavors, and pays very little attention to the changing seasons around him. Victor says that he ignored the nature he once loved so much, and now only focused on his studies. He no longer cares about the natural world, but is now only focused on studying things that are not natural- building his own living being.
By analyzing how Victor perceives and relates to the natural world around him, we are provided with a good idea of how he has changed. For him, when avoiding nature and the natural process of things, he is avoiding and shielding himself from the world he grew up in- the world where he looses his mother.