Frankenstein What Is the Impact of Victor on Robert Walton?
- Submitted by: charlie
- Views: 1100
- Category: English: Novels
- Date Submitted: 03/29/2010 07:07 AM
- Pages: 2
- Report this Essay
‘I have lost all hopes of utility and glory’. What is the impact of Victor on Robert? Is it true that Robert’s narration of Victor is romanticised?
After Victor has finished describing his story, Robert reveals how he fears mutiny from the sailors of his vessel. They approach him and say that though they are stuck in ice, if there is a path to escape it they want to return to England rather than to continue on his journey. The reader presumes that after all that Robert has learned of the dangers of intelligence and curiosity he would revise his mission to the north. However, he is regretful that his journey will not reach its end, and he hesitates before replying.
Victor instead steps forward, and tells that sailors that they should reconsider and return to their families in England with pride, rather than in disgrace. He accuses them of being cowardly, and of looking at a ‘glorious expedition’ as only a journey of danger and terror. Even after he has said this the sailors urge Walton to return home and he agrees reluctantly, saying he had ‘lost all hopes of utility and glory’.
Both Walton and Victor, despite their plights, still hold the passion to invent and discover. The sailors do not, and hold their own mortality over glory.
Victor does not want Walton to repeat the mistakes that he made, despite the fact that he gave that impressionable speech.
Romanticism involves spontaneity and acting on impulse from emotions rather than from common sense. Both Walton and Victor are romantic adventurers, and despite the fact that Victor has done many bad things in his life, Walton still respects him and holds him as a friend. Walton is very passionate in his description to Margaret of what Victor had told him, saying he told it with ‘fine and lovely eyes’ and uses metaphors for his speech such as his agitation was like a ‘volcano bursting forth’.
After Victor has finished describing his story, Robert reveals how he fears mutiny from the sailors of his vessel. They approach him and say that though they are stuck in ice, if there is a path to escape it they want to return to England rather than to continue on his journey. The reader presumes that after all that Robert has learned of the dangers of intelligence and curiosity he would revise his mission to the north. However, he is regretful that his journey will not reach its end, and he hesitates before replying.
Victor instead steps forward, and tells that sailors that they should reconsider and return to their families in England with pride, rather than in disgrace. He accuses them of being cowardly, and of looking at a ‘glorious expedition’ as only a journey of danger and terror. Even after he has said this the sailors urge Walton to return home and he agrees reluctantly, saying he had ‘lost all hopes of utility and glory’.
Both Walton and Victor, despite their plights, still hold the passion to invent and discover. The sailors do not, and hold their own mortality over glory.
Victor does not want Walton to repeat the mistakes that he made, despite the fact that he gave that impressionable speech.
Romanticism involves spontaneity and acting on impulse from emotions rather than from common sense. Both Walton and Victor are romantic adventurers, and despite the fact that Victor has done many bad things in his life, Walton still respects him and holds him as a friend. Walton is very passionate in his description to Margaret of what Victor had told him, saying he told it with ‘fine and lovely eyes’ and uses metaphors for his speech such as his agitation was like a ‘volcano bursting forth’.