I replied in the affirmative. “Every minute,” continued M. Krempe with warmth, “every instant that you have wasted on those books is utterly and entirely lost. You have burdened your memory with exploded systems and useless names. Good god! In what desert land have you lived, where no one was kind enough to inform you that these fancies which you have so greedily imbibed are thousands of years old and musty as they are ancient? I little expected, in this enlightened and scientific age, to find a disciple of Albertus Magnus and Paracelsus. My dear sir, you must begin your studies entirely anew.”
Shelley, pp. 51
Comments or Connections
For context of the passage, the man M. Krempe is a professor of philosophy at the university in Ingolstadt. He is speaking to Frankenstein, who has just divulged that he had previously been studying philosophers Albert Magnus and Paracelsus, men who specialized in alchemy and the pursuit of the elixir of life. These philosophers are very outdated for the time, so M. Krempe is astounded that anyone still follows their teachings, essentially blowing off Frankenstein’s beliefs as silly and antiquated. In his storytelling, Frankenstein paints this as the divine work of chance or ‘the angel of destruction’ which would ultimately lead him to create his monster. It is later in this chapter, when a chemistry professor speaks with him about the same philosophers, that Frankenstein’s curiosity truly takes off.
In my opinion, Frankenstein places too much blame on those around him for his actions. His father’s and professors’ comments didn’t make him create a monster, he did that. He could have stopped at any point in the process, but he seemed obsessed. That obsession, I believe, is his burden alone, not the people around him.
Question(s):
How much responsibility for the individual lies in the public?
