Secret to Life.

[ThatGuyTravis]

I wanna know what you guys think Victors "secret to life" is? I am curious in theorys that you guys have come up with.

[marianf]

I'm only a few chapters into Frankenstein, so I'm not sure if my theory would be accurate. However, I believe (with my knowledge so far of the novel) that Victor's "secret to life" would have to be his desire for knowledge. In Chapter 2 when he describes Elizabeth and himself, he says, "... I was capable of a more intense application and was more deeply smitten with the thirst for knowledge" (22). Just like Faust, Victor has this want for knowledge of the world around him: "The world was to me a secret which I desired to divine" (22).

[mscolansfav]

I think that Victor's secret of life definitely has some part to do with a quest for infinite knowledge but i think it is much more complicated then this. It is easy to just say his entire life is devoted to knowledge with the monster but i believe it goes much deeper then this. I think Victor's secret of life is more like a warning to all human kind. This goes to show that somethings are best left undiscovered. Also, i think Shelley hints at the corruption of society and the negative effects it can have on people. Shelley's life was known for having a plethora of troubles and hardships and i definitely think that this bled into her writing. that's just what i think

[apothecary]

If you mean the creation of life, I assume it was galvinism. If you are interested in the vitality debate in the early nineteenth century some good starting points are John Hunter and John Abernethy's theories of life and the divine spark, compared to William Lawrence's controversial view of a living body simply being the sum of its chemical parts.