"The volume of 'Plutarch's Lives' which I possessed contained the histories of the first founders of the ancient republics.
This book had a far different effect upon me from the 'Sorrows of Werther'.
I learned from Werther's imaginations despondency and gloom, but Plutarch taught me high thoughts.
He elevated me above the wretched sphere of my own reflections, to admire and love the heroes of past ages."
♪ Music: "Hypothetical" by Surasshu
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"Plutarch's Lives" is the book that makes Frankenstein's monster realize that there is more to life than his wretched state.
It's the book that lets him understand the potential for greatness in humanity, and thus in himself.
But Plutarch lent as many thoughts to Mary Shelley as to her fictional monster,
which is what we will principally be diving into today.
Plutarch is often considered the father of biography.
His book, "Lives" is a masterfully written comparison of ancient Greek and Roman figures.
But it's more than just a biography,
he makes it clear that he is as interested in the practical and ethical lessons that can be learned by studying these lives
as he is in the history itself,
and to help the reader draw these lessons he juxtaposes two famous people side by side, contrasting them with each other.
So he pairs Theseus, the mythic founder of Athens, with Romulus, the mythic founder of Rome,
and Caesar, the ambitious populist, with Cato, the moralizing elitist.
And this style of character juxtaposition is something that shows up time and again in Frankenstein.
It's something that serves to make you think, to force you to consider not just the story itself,
but the moral positions of its characters and the ideas that Shelley's trying to explore.
In fact, the book spends most of its pages side-by-siding different pairs of characters.
So let's take a look at some of those comparisons.
The first pair is Victor and Robert Walton, the young explorer who Victor tells his story to.
At the very outset of the book, Robert writes of his journey to the North Pole;
"What may not be expected in a country of eternal light?
I may there discover the wondrous power which attracts the needle and may regulate a thousand celestial observations,
that require only this voyage to render their seeming eccentricities consistent forever.
I shall satiate my ardent curiosity with the sight of a part of the world never before visited, and may tread a land never before imprinted by the foot of man.
These are my enticements, and they are sufficient to conquer all fear of danger or death, and to induce me to commence this laborious voyage
with the joy a child feels when he embarks in a little boat with his holiday mates on an expedition of discovery up his native river,
but supposing all of these conjectures to be false, you cannot contest the inestimable benefit
which I shall confer on all mankind.
To the last generation, by discovering a passage near the pole to those countries, to reach which at present so many months are requisite,
or by ascertaining the secret of the magnet, which if at all possible can only be affected by an undertaking such as mine."
This right here is the lifeblood of sci-fi.
You could replace the words "country of eternal light" with "unexplored planet", "the darkest corners of the net", or "alien ruins",
and you would have the motivation for a huge swath of the science fiction protagonists out there.
Perhaps more than that though, this passage gives one of the principal motivations for the sci-fi reader as well.
Whether it's the secrets of the spice, the mysterious nature of the zone, or the inner workings of Rama,
one of the reasons that sci-fi works is our drive as readers to explore and reveal the mysteries of worlds and ideas so fantastically removed from our own.
And besides laying down one of the foundational elements of sci-fi here,
Shelly is using this paragraph to prepare us to compare Robert to Victor, who Robert is about to haul off the Arctic ice in just a few pages time.
Both men are young, ambitious people of science who seek everlasting fame and glory...
...through unorthodox and drastic scientific endeavors, but in Victor we see all of these bright hopes dashed.
We see everything good about that earlier quote distorted, turned to ash...
...by Victor's lack of self-awareness, his cowardice, and his selfishness.
And these characters are made all the more similar by their upbringing.
Robert says of his youth, "My education was neglected yet I was passionately fond of reading."
...which parallels Victor's upbringing exactly,
Only, Victor later comes to curse the fact that nobody told him that the thoughts of Cornelius Agrippa were long ago disproven
In this, Shelley wants us both to admire the power of self-directed knowledge,
after all, both Victor and Robert yearn to do more than many traditionally educated men of their time
But also to see the hubris of self education
Because after all, had Robert not heard Victor's tale,
he too might have been destroyed by his own self assurance, his confidence in the knowledge that he had gained for himself,
unchecked by the humility that comes from asking others for knowledge
Victor is a cautionary tale for somebody like Robert.
Victor's story is a plea for self-reflection, moral courage, and introspection
And that plea is made clear by placing him next to a young man so like the man he once was not so very long ago
But that is not the only character juxtaposition in this book
The next one we clearly have to talk about is Victor and the monster
Because as Victor and the monster sit in a cave atop Montanvert, the monster telling Victor the story of his life
We are clearly intended to compare the book's two main characters
This moment highlights all of their strengths and weaknesses...
...and forces us to see that the character we've been set up to view as the protagonist...
...might not be the good guy
The monster, in telling his own tale...
...shows us a creature of genuine love who is inherently attracted to kindness and virtue
In Victor, we see the immediate rejection of the monster due to its looks...
...and less concern for the safety of his friends and relatives than with keeping his own secret...
...and avoiding public shame for what he's done
In the monster, we see a methodical and patient nature stretched to its breaking point
In Victor, we see a man driven by obsession without self-reflection or introspection
In the monster, we see an attempt at reconciliation, an offer a forgiveness
In Victor, we find that there will be none
But nothing in Frankenstein is ever quite that simple because at the root when all has been stripped away
These two figures both find one thing, the same thing, to cling to: vengeance
When Victor declares that he won't make the monster a mate...
...the monster responds, "Revenge remains--revenge, henceforth dearer than light or food!"
And when Victor finally talks of the monster to another human being...
...he only brings himself to do so because he had, as he says:
"Formed in my own heart a resolution to pursue my destroyer to death and this purpose quieted my agony and for an interval, reconciled me to life."
In the end, these two who are so dissimilar, who would like to think of themselves as the opposite of each other...
...fall into the same trap, and Shelley makes her point
It doesn't matter who we are. If we let ourselves be consumed by the desire for vengeance...
...petty or grand...
...we are all wretchedly the same
There are myriad other character juxtapositions that Shelley sets up in this book
Juxtapositions written to help us understand the characters and to reflect upon ourselves
And I don't have time to go over all of them here
But here's a brief list worth considering if you're looking to get a bit more out of this book
There's Victor and Clerval, there's Waldman and Krempe... and Victor for that matter
There's Justine and Victor. There's William and the monster
And of course, there's the cottagers and the monster
If you happen to be reading along with us and want to take a stab at analyzing those juxtapositions yourself, share it down below
I'd love to read it. We'll see you next week
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♪ Music: "Hypothetical" by Surasshu