ShmoopTube

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We speak student!

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It's alive!

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[ sobbing ]

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In the name of God,

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now I know what it feels like to be God!

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Frankenstein a la Shmoop

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Getting to Know Victor

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Is Victor Frankenstein a Romantic hero?

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Yes. Short answer, yes.

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He is kind of the perfect Romantic hero.

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He is brooding.

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He's torn - "Did I do the right thing?

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Should I go back and help the monster?

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I don't know what to do."

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Totally torn. He's torn up about his family and everything.

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He also kind of has a

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healthy-ish sense of self-importance about him,

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which is another part of the Romantic hero.

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These guys have egos on them.

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This guy thought he could create life.

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He, as you said before, played God.

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He also embodies the Romantic hero

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in that he is inspired by nature.

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And he kind of has these --

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He describes them as these visions of nature

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where he goes out into it

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and he realizes the sublime.

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The sublime is -- It actually kind of has never really been defined.

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No one's ever agreed on what it means,

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but generally, it's that when you go out into nature

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and you get this awe-inspired feeling

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that you can't get anywhere else.

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That's the sublime.

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And that's what happens when Victor is out in nature

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and looking out at the bigger world.

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He gets this sense of it's greater than him.

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What is a Byronic hero?

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Romantic hero is kind of synonymous with Byronic hero.

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You remember that name.

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"Byron" from Lord Byron, who was actually the one

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who was like, "Hey, we should write ghost stores."

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So, thank you, Lord Byron, for Frankenstein.

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And we call it a Byronic hero

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because it's -- He kind of created this idea

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of the ideal Romantic hero.

01:52

Different from The Six Million Dollar Man, by the way,

01:55

- for those of you who remember that. - Bionic.

01:56

Keep going.

01:57

[ laughs ]

01:58

So, as I mentioned all these things before,

02:01

but who just basically sees the world as bigger than himself,

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but also is kind of rebellious,

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like I mentioned, arrogant, et cetera.

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You start to kind of add all of these pieces together,

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and you end up with Satan.

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So Romantic hero, Byronic hero, Satanic hero -

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all kind of synonymous.

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We'll talk a little bit more about that in later lessons

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of how, you know, we can see the kind of

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God/Adam/Satan situation playing out in Frankenstein.

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That actually makes a lot of sense because Dante

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would have been a big influence in these writers

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who are early 1800s.

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There's Shakespeare, Dante, Canterbury Tales.

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There wasn't a lexicography of literature

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the way there is today where you, you know,

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have tons of great writers to read.

02:47

Right, exactly. And it's actually, in Frankenstein,

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the particular influence is John Milton with Paradise Lost.

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And we'll talk about that a little bit more.

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How would you classify Victor Frankenstein?

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What is a Romantic hero?

03:03

What is a Byronic hero?

03:07

Not ironic hero, Byronic.

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