Consider Victor Frankenstein’s childhood and relationship with his parents. Reflect on what kind of father you would expect him to become because of the early experiences that he has.

Notable Quotes:

…their child, the innocent and helpless creature bestowed on them by Heaven, whom to bring up to good, and whose future lot was in their hands to direct happiness or misery, according as they fulfilled their duties towards me. With this deep consciousness of what they owed towards the being to which they had given life…”

“…with all my ardour, I was capable of a more intense application and was more deeply smitten with the thirst for knowledge.”

“It was the secrets of heaven and earth that I desired to learn.”

“…I also record those events which led, by insensible steps to my tale of misery: for when I would account to myself for the birth of that passion, which afterwards ruled my destiny, I find it arise, like a mountain river, from ignoble and almost forgotten sources: but swelling as it proceeded, it became the torrent which, in its course, has swept away all my hopes and joys.”

“…but what glory would attend the discovery, if I could banish disease from the human frame and render man invulnerable to any but a violent death.”

“Learn from me…how dangerous is the acquirement of knowledge and how much happier that man is who believes his native town to be the world, than he who aspires to be greater than his nature will allow.”

Victor Frankenstein is introduced as a very ambitious character with a strong sense of self and a knowledge of what he really wants in the world. His father is described as a charitable man with a love for those around him. He wanted the best for Victor and his other children.