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Frankenstein: Getting to Know Victor 17657 Views
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Description:
Is Victor Frankenstein a: Romantic Hero? b: Byronic Hero? c: Satanic Hero? d: Guitar Hero? All of the above (but maybe not D…) We don’t know what any of these terms mean, so let’s just watch the video
Transcript
- 00:01
We speak student!
- 00:03
It's alive!
- 00:05
[ sobbing ]
- 00:06
In the name of God,
- 00:08
now I know what it feels like to be God!
Full Transcript
- 00:14
Frankenstein a la Shmoop
- 00:15
Getting to Know Victor
- 00:17
Is Victor Frankenstein a Romantic hero?
- 00:22
Yes. Short answer, yes.
- 00:24
He is kind of the perfect Romantic hero.
- 00:27
He is brooding.
- 00:29
He's torn - "Did I do the right thing?
- 00:32
Should I go back and help the monster?
- 00:34
I don't know what to do."
- 00:35
Totally torn. He's torn up about his family and everything.
- 00:38
He also kind of has a
- 00:40
healthy-ish sense of self-importance about him,
- 00:43
which is another part of the Romantic hero.
- 00:45
These guys have egos on them.
- 00:47
This guy thought he could create life.
- 00:49
He, as you said before, played God.
- 00:51
He also embodies the Romantic hero
- 00:54
in that he is inspired by nature.
- 00:57
And he kind of has these --
- 00:58
He describes them as these visions of nature
- 01:00
where he goes out into it
- 01:01
and he realizes the sublime.
- 01:04
The sublime is -- It actually kind of has never really been defined.
- 01:08
No one's ever agreed on what it means,
- 01:10
but generally, it's that when you go out into nature
- 01:13
and you get this awe-inspired feeling
- 01:16
that you can't get anywhere else.
- 01:18
That's the sublime.
- 01:19
And that's what happens when Victor is out in nature
- 01:22
and looking out at the bigger world.
- 01:25
He gets this sense of it's greater than him.
- 01:28
What is a Byronic hero?
- 01:31
Romantic hero is kind of synonymous with Byronic hero.
- 01:34
You remember that name.
- 01:36
"Byron" from Lord Byron, who was actually the one
- 01:38
who was like, "Hey, we should write ghost stores."
- 01:41
So, thank you, Lord Byron, for Frankenstein.
- 01:44
And we call it a Byronic hero
- 01:46
because it's -- He kind of created this idea
- 01:50
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,
- 02:05
but also is kind of rebellious,
- 02:08
like I mentioned, arrogant, et cetera.
- 02:10
You start to kind of add all of these pieces together,
- 02:13
and you end up with Satan.
- 02:15
So Romantic hero, Byronic hero, Satanic hero -
- 02:20
all kind of synonymous.
- 02:22
We'll talk a little bit more about that in later lessons
- 02:25
of how, you know, we can see the kind of
- 02:28
God/Adam/Satan situation playing out in Frankenstein.
- 02:32
That actually makes a lot of sense because Dante
- 02:34
would have been a big influence in these writers
- 02:36
who are early 1800s.
- 02:39
There's Shakespeare, Dante, Canterbury Tales.
- 02:42
There wasn't a lexicography of literature
- 02:44
the way there is today where you, you know,
- 02:45
have tons of great writers to read.
- 02:47
Right, exactly. And it's actually, in Frankenstein,
- 02:50
the particular influence is John Milton with Paradise Lost.
- 02:52
And we'll talk about that a little bit more.
- 02:57
How would you classify Victor Frankenstein?
- 03:01
What is a Romantic hero?
- 03:03
What is a Byronic hero?
- 03:07
Not ironic hero, Byronic.
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