George Levine's "Frankenstein and the Tradition of Realism"

1. Evil is a "deadly and fascinating mystery" coming from the minds of men as an inexplicable but "inescapable" facet of human goodness.
     * Levine remarks that it is very hard to locate in the text an area where evil is both obviously present and "largely inexplicable." For the reader, it would be a hard to say that Victor Frankenstein was acting completely evil when he decided to make the monster. His motives were complex, as he sought for glory, but also started to hate the deed he was doing.

2. Frankenstein's monster is tied to his creator, Victor, re-enacting in "mildly disguised ways," his creator's feelings and experiences.
     * In addition to Frankenstein and his monster sharing a connection, Frankenstein and Walton, and Frankenstein and Clerval have "redoublings" as characters. Frankenstein and his monster both share a sense of loneliness at some point in the novel, as Victor is creating the monster for one moment, and how the monster constantly seeks friendship. Walton and Frankenstein share theses traits which Levine lists, "ambition for glory, embarking on a voyage of scientific discovery, putting other to risk for his work, and isolation from the rest of mankind by his ambition." Levine points out that Clerval is also strikingly similar to Frankenstein as they both reject the "occupations of ordinary life," they both were softened "into gentleness and generosity by the influence of Elizabeth."

3. Family connections make life humanly possible, but when death in a family occurs, life is difficult to continue. The family is an aspect of one's self, and the self "cannot survive bereft of its family."
     * As Levine suggests, every death in the novel is family related, whether literally or figuratively. Once the monster kills Frankenstein's family members, it creates a extremely negative impact on Victor's life that it is hard for him to be happy in the world. When Clerval dies, for example, we see that Victor becomes mentally and physically ill almost to the point of death, just because he considered Clerval as part of his family. Levine also interesting states that when Frankenstein's monster learns of Victor's death, he goes to immolate himself as Victor was the monster's last link to any sort of family.

This information, especially the idea summarized in number 2, gave me a new point of view to look at Frankenstein with. I never realized how much the characters were similar to each other, and it makes me come to the conclusion that Mary Shelly put herself into many of the thoughts and emotions of the characters.