Protagonist

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Key traits in Gothic Fiction Protagonists

A God Complex, A distressing event earlier in their life, A flaw in their moral compass, A moment of recognition or revelation.

Explain what is meant by each of the statements above and identify how Victor Frankenstein displays these common traits. Use quotations from the text to support your answers.K

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God Complex

“I will pioneer a new way, explore unknown powers, and unfold to the world the deepest mysteries of creation.”

Victors main tell of having a god complex is wanting to control life and death, in this case, create life. “I will pioneer a new way” “unfold to the world”, he wants it to be known that he was the one that did this, that went beyond the limits of science, he doesn’t wish to bring back past life, but to create a whole new one like God creates man.

Distressing Event

“It is so long before the mind can persuade itself that she whom we saw every day and whose very existence appeared a part of our own can have departed forever”

Victor grieves his mother and is shook by her death, although he tries not to show it, he says he has things to do and leaves for Ingolstadt “My mother was dead, but we had still duties which we ought to perform”

Moral Compass Flaw

“And when I received their cold answers and heard the harsh, unfeeling reasoning of these men, my purposed avowal died away on my lips. Thus I might proclaim myself a madman, but not revoke the sentence passed upon my wretched victim. She perished on the scaffold as a murderess!”

Moment of Revelation“

“I thought with a sensation of madness on my promise of creating another like to him, and trembling with passion, tore to pieces the thing on “which I was engaged”

“I do break my promise; never will I create another like yourself, equal in deformity and wickedness.”