Why did Frankenstein make the monster?

Question

I never understood why Victor Frankenstein made the monster in the first place? Just to prove that he could? He is a genius in chemistry and philosophy so on the hindsight he could have applied his skill on something more appropriate. So why did Frankenstein make the monster? What let him to this fascination of life and death?

Answer 1

Victor Frankenstein did make the monster out of the fascination of life and death. Growing up in Geneva, he read works of the outdated and ancient alchemist, which doesn’t serve him any purpose while he attended Ingolstadt University later on. In this university, he took up modern science and masters them all within a few years, even more than what the professors could teach. With that skill equipped, he became engrossed with the idea of “secret of life” and discovered it, bringing the monster to life.

He slowly transformed over the course of the story, from an innocent young man that is amazed by what science could bring, into an arrogant, delusional man. It could be from the desire to obtain a power that rivaling that of the God, to create a new life, an endeavor that is shunned by the rest of the scientists. He also saw M. Krempe, a natural philosopher that Victor met in Ingolstadt, as a model scientist. To him, science is a mystery for all to probe, but once its secrets are discovered, it must then be guarded. So then he created the monster just to prove himself.

Answer 2

Why did Frankenstein make the monster? Short answer is out of arrogance and desire to have Godlike powers. He initially claimed to have created the monster for the better future of humankind, considers that he is doing the world a service by making a “human”. He is obsessed with the idea of life and death, he wants to cheat death and let himself consumed by his own ego in the process.

As he said it himself, “A new species would bless me as its creator and source; many happy and excellent natures would owe their being to me. I might in the process of time (although I now found it impossible) renew life where death had apparently devoted the body to corruption.”

That is his main motivation, success in the experiment would make him a human god and be praised by the things he created. He soon succeeded in reanimating the stitched up dead but was instantly repulsed by his own creation and the ugliness it embodies.