One element that I focused on while reading this book was the significance of education, how a person gets their knowledge, and what they choose to do with this knowledge. In Chapter 2, Volume 1, Victor Frankenstein tells us that chemistry became his passion, and he eventually "succeeded in discovering the cause of generation and life" (30). Aside from the fact that this seems impossible at the time, we are led to believe that Frankenstein is ahead of his time, and is an incredibly intelligent person. However, as he tells Captain Walton his story, he confides in him saying, "natural philosophy is the demon that has regulated my fate" (21). This incredibly powerful statement gives us a look into the horror and gruesome situation that Frankenstein is truly in; while he thought he was building something inspirational and futuristic, he quickly realizes soon after that he created a monster.
The monster, on the other hand, learns his methods of life just by observing a family in a home he comes upon, after his master Frankenstein abandons him. He tells Frankenstein that "I found that these people possessed a method of communicating their experiences and feelings to one another by articulate sounds" (74). Just like a child learning to speak for the first time, one needs a model to look up to, in order to mimic actions that will be acceptable in "normal" society. This is heavily studied in the Psychological field, as the model that a person looks up to has a huge impact on how the person develops and learns to interact with the outside world. Clearly, just by observing a group of humans and not being able to talk with them personally, greatly affects the development of the monster, as he never truly learns how to interact with people in a normal situation (especially since he just strangles people when he gets angry!).
Studying the differences between how these two characters learned and grew within their own lives (interestingly, not interacting with one another at all during this time) gives readers a great deal of insight into how the characters' develop and why their characters are the way they are.
Shannon, I like how in this post (and in class) you complicate ideas of "education" by looking seriously at how we *actually* learn. For the creature, he "learned" a lot about human behavior through "models"--the De Lacy's--but without interaction, what becomes of him? It would seem that actions and experience have a great deal to do with how we understand and learn to be in the world.
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