How Characters Determine Incidents and Outcomes
How Characters Determine Incidents and Outcomes
“Character determines incident. Incident illustrates character.” In other words, a person’s character will decide how he or she acts in certain situations, and a person’s actions will show aspects of their character. Using Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein as an example, Victor Frankenstein is a man whose character determines incidents and whose actions or incidents illustrate his character.
Character determines incident; Mental or moral constitution, a personality will settle or decide something that occurs. Victor Frankenstein is a selfish, conceited man. He never thinks about anyone else until his reputation maybe at stake, then he becomes concerned about the future of mankind. He does not think about the consequences of his work. How it will effect his family, friends, etc. This is how the monster came into being. Thoughtlessly in terms of what could happen, and selfishly. Victor believes that “a new species would bless [him] as its creator and source; many happy and excellent natures would owe their being to [him].” Victor only considers how he would be ‘blessed’ by a new species, and essentially how his creatures would praise him as a sort of god. He never thought about how others would be affected by the creatures, just himself. Even when the creature comes into being he only thinks about himself. “I considered the being whom I had cast among man kind, and endowed with the will and power to effect purposes of horror…nearly in the light of my own vampire, my own spirit let loose from the grave, and forced to destroy all that was dear to me.” Even when he is thinking about the destruction the monster is causing he talks about himself, his creation, all that is dear to him, not ‘the monster’, or the people he is actually killing.
Victor’s arrogance and lack of care for others is the cause of his creation. Victor Frankenstein’s selfish moral or mental constitution decides the making of the monster.
Incident illustrates character; something that occurs makes a person’s moral or mental constitution clear. Frankenstein’s reactions to the monster’s actions show the selfish aspects of Frankenstein’s character. “I paused and reflected on the story I had to tell…I well knew that if any other had communicated such a relation to me, I should have looked...