Effect Of The Three Books On The Creature In Mary Shelley's Frankenstein
...leathern portmanteau after he heard the De Lacey story. In the bag were three books, which he read to further his education. These books were The Sorrows of Werter by Goethe, a section of Plutarch's Lives [of Ancient Greeks and Romans] by Plutarch, and Paradise Lost by John Milton. Each one of these books inspired and instructed the creature in its own way. The Sorrows of Werter taught the creature "despondency and gloom" and inspired him to commit suicide, Plutarch's Lives taught the creature "high thoughts" and inspired his hope for civilization, and Paradise Lost taught him about God warring with his creation, which affected him the most and inspired his revenge for Victor. The reading appears to elevate his state of misery.
The Sorrows of Werter is a novel written by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe written originally in German as Die Leiden des jungen Werther (The Sorrows of Young Werter). It is a story about a boy named Werter who falls in love with a girl named Lotte. However, she was already engaged to an older man named Albert and Werter was heartbroken. Lotte eventually marries Albert and in the end, Werter realizes that one of the three must die and he shoots himself with a hunting pistol. The creature finds great interest in the book, which is apparent with what he stated in Chapter 15.
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I found in it a never-ending source of speculation and astonishment. The gentle and domestic manners it described, combined with lofty sentiments and feelings, which had for their object something out of self, accorded well with my experience among my protectors, and with the wants which were forever alive in my own bosom
. The disquisitions upon death and suicide were calculated to fill me with wonder. I did not pretend to enter into the merits of the case, yet I inclined towards the opinions of the hero, whose extinction I wept, without precisely understanding it."...
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