“The world was to me a secret, which I desired to discover […]”

The Need for Purpose drives Frankenstein not only to educate himself but to achieve something no one else has before. In his youth, he is full of curiosity and ambition and views the whole world as a mystery worth discovering. Frankenstein’s attitude toward scientific inquiry for its own sake changes as he learns The Cost of Unthinking Ambition.

“As I stood at the door, on a sudden I beheld a stream of fire issue from an old and beautiful oak, which stood about twenty yards from our house; and so soon as the dazzling light vanished, the oak had disappeared, and nothing remained but a blasted stump. I never beheld anything so utterly destroyed”

Light and darkness strike a complex contrast throughout the story, and the fire of the oak tree foreshadows Frankenstein’s use of lightning to give life to his creation, as well as the fire that burns within the monster. Impressed by the lightning’s power, Frankenstein does not heed the ominous warning of the tree’s destruction, which Gris Grimly underscores with an illustration of a smoking stump.

“The more fully I entered into the science, the more exclusively I pursued it for its own sake. That application now became so ardent and eager, that the stars often disappeared in the light of morning whilst I was yet engaged in my laboratory.”

Frankenstein does not learn the error of his ways until it is too late, immersing himself in his work in his ambition to master life and death. As he neglects his loved ones, he also fails to take care of himself—he already looks disheveled in the illustration that accompanies this passage—and obsession drives him to illness and eventual death.