Shelley shows how unchecked ambition and a desire for personal glory leads to Victor's unethical actions and ultimate ruin. He tells Captain Walton,
Learn from me, if not by my precepts, at least by my example, how dangerous is the acquirement of knowledge and how much happier that man is who believes his native town to be the world, than he who aspires to become greater than his nature will allow.
Victor describes knowledge as something that can be dangerous, even comparing it in one moment to a "serpent to sting [him]," because he feels that his education and knowledge is what eventually led to his downfall. He'd hoped to create a "new species" that would "bless [him] as its creator and source." He dreams that
No father could claim the gratitude of his child so completely as [he] should deserve theirs.
He becomes too proud, and his pride runs away with him—he thinks that he can play God and create a person who is, essentially, superhuman: taller, faster, stronger, and more beautiful than regular people. Therefore, he actually believes that he can create human beings even better than God does. Such pride contributes to his ultimate ruin and the deaths of almost all his family and friends.
Mary Shelley presents a warning to readers about the pitfalls of pride and overreach by presenting us with the tortured figure of Victor Frankenstein. Frankenstein, his soul tormented when we first meet him, is involved in an epic chase after a monster who has killed his friends, family members, and fiancee.
As the story unfolds, we learn of Frankenstein's quest to create human life out of dead body parts. The story shows Frankenstein to have had an obsessive desire to make new life. This quest isolates him and threatens to ruin his health, as he works night and day. He wants to impress the world by achieving a new and astonishing scientific feat. Yet when he does so, he is appalled at the ugliness of what he has created and rejects his creature, who responds in pain by killing those Frankenstein most loves.
The story was written during a period of rapid scientific and technological advancement in Europe and warns of the consequences when humans become too proud of their own powers and try to play God.
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