No Heroes in Shelley's FrankensteinVictor Frankenstein may be the main character in Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, but he's no hero . He is self-centered and unloving, and there is nothing heroic about him. There is a scene in chapter twenty-four where Captain Walton is confronted with his crew who must turn south and return home if the ice breaks and gives them passage. Frankenstein wakes up and finds the strength to argue to the captain that they should continue north, or suffer returning home "with the marks of disgrace marked on your brows." He obviously has other motivations and if he wasn't the eloquent and manipulative creature he so selfishly accuses of being his creature, he might not have so moved the captain and the men they are blind to the true source of his passion. Unfortunately for Frankenstein, the crew (even "moved") remains firm in its position. Yet the things he says in his motivational speech are prime examples of the extent to which Frankenstein is blind to his own flaws and yet jumps at the opportunity to harangue others. He is so self-centered that his lack of interaction and love for others after his experience is over would barely qualify him as a person, if the difference between being human and being a person is the ability to maintain relationships. relationships with others. A week later, Frankenstein, perhaps in an attempt to touch Walton's heart by making him seem like the virtuous patient his melodramatic presence might falsely suggest, states: "When moved by selfish and vicious motives , I asked you to undertake my unfinished work...", then: "Yet I cannot ask you to give up your country and your friends to accomplish this task." It is as if he were a sort of premature believer in reverse psychology It seems a bit of a stretch to interpret his indecisive nature at this moment as an illumination of the conflict brewing deep within him, when you consider that he has never really demonstrated one. genuine concern for someone close to him, let alone a man he has only just met and befriended to advance his cause He says: “...and I renew this. asks now, when I am driven only by reason and virtue", then almost in the same last breath: "I do not dare ask you to do what I think is right, because I can I am always induced into error by passion.