The search for nothing in Mary Shelley's FrankensteinThe last chapter of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein concludes Victor Frankenstein's search for the monster. His obsession with finding the unfortunate man takes him to the most desolate territories in the world, guided by the clues left by the monster himself. The reason for his quest goes beyond the desire for revenge, but is shaped by Victor's primal need to become his ideal self. The monster, in which Victor spent his most intense hours of isolated contemplation, represents, if not the unconscious, then at least an outlet and a means for the realization of Victor's repressed dark desires. Victor is therefore determined to achieve "that completeness which was devastated instantly and forever in the formative stages of his mental growth, particularly in the mirror stage". (Reed 64) In the mirror phase, the spark of knowledge, which will ultimately mark the splitting of the self, pervades the child when, still in a state of dependence, he identifies his reflection in the mirror. The child is then left at the mercy of the gigantic and diabolical awareness that will never again be able to unite with the ideal Ego or, as Jacques Lacan calls it, with the Gestalt. Gestalt represents the "rigid structure of the entire mental development of the subject", an ideal goal that cannot be reached, and the subject "will only come together asymptoticly with the becoming of the subject". That is to say that the moment the child sees his reflection in the mirror, he is condemned by the eternal distance from the exemplary self, from the fully functioning and accessible mind, and can only hope to get infinitely closer to becoming one, Lacan emphasizes the impossibility of b. ..... middle of paper ...... into thin air. Works Cited and Consulted Bloom, Frankenstein by Harold Mary Shelly, New York: Chelsea, 1987. Botting, Fred Frankenstein, criticism, theory. Manchester University Press, 1991. Boyd, Stephen York Notes on Frankenstein by Mary Shelley Longman York Press, 1992. Garber, Frederick The Autonomy of the Self by Richardson Huysmans Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1982. Mellor, Anne K. Mary Shelley. Methuen. New York, London, 1988.Marcel, Anthony J. “Conscious and Unconscious Perception.” Cognitive Psychology 15 (1983): 197-237Reed, Kenneth T. "A Freudian Note on Shelley's 'Frankenstein'." Literature and Psychology 19 (1969): 61-72.Shelley, Mary. Frankenstein or the modern Prometheus. Edited with an introduction and notes by Maurice Hindle. Books about penguins, 1992