Victor Frankenstein continues recounting the influences that lead to his great experiment:
An accident again changed the current of my ideas. When I was about fifteen years old we had retired to our house near Belrive, when we witnessed a most violent and
terrible thunderstorm. It advanced from behind the mountains of Jura, and the thunder burst at once with frightful loudness from various quarters of the heavens. I
remained, while the storm lasted, watching its progress with curiosity and delight. 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. When we visited it the next morning, we found the tree shattered in a singular manner. It was not splintered by the shock, but entirely reduced to thin ribbons
of wood. I never beheld anything so utterly destroyed.
Before this I was not unacquainted with the more obvious laws of electricity. On this occasion a man of great research in natural philosophy was with us, and excited by
this catastrophe, he entered on the explanation of a theory which he had formed on the subject of electricity and galvanism, which was at once new and astonishing to
me. All that he said threw greatly into the shade Cornelius Agrippa, Albertus Magnus, and Paracelsus, the lords of my imagination; but by some fatality the overthrow of
these men disinclined me to pursue my accustomed studies. seemed to me as if nothing would or could ever be known. All that had so long engaged my attention
suddenly grew despicable. By one of those caprices of the mind which we are perhaps most subject to in early youth, I at once gave up my former occupations, set
down natural history and all its progeny as a deformed and abortive creation, and entertained the greatest disdain for a would-be science which could never even step
within the threshold of real knowledge. In this mood of mind I betook myself to the mathematics and the branches of study appertaining to that science as being built
upon secure foundations, and so worthy of my consideration.
--What is the main effect of describing key events in the narrative as "accidents" or as happening by chance?
the narrator.
A)They suggest the events are not entirely negative in their effects
B)They suggest the events cannot be retold objectively by the narrator.
C)They suggest the narrator feels a great sense of responsibility for the events.
D)They suggest the narrator is not fully responsible for the outcome of his story.