In Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, the dangerous ambition of multiple characters is conveyed through the symbol of the blasted tree witnessed by Victor Frankenstein, painting it as the representation of his boundless ambition and the desire to play against divine power, ultimately revealing the foreseeable, brutal consequences as the result of the limits of man.

The source of Victor Frankenstein's unholy ambition came from a pivotal point of his childhood, where a tall tree, which appeared to be normal at first, would totally shape the worldview of the young man and would be the foundation of his entire story. It was during a fateful night, with thunderbolt and lightning, very very frightening, when the young Frankenstein witnessed the "blasted tree" became "utterly destroyed" into "thin ribbon." The horrifying scene happened in front of his own eyes, and it inspired the character with both fear and awe. The blasted tree in Shelley's novel is the representation of the sublime: a symbol with terrifying and scary characteristics that inspires the character with fright, but at the same time, fascination with a such a concept that is hard to get hold onto. The sublime introduced in Frankenstein's childhood is the starting point of the "tragedy" in the rest of his life; a lesson that would be told again to future generations, like Captain Walton, about the danger of standing against God, against divinity, limitless and powerless. Unfortunately, it was the young Frankenstein that did not see how the blasted tree was a foreshadow of his own fate. The feeling of awe inspired by the symbol of the blasted tree stuck with Frankenstein, and overpowered the danger as seen from the frightening scene. A blasted tree comes with light, and when Victor Frankenstein successfully created his Creature, his vision towards the construction of his work was also filled with light of enlightenment, and that also resembles the flashing tree he saw in the past. Again, Frankenstein failed to see the danger of what was in front of him, only focusing on the unrealistic, short-lived excitement. So the blasted tree, to this point, has been used as the signaling symbol of Frankenstein's own downfall, hinting towards the message that a character, who is lack of awareness of his own limits, would die under his own hands.

Over the course of the whole novel, Victor revealed how the consequences of his work have ruined his life, and there is no better way to justify a man's life destroyed by his own work, by using the very symbol that inspired it in the first place. Towards the end of his journey, Frankenstein acknowledged that "now [he was] the blasted tree." A confession, comparing himself with his own memory of the tree, illustrates the late and ineffective remorse, now that he realized his mistakes were fatal and irreversible, just like how a thin ribbon couldn't be brought back to life. The similarities between Victor Frankenstein and the blasted tree he saw are now seen most clearly: they were both full of life, they thought of themselves as the great beings and dared to stand against a bigger power, and that crime came with a punishment. Shelley brought back the blasted at this stage of the novel as a reminder that life is a full circle, and depends on the actions of the perpetrator, that circle could be filled with joy, or grief. To break the wicked cycle, Victor Frankenstein decides to tell his own story, revolved around the blasted tree, to Captain Walton, who is also a young man full of ambition like how Frankenstein used to be, or to be more accurate, how the blasted tree inspired Frankenstein to be. For many times, Victor asks Captain Walton to "hear [him]," to "listen to [his] story," because his story is a fatal lesson that anyone who refuses to listen would be doomed to repeat the same mistake. Victor's demands for Walton are as loud and as many as the sound of thunder the blasted tree heard the moment before its destruction. If Walton can hear it, can see the foreshadow, then he is ought to reconsider his objective and his limits; if he fails to do so, then unfortunately, his fate would see the same result as the blasted tree: the arrogant symbol of mindless ambition, of the desire to become divine, and of a crime that would ultimately be punished.

In the end, the lesson about knowing the limits of man against the laws of nature has been portrayed consistently throughout Mary Shelley's novel Frankenstein, with the vivid and complex symbol of the blasted tree.