Frankenstein: destroyed tree

I definitely called a foreshadowing incident from Mary Shelley's Frankenstein and was spot-on...no big deal.  After a violent storm in Victor's childhood, when the family went to look at a lightening-struck tree, he said that "it was not splintered by the shock, but entirely reduced to thin ribbons of wood.  I never beheld anything to utterly destroyed" (Shelley, 22).  On first reading this, I wondered if the tree were symbolic of how Victor would later turn out in the story; "utterly destroyed".  As it were, not only did Victor become reduced to a fraction of the man he had been, but he also made a reference once more to a lightening-struck tree.  "But I am a blasted tree; the bolt has entered my soul..." (Shelley, 116).  Victor, like the tree from his childhood, has been destroyed.  There is no hope of him being returned to his former state.  His very core has been struck.  He seems to me to just be a walking corpse, with no zeal or desire left for life.  I think Victor is perfectly aware that he will never be the same, but, at this point, he must go through the motions of living in order to carry out his promise to the creature.