Who is the Monster?

Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein is one of the pioneering works of gothic fiction that made the genre famous in the modern world. The Gothic genre often has been characterized by a persistent sense of dread and a threat of the inevitable yet uncertain tragedy. Within the genre, Shelley’s novel ‘Frankenstein’ is a classic example of gothic theme and horror as the novel centers around the themes and issues of thirst for forbidden knowledge, scientific overreach, psychological terror, alienation, isolation, and the need to connect and what truly monstrosity is? In this essay, I am going to argue that the real monster in the story is not the creature but his creator himself because his obsessive quest for the knowledge of life made him not only create but also abandon a creature that was capable of so much destruction. I will analyze the differences and similarities between the monster and Victor in terms of motivations and desires they had.

In Mary Shelley’s novel, the character of Victor Frankenstein was not a physical monster, given the deceptive existence of the popularized version of the horror story. But will Victor himself be called a monster by creating a creature that killed several innocent individuals? One must ask what constitutes a monster to address this issue. The first thing that should be recalled is a gruesome form from a horror film as the word monster is talked about. Nevertheless, when defining an individual, “inhumanely cruel or evil person” is the most appropriate meaning of the term “monster.” So the main question then arises, was Victor’s creation cruel or evil? It is important to note that Shelley when creating the monster gave it very human characteristics like ability of speech, learning, feelings and other emotions and the questions the creature asked itself about its existence and its identity as the creature itself stated, “But where were my friends and relations? No father had watched my infant days, no mother had blessed me with smiles and caresses; or if they had, all my past life was now a blot, a blind vacancy in which I distinguished nothing. From my earliest remembrance, I had been as I then was in height and proportion. I had never yet seen a being resembling me… What was I?” (Shelly, p.162). The creature did not choose itself to be created, he certainly did not choose to look the way he did, a grotesque and scary form and he also did not choose to be mocked and rejected by everyone around him which made him feel isolated and alienated from the rest of the society. It cannot be overlooked that the creature went on a killing spree as there is no moral excuse for it but was it his fault as he was brought into this world and then left alone to fend for himself? In an unnatural, perhaps quite immoral way life was created by Victor. A passionate desire to create the creature brought him to the overwhelming raging fire as he was fascinated with his research to establish this way of life. He didn’t care about the consequences of his research in his reckless series of acts. He had no clear strategy for what he’d do after he produced his creation successfully. Victor sunk into the abyss of his guilt of creating life unnaturally and trying to play God as his creation went on to commit terrible crimes. He acknowledged his acts being wrong, but did little to fix them. Victor cannot truly be called a monster as he acknowledged the fact that he did something wrong experiencing the natural human feeling of guilt. Victor cannot be called a monster in the truest sense as he did feel the guilt from his predicament but the truth cannot be hidden that he overstepped the boundaries of human control and created a monster in the physical sense without any precautions, an inhuman act indeed. Both Frankenstein and his monster pursue knowledge as they both desire the accusation of knowledge to form connections with others and even though they share similarities, there are some important contrasts seen throughout the book concerning how Victor and the monster pursue knowledge. Victor pursues scientific knowledge to prove that he can create life and do things nobody else has ever done, he rejects the scientific knowledge of his time to come to his conclusion. It’s almost like he had a God complex when it came to understanding the knowledge of creating life. The monster however proceeded with the knowledge to help him understand humanity and find how he can fit into society, although he isn’t a human he wants to be considered human, through the emotions that he feels as he expresses in his talks. This shows an evident contrast between the enlightened scientific mind of Victor versus the emotional mind of the monster. The two contrast each other and it shows how Shelley feels towards the inline thinkers as almost lacking humanity that the monster who isn’t human does have. These ideas are contextualized into quotes such as “I was capable of a more intense application, and was more deeply smitten with the thirst for knowledge.” (Shelley, p.258). The monster can also be contextualized when he says “I can hardly describe the effects of these books. They produce in me an infinity of new images and feelings that sometimes raise me to ecstasy, but more frequently sunk me into the lowest dejection.” (Shelley, p.167). Victor and his monster also have a similarity of isolation, Victor chooses this isolation to focus on the research. 

However, the monster must isolate himself for his protection and is also isolated from humanity because of his deformities, because he is not accepted and he must be isolated. These isolations can be seen in some of their quotes like when Victor says “I avoided explanation and maintained a continual silence concerning the wretch I had created” (Shelley, p.215). This is how he is sectioning himself from the world, refusing to talk to his father about what he’s done and refusing to explain the madness that he is in once his friend dies. The monster also says “You had endowed me with perceptions and passions, and then cast me abroad an object of scorn and horror for mankind” (Shelley, p.177). Victor and his monster’s similarity to isolation is reflected in their desire for family. Victor isolates himself to focus but while he is isolated all he wants is the connections that he’s felt his entire life, this can be seen in his quote “My future hopes and prospects are entirely bound up in the expectation of our union” (Shelley, p.188). This union between him and Elizabeth shows how he desires family, before anything else, especially after creating the monster. The monster himself desires family because he is isolated and can’t do anything about it, the monster says “I am alone and miserable; man will not associate with me; but one as deformed and horrible as myself would not deny herself to me. My companion must be of the same species and have the same defects.” (Shelley, p.180) he is asking Victor to create a companion and this shows how the monster feels that the only way to keep from being isolated is to have a family. Mary Shelley’s novel does tell us that sometimes the real monster is not the one who is in front of us but the reflection of ourselves we see in the mirror.

Bibliography

Shelley, Mary Wollstonecraft, and Nick Groom. Frankenstein, or, The Modern Prometheus: the 1818 Text. Oxford University Press, 2018