The Growth and Deterioration of the Creature Within Frankenstein

Victor Frankenstein’s creation, the nameless creature in Mary Shelley’s novel, Frankenstein, displays countless characteristics of physical monstrosity; he is described as “ugly”, “demonical” and a “hideous… wretch” (Shelley 36). However, the creature expresses that his only desires are acceptance and love, but he is seen as a monster regardless of his true intentions. When the creature is abandoned by Frankenstein, he is forced to find acceptance on his own and eventually comes across a cottage in the woods. As an attempt to gain approval, he waits to approach the home until the only character home is a blind man, to whom he explains his desire for friendship. The creature says that he is afraid to become “an

Victor Frankenstein, engulfed in the obsession of creating life out of death, resurrects a body composed of multiple parts from different origins. Victor “had worked for nearly two years, for the sole purpose of infusing life into an inanimate body. For this [he] had deprived [him]self of rest and health;” this madness is Victor’s desire to become a creator that people envied (Shelley 57). Victor creates a monster, one that is the “outcome or product of curiosity … pushed to an extreme” (Brooks 387). Resembling an infant perceiving its surroundings through its parents, the monster’s entire perception of the world is centered around Victor Frankenstein due to . The monster tries learning about his creator

Victor worked continuously on his experiment, obsessed with finding the correct building material. It would seem that after all this arduous work he put into making this Creature, he would be in awe when it was finally finished. Upon the completion of the Creature, he finds himself in shock, explaining in vivid detail about the Creature’s “yellow skin which scarcely covered the works of muscles and arteries underneath” and its “shriveled complexion,” and “straight black lips” (42). In the human nature, it is known that when a person creates something, no matter how ugly, or how deformed it is, the creator is proud of his creation. Although, immediately after he sees his creation, Victor is unable to stare at the “monster” any longer, and paralyzed with fear and guilt, abandons the creature all alone in the world, like a new born baby. Although it might not seem like this, this particular scene conveys a deep sense

While attempting to uncover the meaning of life and death, and though he believed his experiments would further the paths of science, Victor fails to see the potential consequences of “bestowing animation upon lifeless matter” (Shelley 37). This, in turn, creates a monster. After his “great” experiment, Victor spends his life in grief. Despite this, he manages to belittle his creation, and act superior to him, claiming that “I [Victor] will not hear you. There can be no community between you [the creature] and me; we are enemies” (Shelley 84). Even later on, when assured by the creature himself that Victor would be left alone if he creates a female counterpart, Victor cannot see past the shreds of pride he has left and refuses, causing the death of his family and loved ones. It’s Victor’s pride and his fear of the creature that clouds his judgement and in the end leads to his

Due to Victor’s unwillingness to accept him, the creature was unable to conform to societal norms. From the creature’s very first moments, he is feared by others - the instant his eyes open, his creator cries out in terror and runs to his quarters. If only Victor had stayed and attempted to nurture his creation, instead of having “turned from [him] in disgust” (93), the creature may have enjoyed a gentle, upbringing in which he

The creature's physical grotesqueness makes the creature unable to attain affection from the human societies. The creature is initially rejected by his creator, who is the closest resemblance to a mother or father figure. Despite this relationship, Victor finds the creature to be a "miserable monster" (39). Consequently, as soon as life is present within the creature, Victor abandons his child. Victor claims that he "escaped, and rushed down the stairs" (40) away from the

Ambition and the thirst for knowledge leads Victor to fabricate the Creature. By doing so, he defies nature, fate, and destiny. Victor goes against the natural realm and creates life, rebelling against nature. As Victor tediously worked on his creation, he lost sight of nature, “Winter, spring, and summer passed away during my labours; but I did not watch the blossom or the expanding leaves- sights which before always

Victor’s blindness to what his end result will produce is immediately revealed when his final work is a hideous creature. Victor, through repulsion, neglects caring for the creature in its blank slate, gradually fuelling the ambition it feels for revenge. With the monster isolated, he begins to learn, “I learned to distinguish between the operations

The enormous difference in the way Victor views the creature before and after its completion shows that he has an altered state of mind while he works on it. As a result of Victor’s secrecy about his creation, he sacrifices his health and happiness to make a creature that disgusts him.

monster avoid pain again and how he is able to sit and think about how

Once finished, even he, along with the rest of community of people views his creation as a very cruel monster, which he did not intend it to be. Common belief commands has someone write down what is said that misleading and tricking of creation is reserved only for God-related beings such as gods, however Victor breaks this unspoken Law. Victor's creation was formed from multiple dead bodies' parts, and was guilty of the truly awful murder of William, since "every human being was guiltless of it" (Shelley 78); the creation is carefully thought about and referred to as a creature or monster rather than a man. Physically, the creature's features look like those of a demon from a nightmare, having terrible, scary "yellow skin hardly that covered the work of muscles" (Shelley 55), and "shrank and wrinkled skin and straight black lips" (Shelley 55); "a mummy could not be as extremely ugly as the miserable, awful person that is Victor's creation " (Shelley 56). Victor's creation, rather than a very pleasant new medical sample/example that praised him, was a "evilal dead body to which he so terribly given life" (Shelley 56).

This shows Victor even more about the creature and does nothing but make him want to destroy and hate the creature more and more. Victor has a hatred as seen in the novel for the creature from the beginning. One might ask why he is making this creation. He states that his purpose for making the creature is because he wants to make a new race of people. His desire for a new race is not in the right mind though, he is in search of gratitude by making this race. He is craving this sense of thankfulness where he wants people to thank him for making such a great race of creatures. Although, he does not receive this gratitude, he actually recives quite the opposite as people are disgusted by his creature. Throughout the story people such as Victor 's father and his professor go to him and provide him with suggestions and try and help him. Although Victor blatantly brushes them off and acts as he pleases.

Likewise, Victor Frankenstein allows his emotional senses to give way to a hatred of the Creature without even giving the Creature a chance. After seeing the hideous creation made by his own hands, Victor refrains from taking responsibility of the actions of the Creature, even when his conscious tells him it is his duty to. On the night of the creation, Victor recalls that the creature, who he emotionally describes as a monster, “held up the curtain of the bed … one hand stretched out, seemingly to detain [Victor], but [he] escaped … catching and fearing each sound as if it were to announce the approach of

The creature is renounced by Victor throughout the book, which removes any positive role model that the creature might have had. The two encounters that Victor has with the creature when it is first created are evidence of his rejection. The first is when Victor finishes creating the creature. During the process of creation, Victor dedicates himself so greatly that he "pursued [his] undertaking with unremitting ardour" (32). He puts aside everything else in his life, and concentrates completely on his purpose, which is to bring a being to life that would serve him. In order to do so, he spent an entire summer "engaged, heart and soul, in one pursuit" (32). Because of the hard work that Victor puts into his work of creation, he never really examines the fruits of his labour. He is too caught up in his work, and has "lost all soul or sensation but for this one pursuit" (32) of finishing his work on making the creature. So in the process of his creation, Victor is never really aware of what he is creating because he is too focused on the actual act of creation. However, when Victor finally finishes the work of making the creature, and takes time to look at what he has done, he is horrified by his accomplishment. As the creation opens an eye, and

Victor spends days and perhaps months doing research and work for one project and one purpose. His desire is to create a living being, bringing life back into the dead. At last, Victor succeds at his task, but he is horrified. At first this may seem an irrational response, was not this what he had been striving towards, yet, now he refuses to speak of the creature or even think of it, however, when I put myself in his place, I realized that this reaction may not be as irrational as it seems.