The Monster In Mary Shelley's Frankenstein '

The monster acknowledges that his environment directly affected his behavior and personality. Growing and learning around the cottagers caused him to develop into a kind, caring, and helpful being. In contrast, the monster expresses that if he had learned to behave and act around someone such as a soldier, he wouldn't be the same. Upon the disappointed encounter with Felix, Agatha, and Safie, the monster no longer behaves the same. He expresses this when he says, “There was none among the myriads of men that existed who would pity or assist me; and should I feel kindness towards my enemies? No: from that moment I declared everlasting war against the species, and… sent me forth to this insupportable misery,” (Shelley 124). He is now hateful, rather than the trusting creature he once was. His environment and experiences have led him to alter his personality and perspective to suit the increasingly disappointment nature of his life.

“As I read, however, I applied much personally to my own feelings and condition, I found myself similar yet at the same time strangely unlike to the beings concerning whom I read and to whose conversation I was a listener. I sympathized with and partly understood them, but I was unformed in mind; I was dependent on none and related to none. ‘The path of my departure was free,’ and there was none to lament my annihilation. My person was hideous and my stature gigantic. What did this mean? Who was I? What was I? Whence did I come? What was my destination? These questions continually recurred, but I was unable to solve them.” (Shelley 109)

Not only is he left alone but he also must learn and adapt to the cruelty of the human world. The monster is left to figure out what feelings are, what fire is, what hunger is, etc. He approaches humans and they fully reject him in horror. They throw rocks and fire and he is forced to be alone, scavenging nuts and berries and hiding in the woods, only traveling when he cannot be seen. Every experience he has had with human beings has been awful and incredibly discouraging. As time progresses he stumbles across a cottage in the woods and he begins to watch a family of three: father, son, and sister (and eventually another woman). It is here that the creature learns what goodness is, what love and family is. He learns to speak English and he reads many novels such as Milton’s Paradise Lost to gain knowledge about his world, a similarity he has with his creator . But he also hears hears stories of the horrible things humans can do and he does not quite understand why or how at this point. From here he develops the feeling of loneliness and just wants to be a part of a family. “The more I saw of them the greater my desire to claim their protection and kindness; my heart yearned to be known and loved by these amiable creatures…” (Shelley 145). He wants someone to love and care for, he wishes for that love and care in return. He does not want to be cold in the woods rejected by any who sees

In Mary Shelley’s novel, Frankenstein, the unnamed creature brings terror to civilians and commits horrific acts against his creator, Victor Frankenstein. However, his redeemable acts of kindness makes his character morally ambiguous. He struggles between doing well and causing trouble because of isolation, the excerpts of society, and his pursuit for love.

After the death of Frankenstein, the Creature is met face-to-face with Walton, and here the Creature meets his final challenge of communicating and addressing a human who might have compassion for him. Upon seeing and hearing from the Creature, Walton experiences similar reactions as Frankenstein upon first communicating with the Creature. His physical appearance once again stains with utter disgust any attempt at showing benevolence: “Never did I behold a vision so horrible as his face, of such loathsome, yet appalling hideousness. I shut my eyes involuntarily” (Shelley 211). Once this reaction takes place, the Creature’s words do cause a small time of wavering of compassion for Walton, although ultimately he does reject the Creature once

Frankenstein follows Victor Frankenstein’s triumph as he reanimates a dead body, and then details his guilt for creating such a thing. When the creation realizes how he came to be, and is rejected by mankind, he seeks revenge on his creator’s loved ones. In the novel Frankenstein, Mary Shelley portrays Victor Frankenstein as the true monster of the story through the use of literary devices revealing the characteristics that Frankensteins and monsters share, and shows how Frankenstein’s irresponsibility leads to his monstrous labeling.

     Shelley also uses the monster to portray the idea that happiness is found through personal relationships. From the moment he is created, people react to the monster with fear and hate, but all he wants is to be loved. While watching the family in the cottage, the monster desires only to reveal himself to them and gain their love and acceptance. He quickly learns how to speak and read in order to make

“...Hateful day when I received life!' Accursed creator! Why did you form a monster so hideous that even you turned from me in disgust?.... Satan had his companions, fellow devils, to admire and encourage him, but I am solitary and abhorred” (Shelley 119). The monster after discovering that his own creator is horrified by his existence, continues to lose hope about his position in the world. He is left alone with no one to care for him or show him love. “I was dependent on none and related to none….My person was hideous and my stature gigantic... These questions continually recurred, but I was unable to solve them”(Shelley 117). The quote expands on the idea of how the monster has expanded his knowledge from listening and reading literature on his existence and his place int the world. “Sometimes I allowed my thoughts, unchecked by reason, to ramble in the fields of Paradise, and dared to fancy amiable and lovely creatures sympathizing with my feelings and cheering my gloom;...”(Shelley 118). This quote continues on the theme of how the monster is expanding knowledge and becoming much more intelligent and aware of his place on earth. It shows how his thoughts are directly focused and stemmed on a few pieces of literature. It shows that he may be narrow-minded and needs to broaden his horizons to other possibilities and pieces of

The monster is isolated because of his physical features. He is portrayed as ugly and a social outcast. The novel writes, "As I fixed my eyes on the child, I saw something glittering on his breast. I took it; it was a portrait of a most lovely woman. In spite of my malignity, it softened and attracted me. For a few moments I gazed with delight on her dark eyes, fringed by deep lashes, and her lovely lips; but presently my rage returned; I remembered that I was forever deprived of the delights that such beautiful creatures could bestow and that she whose resemblance I contemplated would, in regarding me, have changed that air of divine benignity to one expressive of disgust and affright” (Shelley 143). The monster is upset that normal people will not treat him with kindness simply because he is not attractive. Therefore, he separates himself from associating with others, which causes him to feel lonely and unhappy. Because of his appearance, he excludes himself from the world and says, “Of my creation and creator I was absolutely ignorant, but I knew that I possessed no money, no friends, no kind of property. I was, besides, endued with

There is a myth that every creature on this planet is one half of a whole and must be completed by another half. Sometimes it takes that other half coming into their life to make them realize the truth about themselves and to see hidden parts of their unconscious minds that they otherwise would not have noticed themselves. Mary Shelley, an accomplished writer during the Romantic Era of English Literature, is the author of Frankenstein. Victor Frankenstein is a young man with a hunger and passion for knowledge and science. He wants to do what no one has ever done before- create human life all on his own. Victor creates an eight foot tall, grotesquely terrifying monster that after continuous rejection from society, decides to take revenge on the man that gave him life. Shelley shows throughout this novel how two mortal enemies can be surprisingly similar and even act as mirrors of each other.

The creature in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, who parallels Milton’s Eve and Satan in many ways, also makes choices based on his envy for human beings and Milton’s Adam. When the creature is hiding out by the De Lacy cottage, he finds books that include Paradise Lost. The creature acknowledges his feelings of envy saying that he feels like Satan because “often, like him, when I viewed the bliss of my protectors, the bitter gall of envy rose within me” (Shelley 90; vol.2; ch.7). The creature is envious of the DeLacey family because they have what he does not: family and friends. The creature is all alone, so he akins himself to Satan feeling envy for The Son, whereas his envy is rather more like Eve’s because his creator made him unequal to other humans, although not on purpose. The creature also envies Adam, of Paradise Lost because he says that “like Adam, I was created apparently united by no link to any other being in existence; but... He had come forth from the hands of God a perfect creature, happy and prosperous, guarded by the especial care of his Creator; he was allowed to converse with, and acquire knowledge from beings of a superior nature: but I was wretched, helpless and alone” (Shelley 90; vol.2; ch.7). Although the creature was created in similar circumstances to Adam, he struggles because his creator shunned him and left him to be alone and ugly. The creature, so much like Adam, envies how Adam was loved by his creator.

The first manifestations of his erratic truths are seen when he proclaims to Frankenstein “For the first time the feelings of revenge and hatred filled my bosom, and I did not strive to control them, but allowing myself to be borne away by the stream, I bent my mind towards injury and death.” (118) and sets the cottage of his former “friends” on fire. The monster did not have much contact with humans, and therefore, had very little experience with the emotions he felt for the De Laceys. Their refusal hurt him, so he cultivated a loathing for the family and acted maliciously. This can also be seen as the beginning of the monster’s transformation - as his experiences make him more resentful, his ideals, goals and actions become more monstrous. The conflagration is what frees the monster from the vice of his first wish for emotional fulfillment. His inability to satisfy his needs combined with the satisfaction he gains from cruel behaviour causes the monster to believe that he is a wretched beast. The truth he saw in his own nature - the kind, innocent being - is blended together with the hideous and terrifying fiend others see him as, so a new sort of fabrication is created. By using this element, Shelley depicts how an individual is forced to alter the truth that they associated with their own life when they realize the imperfect nature of their ideals. This may cause an individual to indulge in unkind behavior in an attempt to reconcile the relation between their ideals and worldview. Without the family’s denial, the monster’s idea of perfection would have remained stagnant. After that experience, he starts to believe that the prejudiced view of the humans who fear him and the abandonment he faced is enough reason to retaliate against mankind. This

The Frankenstein monster is often portrayed in the movies as unemotional and violent: a barely functioning behemoth. However, these depictions are far from the canon storyline. In Mary Shelley’s novel Frankenstein, Victor Frankenstein, the creator of what shall be called the Creature, was actually rivaled in empathy and joie de vivre by his wretch. Throughout the story, the Creature showed more compassion and emotion than Frankenstein, but committed multiple monstrous things after facing neglect and trauma.

In Frankenstein by Mary Shelley, the Monster might be incorrectly named—when most people think of monsters, they think of creatures that are inherently bad. The Monster, however, experienced emotions like any human did and was even repulsed at thoughts of death and destruction; events throughout the story shaped the Monster into the murder he became. The Monster also encountered books that developed his pessimistic worldview and hatred of humanity, including Ruins of Empires, Paradise Lost, The Sorrows of Young Werther, and Plutarch’s Lives. The characters and events in these books were partially responsible for the Monster’s belief that he would never be accepted by any human. If he had read some more optimistic works with characters he could relate to, perhaps he would have developed into a different character.

In the novel Frankenstein by Mary Shelley, some characters were viewed to be morally ambiguous. One character that discourages readers from identifying them as purely evil or purely good is the creature. The creature goes through many obstacles that test who he is. The creature sacrifices loved ones to get what he wants. He also does this to show his creator the pain he has caused him. The creature says, “ If you will comply with my conditions, I will leave them and you at peace; but if you refuse, I will glut the maw of death, until it be satiated with the blood of your remaining friends.”(68) This shows that the creature is not only bad but can be good too. However, The creature is in pain, and hoping by threatening Victor that he’ll get