The creature feels as though he is different, which he is. He feels this for the simple reason that when he was walking through a village, people started to throw stones at him because he appeared to have the plague. This obviously was his normal appearance but he feels that he must stay hidden, away from people. The only people he shows himself to, is Frankenstein and the De’Laceys, this is because he knows that Mr. De’Lacey cannot see and that Frankenstein made him so he cannot be horrified with his creature’s appearance. The creature also feels isolated as he is the only one of his kind in the world and will always be alone, there will never be anyone to solace or be able to relate to him. Frankenstein is isolated, as no one knows what he has done so he cannot, and does not tell anyone. Even his dearest friend, Henry Clerval is kept in the dark, as to what he has been up to.
Eventually Frankenstein and the creature meet and the creature say he will never ask Frankenstein for anything else, if he will just make him a partner. The creature knows how Frankenstein feels about him as he found and read his diary on the moors. The creature has also educated himself by reading Paradise Lost, which he believes to be fact. He compares himself to Adam and wonders why he has no Eve, and why his creator does not watch over, teach or protect him as God does Adam. Frankenstein is horrified with what he has created so he does not wish to protect or teach the creature. The creature is actually more like the fallen angel, Satan, although even Satan has his followers. The creature is all alone. Frankenstein moves his lab to the Orkney Islands, where he wishes to create another creature, a partner for his other creation. He decides he cannot do this and destroys his lab and attempts to destroy his knowledge along with it, although he knows that he cannot do this.
After the death of Henry Clerval, Frankenstein is suspected of his murder, but it is then proven that it was infact the creature. The creature then vows that on Frankenstein’s wedding night he will kill his bride. Frankenstein basically ignores the creature and is stubborn to his threats and, therefore Elizabeth gets murdered. Frankenstein and the creature both live to cause the other pain; there is an unholy unity between the two of them. They are enemies and Frankenstein would prefer to keep the creature alive and torture him than allow him to die, he feels that he must avenge his family and friends deaths. The creature feel the same way, he must keep Frankenstein alive and punish him for creating him and not creating him a partner. “For we shall soon enter upon a journey where your sufferings will satisfy my everlasting hatred.” The way Shelley describes this, and most other feelings of the creature, are done in a gothic and dark style.
Frankenstein read and was inspired by Cornelius Agrippa at a young age. He acts in a similar way to the creature because he doesn’t realise that this in fact fiction and this seems to start his obsession with creating life without birth. When he leaves Geneva even his lecturers say how he has wasted his time reading that ‘rubbish’. This is the same as the creature reading Paradise Lost. Towards the end of the novel Frankenstein begins to blame his father for his creation as his father was aware of the fact he was reading Agrippa but did not explain why it was ‘sad trash’. His father just tells him not to waste his time with it.
Shelley is inspired by the romantic period and shows how knowledge can be a good and bad thing and also how progress can be a bad thing, although it is generally thought of as good. Progress can cause terrible things. Frankenstein thought that his progression, of creating life without birth was brilliant but was in fact disastrous.
Kayleigh White 10R March 3rd 2003
