Walton is to blame for the alienation he felt early on, because he could have done several things to prevent it. First, he could simply stay home. Or, he could bring a friend with him, maybe even his sister. Yet, he makes the decision to go to the North Pole on his own, taking into the consideration only his desire for fame. His feelings of alienation could be avoided easily if he thought long and hard about it. He knows he would be lonely if he got aboard the vessel headed to the North Pole, but it is his quest for instant fame and immortality that drives him on towards his destination.
Victor Frankenstein, on the other hand, completely withdraws himself from society in order to do his experiments. At age seventeen, he moves from his Geneva home to Ingolstadt, where he studies sciences. There he begins to study chemistry under professor Waldman. And from this study comes his love for the study of anatomy. From this comes his obsession to create or reanimate human life itself. “I seem to have lost all soul or sensation for this one pursuit (62)”, he says. This is true: he works non-stop on his experiment, alone in the seclusion of his apartment. Several years pass since he has seen his family or Elizabeth. No one really hears from him, and when Elizabeth writes to him (which is still seldom), he replies that he is very involved in his work. Victor purposely alienates himself from society at this point.
Yet, when the monster is created, Frankenstein does not become famous, like he had hoped; both Victor and the monster are extremely alienated. In Walton’s last letter to his sister, the monster says in hindsight: “I, the miserable and the abandoned, am an abortion, to be spurned at, and kicked, and trampled on”. Victor (and no one else for that matter) wants anything to do with the monster. When Victor beholds what he created, he is terrified. The monster leaves his house, which pleases Victor because not only was it cold out, but there is an epidemic going around that might kill him. Outside, the townspeople scorn the monster. Once, the monster tries to help a lady cross a river, but the lady’s companion thinks that the monster is going to hurt her, so he proceeds to shoot him. On another occasion, even after gathering wood for them, a family runs the monster out of their house because he looks scary. The monster says this of the event:
Who can describe their horror and consternation on beholding me? Agatha fainted, and Safie, unable to attend to her friend, rushed out of the cottage. Felix darted forward, … dashed me to the ground and struck me violently with a stick. (p.178)
All the monster seems to want is compassion. He then reads Paradise Lost, which makes him believe that he is alienated (“Like Adam, I was apparently united by no link to any other being in existence, p.170) and is also the angel cast down from god (god being his creator). He believes he is “wretched, helpless, and alone”, which is why he must seek revenge on Victor for the alienation he has received. This will cause Victor to alienate himself without choice.
The monster goes on a spree of revenge in which his objective clearly becomes to alienate Victor as much as he himself has been alienated. First, he kills Victor’s brother William, and frames Victor’s childhood friend, Justine, for the murder. Victor comes home from Ingolstadt to Geneva since the killing of his brother and the scare he gets from beholding his monster. He knows that the monster has killed William, but does not tell anyone because he doesn’t think that they will believe him. So, Justine is charged with the crime, found guilty, and executed. Later, Victor meets the monster, who tells him his story of alienation and his longing for a partner. The monster asks Victor to create a partner for him, and says that if he has a partner he will go and live in the jungles of South America where he would not bother anyone. Victor agrees to create a partner, but eventually (after moving back to Ingolstadt) decides it is best not to create the female monster. Furious, the monster kills Victor’s best friend, Henry Clerval. Victor is accused for the murder and put in jail, but is bailed out by his father. He brings Victor back to Geneva, where Victor is to wed Elizabeth. Yet, on the wedding night, “(Victor) hear(s) a shrill and dreadful scream. It came from the room into which Elizabeth had retired (p. 246)”. Victor enters the room to find Elizabeth dead. The monster has succeeded in killing off those who mean the most to Victor, which drives him into complete alienation since he no longer has anyone close to him. No longer having any companions, whom he used to take for granted, his only ambition becomes finding and killing the monster for his revenge, which eventually kills him.
Besides the main three Byronic heroes (Walton, Victor, and the monster), Elizabeth is also alienated. Although not secluded from all of society, she is secluded for a very long time from the person she loves the very most in the world: Victor. Before Victor goes off to Ingolstadt, Elizabeth and Victor ponder marriage, but Victor says he will marry when he arrives home. Yet, after several years, Victor tells her that he is too caught up in his studies and experiments to return home at the time. This makes her feel unloved, similar to how the monster felt. Victor does in fact have a deep love for Elizabeth, yet it is ashamed that he waits so long to marry her. When he finally does, however, he has already made the monster angry which results in her death.
Shelly has two main messages she wants to send us through this one motif of alienation. The first is what she shows us through Walton, the monster, and Elizabeth. This message is that people who are alienated from society, one another, or even from a god or creator, are longing for companionship. She has chosen this message to illustrate that one is in fact the loneliest number. The second message she delivers through Victor, and is more of a moral than a fact. Through Victor she shows that when we take things like friendship, love, or family for granted, we will be devastated when it is gone. She is telling us that we need not to seclude ourselves from one another because one of these days, the other will not be around and we will never again get the chance to know them.
