However, it is a part of human nature to make mistakes. This means that once in a while, sometimes very often, people do things they are not supposed to do. When a person makes a mistake, there is always someone there who is ready to judge him or her, and also, when the mistake is considered a crime by society, the individual may be severely punished. Because of this, many people who commit these mistakes or crimes, try to hide them, so that no one can judge or punish them for committing them. This is the case of Victor Frankenstein, who defied the forces of nature, by going against its law, creating life.
Victor gave life to a creature when discovering the “elixir of life”, with the selfish purpose of having someone who would worship and adore him. Then, after giving life to his perfect and beautiful creation, he discovered that he had made a big mistake by going against nature, and realized that he had created something that looked now like a monster, something not from this world. As any human being, Victor when noticing all these things, got scared and ran away, leaving his creation behind, all alone, worrying only about himself and having no consideration for the creature’s fate, who was left like a newborn without his mother. Most humans are very selfish and worry only about themselves, and as long as they can succeed, they do not care about the effect that they can have on another person.
Victor, like many other people, was a very comfortable man, who always took the easy way out of problems, and this particular case is a perfect example of that. What he did not understood in the moment he gave life to the creature, is that for every action, there is an effect or a consequence that has to be dealt with. Frankenstein realized, with the death of his brother, Justine, Elizabeth and Henry, that there is a price to pay for your mistakes and that you just cannot run away from your problems.
Frankenstein, as the creature’s creator, was responsible for his creation’s fate since he played the role of the mother. Unfortunately, he played the role of a cold hearted mother, when leaving his “baby” alone with no protection or instructions about what awaited for him in life. It was because of this, that the creature lived through bad experiences, which made him change his sweet and innocent personality to a colder and meaner one, just like the one of many other human beings.
All the creature knew about humans was the bad part of their nature, and all he had received from them was hatred and betrayal, so he decided to take revenge on Victor, the one responsible for all his misery. He wanted to make Victor feel as lonely and miserable as he felt, so he decided to kill his loved ones unless Frankenstein agreed on creating a wife for him, but Victor, finally learning from his mistakes, refused to fulfill this petition. So the creature, mad about Victor’s decision, was responsible for Henry and Elizabeth’s death, and this way, became all that he hated and despised about the human race: a resented, cold and ruthless being.
Victor, even when he knew the cause of his loved ones’ deaths, he did not tell anyone his secret because he was afraid that people would think he was crazy. This is clearly another common human characteristic which shows how insecure about themselves people are and how because of this insecurity, are so afraid to be different. On the other hand, people in the time the novel was written, were much more intolerant and afraid of the abnormal than people today, so it is probable that Victor would have been sent to a mental institution if he had told that he had discovered the “elixir of life” and created life. So at the end, both Victor and the creature’s lives ended up in misery and suffering, mainly produced by loneliness, and all due to one mistake made by a selfish person, a mistake that was big enough to ruin two lives.
In conclusion, it is part of the human nature to make mistakes, and it is not a bad thing as long as people learn from their errors. However, this does not justify what Victor did because he committed a huge mistake when interfering with the natural order of things, getting involved with forces much superior than anything humans can get involved with. He did not entirely fail as a human being because it is part of the adult human nature to adequate his essence and becoming many times selfish and afraid. Victor is just another scared and insecure human being who is terrified with the idea of not satisfying the society, and because of this, tried to escape from a huge mistake he made instead of trying to accept the consequences for his actions. He was just an ordinary person who had to deal with an extraordinary situation caused by a huge mistake produced when trying to fulfill his dream, and who unfortunately became responsible for the miserable and lonely fate of his and the creature’s life.
