Victor first displays real arrogance when he speaks of his prowess at the university; declaring how he “…made some discoveries in the improvements of chemical instruments…” and “…procured me great esteem and admiration…” This is a demonstration of the part of Victor that yearns for recognition as a great scientist, and enjoys any opportunity to show off his capabilities. Another quotation on this page from him gives an idea about where he places himself in his mind; “…yet with how many things are we upon the brink of becoming acquainted, if cowardice or carelessness did not restrain our inquiries.” What Victor is saying by implication is that he thinks other scientists studying the same subject are cowards, or don’t know what they’re doing as much as he. Meanwhile he is becoming more and more sinister, creeping around cemeteries and charnel houses. Apparently incorruptible to superstition, Victor simply sees death for what it is, without sentimentality and is not bothered by any layers of meaning that the process of passing away may have; only wanting to reverse it. He mentions how he is “…forced to spend days and nights in vaults and charnel houses,” but in reality he is only ‘forced’ by his own desire to succeed.
It is no more than a few paragraphs later that Victor shows a large amount of regret for his behavior, apparently speaking to and informing Walton “how much happier that man is who believes his native town to be the world, than he who aspires to become greater than his nature will allow.” This deals with the themes of boundaries, and whether or not we as humans below God have the right to create life. Some religious opinions have speculated that the reason Victor’s life turns out the way it did is because God is punishing him for attempting to usurp his job of ‘animating the lifeless clay’. Because he was the product of kind and rich parents, Victor wasn’t really taught any limitations that he should set himself. The fact that he is telling Walton this shows how his character has had time to change attitudes, and how sorry he is that he didn’t stop his experiments before too late. The novel’s second title: The Modern Prometheus; spells out how this theme was intended to be prevalent throughout the text. Prometheus was a character from Greek mythology, who also has a story with a similar didactic meaning. Essentially, in both versions of Prometheus’ story; he tries to seize power that would normally only belong to the gods, and was punished greatly. Victor’s tale is fundamentally the same. Although his punishment is not directly mentioned in the book to be from the gods, his torment hints along with the alternative title that he is being punished for a reason.
It is not long afterwards that he talks about how he had no problem playing God as he describes the construction of his creation. The lexical choice here is nothing short of biblical as he speaks about himself as he wishes to become. Shelley uses words like ‘bless’, ‘bestow’ and ‘creator’ to show how absorbed Victor is in himself and how he is convinced that he has a holy purpose. To express how Frankenstein is being driven forward she uses the phrase ‘like a hurricane’, which implies uncontrollability and destructiveness. The repeated uses of the first person pronoun emphasizes further his extreme arrogance at this point, as well as how he expects to receive blessing from his work. “Life and death appeared to me ideal bounds, which I should first break through, and pour a torrent of light into our dark world.” This is another instance of Victor being shrouded by self-importance, illustrating that he thinks he is the only one who can bring light to the world. Saying that the world is ‘dark’ implies that the world was created wrongly in the first place, showing how he believes he could do a better job than God. He claims that he deserves the gratitude of his ‘child’ more than any father and also alludes to pregnancy when he claims to have become “emaciated with confinement.” As confinement is something women are known to go through before childbirth, this shows how much time he has put into his creation and as pregnancy is hard work, how much he has struggled to achieve his goal. Another thing about this phrase is that usually during pregnancy the carrier of the child is anything but ‘emaciated’, and this contrast could have been used by Shelley to show how wrong and abnormal Victor’s experiments are. In addition to these details Victor also admits to himself changing physically in other ways, in that his “limbs now tremble” and his “eye-balls were starting from their sockets”, the latter probably from seeing too much of the slaughterhouses and dissecting rooms that he ‘disturbed’. He calls his laboratory a ‘cell’, hinting again that he is trapped and forced into carrying on with what he is doing by his own knowledge of the ‘secret of life’ that he refers to. He confesses that his “eyes were insensible to the charms of nature” as if he had forgotten what natural things looked like and was blinded against his hideous and unnatural creation by his own thirst for glory.
Again in his storytelling Victor takes time to show how he laments his actions. Showing his change of thoughts since the time, he basically says how any study that decreases man’s taste for simple pleasures should not be allowed. Telling his story to Walton knowing that he had not benefited humanity in the way he would have liked; Victor may have thought that the best way to do good before he died was to make sure that people learn from his mistake, and these injections of morality inside the main thread of the story are another way of expressing the main parable-like message of his tale. He also mentions how he has deteriorated in health nearly to disease while he’s been working, displaying again his obsession and refusal to take a break. “…I became nervous to a painful degree; the fall of a leaf startled me, and I shunned my fellow-creatures as if I had been guilty of a crime.” This is truly indicating just how paranoid and drained Victor has driven himself to becoming and is intriguing that as he becomes nearer to death, his creation comes closer to being alive.
The creature’s creation itself takes place “on a dreary night of November”. This is significant alone because the weather represents pathetic fallacy, in addition to his candle being almost burnt out, both these things implying gloom and despair. The fact that Victor can’t wait until the next morning to complete his efforts yet again makes his fixation on it obvious and he perhaps wants everything to be over with as soon as possible. “With an anxiety that almost amounted to agony…,” is again a possible comparison to pregnancy, and the words themselves are an example of alliteration used by Shelley to build up tension. The way in which Victor chooses to describe his creature is ambivalent, with contrasting images of its features presented, as if to give a feeling that it is unbalanced and pieced together from all kinds of different parts. Shelley places the word ‘beautiful’ twice in this paragraph probably to purposely contrast with the rotting corpses that the creation is comprised of. His “lustrous black hair” is compared with his “yellow skin”, and his “teeth of a pearly whiteness” with his “watery eyes” and “dun white sockets”. In these contrasts, the hideous features of the creature outweigh any redeeming features he has, showing us that to at least his creator, he appears repulsive and unnatural. Now that Victor has finally seen how ugly and repugnant his creation is, and that the ‘monster’ represents a failed side of him that he doesn’t like, he can’t bear to look at it and flees.
At this point the reader is led to be disgusted both by the description of the unnamed being, and at how Victor has simply abandoned something that is now a living thing. Even in his dreams, Victor can’t escape the horror that he has created, and when he awakes he is faced yet again with his creation. “His jaws opened, and he muttered some inarticulate sounds, while a grin wrinkled his cheeks. He may have spoken, but I did not hear; one hand was stretched out, seemingly to detain me…” The creation is shown to be childlike in his mannerisms, smiling for apparently no reason at all and burbling like an infant. However, because he is naïve in his immaturity, he doesn’t realize that he is shocking to behold, and sees no problem with visiting Victor in his sleep. The above quotation also shows how the narrator in this case may be unreliable, as Victor thinks that the creation’s outstretched arm was ‘seemingly’ meant to capture him, when it is likely (when looking at the creation’s other actions later on in the novel) that he was only doing this as a sign of friendliness and the need for a companion. It is because his appearance is so gruesome that even his creator is prejudiced against him. Victor assumes that as the ‘fiend’ appears grotesque; he must have monstrous intentions, when this isn’t necessarily the case. His horror at how playing God has backfired is exemplified more by associating his creation with Dante and hell, whilst also referring to him as a ‘demoniacal corpse’, showing tremendous contrast from his original intentions. Because the reader doesn’t yet know what (if anything) is going through the mind of the ‘monster’, it is only natural that they can sympathize with Frankenstein, and pity him in his fear and disappointment whether they believe him to be foolish and arrogant or not. After him being occupied with nothing but his work for so long, the arrival of Clerval serves as a reminder to the reader and Frankenstein of his family back home, bringing back an element of normality in Victor’s thoughts. When he falls ill, he is cared for and written to, showing that no matter how much he may have neglected his family he is still lucky to have them to care for him, whereas his ‘monster’ has nothing and nobody.
The next time we hear from the creation is when Victor encounters him on his way to Geneva. Without any real evidence, he immediately blames his ‘fiend’ for the murder of William and is no less than degrading with his description of him. Saying that a “…flash of light illuminated the object...” quickly gives us an impression of the creature being sinister, as we normally associate lightning with being threatening. The fact that Victor objectifies his creation also shows how he is looked upon by his creator as a simple thing that only resembles a living being.
Throughout the next few chapters, Shelley makes us feel sorry for Victor’s family and possibly Victor himself by using the death of Justine and William effectively. When it seems clear to Victor that these two people have died because of his actions, he has an epiphany-like moment. Besides from the initial thrill and enthusiasm he first felt; Victor knows that his dream has caused him nothing but pain. He says that his guilt “hurried [him] away to a hell of intense tortures, such as no language can describe,” this is certainly giving us the impression that he feels sorry for himself. He becomes angry at his creation: “I gnashed my teeth, my eyes became inflamed…” even though he has no proof that the ‘fiend’ had anything to do with the murder, he curses him for it without any doubt. However he also reflects that “I , not in deed, but in effect was the true murderer.” This is showing how Victor is coming to take responsibility for his actions and suffering in shame for them.
Having walked into the mountains and met his creature, he threatens and insults him; labeling him as a ‘vile insect’ and stating his desire to ‘trample’ him. He condemns the ‘monster’ in such a way, although if there were other people who knew about his experiments and results, it could be that he would be condemned too. The creation replies that as long as they both exist they are bound together and that Victor has a duty towards him as a creator even if he has been so far abandoned. Not really acknowledging what his creature said, Victor becomes then so angry that he throws away an amount of dignity and begins attacking his creation in vain. His enraged turn to physical violence while the creation only wishes to talk shows a darker side of Frankenstein and is an interesting comparison as the ‘monster’ doesn’t want to set himself in ‘opposition’. He likens himself to Adam and the fallen angel; again hinting at Victor’s old desires of playing God, as well as the fact that he greeted his creation with the word ‘devil’. Likening Geneva to Eden, and the Creation to be the ‘forbidden fruit’, Victor also plays the role of Adam, who lived in paradise before the temptation for more caused him to lose what he had. The monster uses words like ‘abhor’, ‘spurn’ and ‘detest’ frequently, which embellishes his anguish further. The creation asks Victor:
“Will no entreaties cause thee a favourable eye upon thy creature, who implores thy goodness and compassion?” This is clearly a rhetorical question, and it tempts the reader again to doubt Victor and consider how he seems to be selfish and doesn’t recognize his creature as a being capable of thought and emotions. “You accuse me of murder; and yet you would with a satisfied conscience, destroy your own creature.” This gives the impression that the monster knows Victor sees him as sub-human, and not allowed regular justice as is given to normal people. Here Frankenstein uses the word ‘wretched’ to describe himself rather than his creation, which leaves the reader to compare these two characters further still. Defeated in knowing that if he did not listen to the ‘fiend’, his life would most certainly become more miserable; he finally accepts responsibility and lets the creature tell his story. It is likely that Shelley uses the oxymoron-like term ‘odious companion’ to express the start of Victor having mixed feelings other than hatred towards his creation.
Although superhuman in abilities and monstrous in appearance, the Creation is shown to have all of the emotional traits of a human being. As mentioned previously, after he is first brought to life his mind resembles that of a child and he learns and develops knowledge the hard way. When he is talking about the time directly after he was created; although it is not said directly, Shelley uses short phrases fragmented frequently by commas to give a sense that the creature is bewildered. “I was a poor, miserable, helpless wretch… I sat down and wept.” Because he doesn’t understand anything and is left to roam outside with only whatever thoughts instinctively occur within him, he is incredibly frightened and like a teething child; he can only weep. As he becomes accustomed to the world he grows to be curious about nature, which he doesn’t yet know that he is contrasted against, and this natural beauty inspires him initially to do good things. When he attempts to imitate birdsong, he realizes that the sounds he makes are ‘uncouth’ and ‘inarticulate’; he is frightened by the sound of his own voice. He is shown to have a likeness to prehistoric man in that he has to learn everything himself.
His first encounter with a human other than his creator is an anonymous old man. Upon seeing the creation, the man flees immediately, afraid. This happens again on a larger scale, when he enters a village he is rejected and chased out with weapons purely based on his appearance. This gives the creation a skewed view on humanity and leads him to start questioning himself and what he is. Soon after him being driven from the village he first sees the members of the DeLacey family, and is shown to have yet more human characteristics and emotions. “… I felt sensations of a peculiar and overpowering nature: they were a mixture of pain and pleasure such as I had never experienced.” When he beholds the music played by the old man to the young girl, he is overwhelmed by the beauty of what he sees and displays empathy. It is here that he also experiences a desire to have friends and later suffers from pangs of guilt when he secretly takes food from the family in order to feed himself.
The creation shows his sympathy and willingness to do good things when he gathers firewood for the family. His behaviour is altruistic, with him gaining nothing except to be able to watch how happy he has made the family by helping them. While staying around the house of the DeLacey family, his personality changes according to experience, whilst he slowly realizes the extent to which he is different from them and everyone else. He begins to refer to them as “my” cottagers, feeling a human sense of attachment to them, even though they are oblivious to his being there. His deformity betrays him when he makes out his reflection in a pool of water, and he realizes why people have fled from him, but still wonders what it would be like if he could keep the family in high spirits. As well as Shelley using these kind deeds to elevate him above Victor, it is noticeable how the creation constantly admires nature’s beauty, whereas when Frankenstein is building him, the creator simply ignores the scenery and environment around him.
His aspiration to do kind things drives the monster to learn to read, and when he finds several books in the woods, he is led by them to ask himself whether or not he has an ultimate purpose, or any purpose at all. This ongoing existential crisis could be debatably the same for humans also, but it has a great effect on the creation because he knows he is different from anything within the books he has studied. He declares himself as a “blot upon the earth” and curses his creator whom he realizes he did not ask to create him.
The main turning point for the monster is during his brief meeting with the blind old man of the DeLacey family. By this point in the novel, Shelley has shown us how his need for emotional warmth has swelled hugely, much as Victor’s “anxiety that almost amounted to agony,” shortly before he was to become heavily disappointed also, and drawing yet another comparison between the two ‘protagonists’. The creation is well spoken when he finally comes to have a conversation with a member of the family, showing how much effort he has put into his quest for company. The fact that to the blind man he seems like any other normal person helps Shelley to create more sympathy when he is eventually driven away. The creation tells the old man how he “tenderly loves” the cottagers, confirming the feeling of attachment which has only been hinted at before. “…But they believe that I wish to injure them, and it is that prejudice which I wish to overcome.” This quotation shows how the ‘monster’ has learnt exactly why he is rejected by human beings, but still hopes that he can salvage some friendship from them. The old man says to him how there is something in his words that persuades him that he is sincere, embellishing further the point that the creation is perfectly capable of passing as a human without his visual deformities. When the two young members of the family return, however, the creation is clinging to the legs of the blind man in a desperate flail for help. The aforementioned prejudice against him causes his actions to be misinterpreted much like earlier in the novel when Victor thinks that the ‘fiend’ wished to ‘detain’ him.
With his hopes destroyed, the creation grows incredibly angry with human beings and declares an ‘everlasting war’ against them. After how he has been treated this decision seems like a fair one, as they seem to be the source of all his anguish. There is a strange balance between him and humanity in that although to him they appear to be beautiful creatures that he only wants to interact with; their actions toward him are always negative. Whereas the creation’s actions toward mankind are at first positive, and to them he appears to be a vile and hideous monster to be scorned and avoided. He insinuates this himself when he finds the locket containing a picture of Elizabeth. “I was ever deprived of the delights that such beautiful creatures could bestow… in regarding me, would have changed that air of divine benignity to one of expressive disgust and affright.” This is exemplified again when he rescues a young girl from drowning and is shot in return; again only trying to do good but seeing his own benign actions misinterpreted. This then leads him firstly to attempt to kidnap William, who even as a young child is shown to be prejudiced against him. To the reader his decision to kill who he knows to be a relative of Frankenstein seems less shocking because of his miserable story so far. Being kind to humans has only resulted in their rejection of him, and so it seems almost justified that he should take the opposite direction. After the deed is done, he tells how his “heart swelled with exultation and hellish triumph” and goes on to mention how he will enjoy punishing his creator further. Here is the creation’s transformation into the vengeful being that he is seen as to other characters.
When the creation asks for his own companion it is no surprise due to his attitudes toward the creation so far that Victor initially refuses. It is easy for us to be compassionate toward the monster, because he only wants what we has humans mostly want, and that is to not be alone. He does not ask for much, and is willing to be banished and cast away by humankind if he can only have an ‘Eve’ for him as ‘Adam’. As the story in this segment is told from Victor’s point of view, it contains much less sympathy and we see the creation again from the prejudiced human point of view: “…his face was wrinkled into contortions too horrible for human eyes to behold…”. However, Victor eventually softens to the creations plea, and sees good logic in keeping him contented, accepting responsibility for what he has created. “I sometimes felt a wish to console him; but when I looked upon him, when I saw the filthy mass that moved and talked, my heart sickened…” This shows consideration for the monster but this time from Victor’s point of view. It is again reiterating how other than his appearance and strength, the monster is just like a human, and is capable of feeling emotions and receiving pity.
Doubts about the benefit of creating a companion begin to manifest themselves in Victor as he grows nearer to creating his second creature. Unlike the first time he carried out this task, his heart is not in it as he knows that what he creates will be nothing like his original intentions that he had years ago. Just as now all Victor wishes to do is to settle down with Elizabeth, the creation’s only desire is to have a partner also. It is ironic that after Victor destroys what was to be the monster’s companion, the creation says how despite Victor being his creator, he is his creator’s master. The creation is clearly mortified and crushed by Victor’s actions, knowing that he has been condemned to suffer alone, even after enduring ‘incalculable fatigue, and cold, and hunger”. Victor remains ‘inexorable’ despite all of the creation’s threats and in the heat of the moment doesn’t seem to care that this choice will probably be his own undoing.
Strangely, when being ‘tortured’ by the ‘fiend’, as well as being consumed by guilt, Victor is faintly selfish. He says “…no creature had ever been so miserable as I was…” although to the reader it is glaringly clear that the monster has been lonely much longer than he has, and that if the creation is trying to prove a point to his master, then Victor is stubbornly refusing to take note of it. When everything dear to him is lost, he sees that his only remaining duty is to destroy what he has unleashed on the world. His dedication to his final quest is shown at the beginning of the novel, where Walton’s description of him shows us how he has driven himself to death. “His limbs were nearly frozen, and his body dreadfully emaciated by fatigue and suffering. I never saw a man in so wretched a condition.” Here the word ‘wretched’ is used again, this time to describe Victor, and not the creation, and yet another time Victor has become ‘emaciated’ by his obsessive want to achieve something, compared with how he became as he was building his creature. Not long before his death, Victor shows us how despite his stubborn nature, he admits that he has failed, and tries to teach Walton that he should ‘avoid ambition’. Even if it is too late, this shows a great change in Victor’s character and his view of the boundaries of humanity before he passes away. The creation boards the boat and recounts some of his point of view to Walton when he discovers his creator’s demise. In his closing speech, the creation talks about all of the death and destruction that he has wrought. “Think you that the groans of Clerval were music to my ears?” This and many other lines spoken by him on the final few pages display the immense guilt he feels for the terrible acts of malevolence he committed. Eventually he figures that the only way to end his suffering is to end his ‘wretched’ life along with his creator, simply saying; “I shall die.” This statement is possibly the shortest sentence in the entire novel, and emphasizes the finality of what the creation believes he has to do.
In conclusion, I believe that Victor is very much the character who can be said to be more culpable for the tragedies that happen within the novel. There were many opportunities for him to prevent the suffering of others which he refused. If he had not been blinded by his need for recognition as a scientist then he could have thought deeply about the implications his creation may have outside of his imaginings. Among many things, he could have educated the creature himself rather than shunning him away; and the final blow he delivered to his and the monster’s life was by refusing to create for him a female partner. Even though it is the creature’s hand which directly causes deaths, “[Victor] not in deed, but in effect was the true murderer.” by releasing his naïve and powerful creation into the world. At the end of the novel the creation states how he did not enjoy taking his revenge and was driven forward by ‘a frightful selfishness’. Although this doesn’t redeem him for his actions, it shows even more that he is very capable of understanding, and isn’t pleased with what he has done. Victor’s arrogance and neglect of morality was the real origin of his tribulations, and even if he showed deep remorse for them, his problems and aches still followed him even to the grave.
