‘I was led to desire peaceful lawgivers… The patriarchal lives of my protectors caused these impressions to take a firm hold of my mind.’
This suggests that the creature at a later date followed an example of murder, or was incited with hateful feelings, rather than that the creature was born a merciless child killer.
The first time the creature experiences emotions that are considered wrong by society, is when he realises he is ugly and socially unaccepted. It is prominently obvious that the creature is perhaps indwelling feelings that could eventually incite an act of murder after it has read the journal of Dr Frankenstein which transcribes his own creation.
‘"I sickened as I read, "Hateful day when I received life!"’
The feelings that rejection force onto him are such that lead him to despair and loneliness. He starts to encounter feelings that are different from those that he has witnessed and felt because of the attention he paid to the residents at the cottage.
‘…in the bitterness of my heart, I cursed him.’
The creature, however, is still filled with a hope that his protectors will accept him with all his physical flaws, and welcome him with their kind hearts into their lives. His faith in the people is absolute at this point, but his whole faith in the benevolence of humanity was rested only on what he had observed at the cottage. Therefore, when the humans rejected him and beat him out of their lives with hatred, hatred in return for his selfless acts to help them, the creature’s heart ‘sunk within him as bitter sickness’. He begun to doubt the humans as a race, and danced with feelings of ‘rage and revenge’. After realising to what extent the humans despised him, these feelings were firmly cemented in the creature and he began to feel violent and hence capabe of murder.
‘For the First time the feelings of revenge and and hatred and revenge filled my bosom… I bent my mind towards injury and death.’
The creature’s isolation from mankind, and long days without any human contact allowed it to further torture itself with the cruelty he had indured, first at the hand of his creator, and secondly at the hands of his supposed protectors. He had tried to seek the compassion his creator had not given him in other human beings, and had been treated with equal hatred. His suffering was intense and thus his feelings of passionate bitterness and desire to seek revenge through violence grew. The creature had been treated with violence by Felix, and had read of violence in novels he acquired, and so knew of it more than just instinctively. These feelings of violence were not suddenly borne from one bad act, because he didn’t kill Felix when he had the chance, but instead spared him, and only now after much thought and consideration he felt passionate enough to commit these acts.
When the creature stumbles upon a young girl who is about to drown, he overcomes feelings of hatred for the race of humans and tries to save her, and succeeds. This action strongly suggests that the creature is not a cold blooded murderer at all, and in fact a naturally good soul. Despite all the wrongs human kind had done against him, he still felt the need to save their kind because from them he saw the opportunity to derive so much emotional pleasure. However, his kindness is not rewarded with pleasure, but with a bullet shot from the girl’s father, who had presumed the worse of the physically deformed monster. This left the creature the lowest it had ever felt.
‘This was then the reward for me benevolence! I had saved a human being from destruction and, as a recompense, I now writhed under the miserable pain of a wound, which shattered flesh and bone. The feelings of kindness and gentleness which I had entertained but a few moments before gave place to hellish rage and gnashing teeth. Inflamed by pain, I vowed eternal hatred and vengeance to all mankind.’
The creature from this situation proceeded to Geneva in order to seek his creator. He came upon, on his travels, a young and very handsome boy. He hopes that the boy is unprejudiced and plans to steal him and educate him as a companion and a friend. However, the boy is prejudiced against the deformed creature, and is also found to be a relation of Dr Frankenstein.
‘Frankenstein! You belong then to my enemy- to him towards whom I have sworn eternal revenge; you shall be my first victim.’
Hence, the creature strangles William, futher enraged and despaired by William’s insults.
‘ " I too can create desolation, my enemy is not invulnerable; this death will carry despair to him, and a thousand other miseries shall torment and destroy him.’" The creature.
The above quote shows the creature’s motives behind killing William. He wanted to subject his creator to similar emotions that he had been subjected to, for example, despair, pain and desperation. The creature realises that he has power over his creator, power to give him misery, just as his creator has given him misery. The only idea the creature has on how to rouse these emotions from within Frankenstein is by killing his loved ones. This is the primary reason why he kills William .
The creature did not kill because of rooted evil qualities in which he was born into, but instead he killed as a reaction to the severe rejection he endured and as a result of being on the receiving end of cumulative acts of prejudiced hatred. In fact, there is more evidence to suggest, as discussed throughout the essay, that the creature tried repeatedly to make friends with the humans despite being repeatedly rejected. For example, even after he is shunned by the society of the cottage, he tries to help the little girl.
In conclusion, the creature was not born a monster, but from the nature of humanity, a monster was born. The monster killed William because society had made him a monster, and the only way he felt he could gain revenge was from making Dr Frankenstein feel as lonely as him, hence, by killing his close family.
