On the title page of the novel, the following words have been taken from John Milton’s ‘Paradise Lost’, when Adam bemoans his fallen condition, ‘Did I request thee, Maker, from my clay/To mould me Man, did I solicit thee/From darkness to promote me?’. The words create the parallels between Victor and the creation to God and Adam. It emphasises the importance of responsibility of the creator, and makes the reader question Victor’s and his creation’s relationship. The creation conceives himself as a tragic figure, comparing himself to both Adam and Satan. Like Adam, he is shunned by his creator, though he strives to be good. These rhetorical questions epitomize the creation’s ill will towards Victor for abandoning him in a world relentlessly hostile to him and foist responsibility for his ugliness and eventual evil upon Victor. It’s in the creation’s narrative, where he addresses the comparison to both Adam and Satan when he says, ‘I ought to be thy Adam, but I am rather the fallen angel, whom thou drivest from joy for no misdeed’. Here, the creation's distinction is that Adam fell by knowingly committing a sinful deed, whereas Satan, in contrast, in this reading was intended to fall from heaven as an intrinsic part of the conception of God's new creation. This powerful, religious and biblical comparison provides depth to the creation’s grievance and rejection; it provides the importance of loyalty and responsibility. For the reader, this quote places fault upon Victor for rejecting his own creation and links the creation’s evil behaviour to Victor’s desertion, as opposed to providing love and protection for his creation. The blame for the creation's misdeeds is on Victor, rather than the creation because it is Victor who creates him then abandons him - the monster has done nothing to deserve this treatment - ‘no misdeed’. Our sympathies are further intended towards the creation when Walton recounts the creation’s words over Victor’s body, ‘I, the miserable and the abandoned, am an abortion, to be spurned at, and kicked, and trampled on’. This eruption of angry self-pity as the monster questions the injustice of how he has been treated, compellingly captures his inner life, giving Walton and the reader a glimpse into the suffering that motivates his crimes. This line also evokes the motif of abortion: the creation is an unwanted life, a creation abandoned and shunned by his creator.
The creation is very reluctant to become evil as he continuously keeps contradicting his decision to seek revenge on the whole of mankind, for example when the creation is shunned from the De Lacey family, the creation declares ‘everlasting war against the species, and… against him who had formed him, and sent him forth to this insupportable misery’. However, with his benevolent and innocent nature, he quickly retracts his declaration as he says, ‘the pleasant sunshine… restored me to some degree of tranquility… I could not help believing that I had been too hasty in my conclusions’. This shows the creature’s desperation to be accepted in society and that although he is treated with hostility and rejection; he’s still full of compassion and wants to attempt, yet again, to integrate himself into society. The monster’s eloquent narration of events, as provided by Victor, reveals his remarkable sensitivity and benevolence. The reader becomes convinced of the creation’s innocent nature. In fact, as the novel progresses, the reader begins to view Victor as the true monster with his deterioration in behaviour; abrupt and confused states of mind, acceptance of blame for the murders and the complete occupation of guilt. The reader becomes aware of Victor’s abrupt and rash state of mind when he encounters his creation on his journey towards the valley of Chamounix, where the creation is portrayed to be calm, collected and reasonable in comparison to Victor’s hasty, unreasonable and irrational state of mind. Formerly a mysterious, grotesque, completely physical being, the monster now becomes a verbal, emotional, sensitive, almost human figure that communicates his past to Victor in eloquent and moving terms. The creation’s words appear intellectual and emotive when he says, ‘All men hate the wretched; how, then, must I be hated, who am miserable beyond all living things’, which shows the creation’s growth in personal intelligence in understanding society. While Victor curses the monster as a ‘daemon’, the monster responds to Victor’s coarseness with surprising eloquence and sensitivity, proving himself an educated, emotional, exquisitely human being. Victor constantly refers to his creation with terms of abhorrence and detestation as he calls him an ‘abhorred monster’, ‘wretched devil’, ‘fiend’ and further malicious and vindictive expressions, in which he also issues futile threats of attack to the creation. The transformation in the creation is key to Victor’s fuller understanding of his act of creation: before, it was the monster’s physical strength, endurance, and apparent ill will that made him such a threat; now, it is his intellect. Victor’s language presents his fear of the creation as he’s eager for the creation to leave and refuses to hear his story as he continuously repeats, ‘Begone… vile insect…Begone! I will not hear you’. Despite Victor’s hostility towards the creation’s request to tell his story, the creation’s eloquent, rational and reasonable argument seems to appeal to Victor, which encourages Victor to hear the creation’s tale, as he says, ‘I weighed the various arguments that he had used, and determined at least to listen to his tale. I was partly urged by curiosity, and compassion confirmed my resolution… I consented to listen’.
While the monster’s grotesque appearance lies only in the reader’s imagination and may be exaggerated by Victor’s bias, his moving words stand as a concrete illustration of his delicate nature. For the reader, whose experience with the monster’s ugliness is second-hand, it is easy to identify the human sensitivity within him and sympathize with his plight, especially in light of Victor’s relentless contempt for him. The gap between the monster and Victor, and between the monster and human beings in general, is thus narrowed. The reader is convinced of the creation’s benevolent and innocent nature and in fact Victor is shown to be responsible for the creation’s monstrosity. Victor is responsible for his creation and he is responsible for his abandonment, which lead to the creation’s isolation and rejection from society. Victor is heedless of the dangers of his work, and is irresponsible with his invention. It is in fact, due to Victor’s irresponsibility that the creation becomes evil and an ‘abhorred monster’.
Although Victor calls his creation a monster, and considers it disgusting and abhorrent, it is in fact Victor who behaves monstrously. He claims to have created the creature for a noble purpose: to defeat death. However, it is clear that his motives are largely selfish, as he states: ‘I was surprised that among so many men of genius who had directed their inquiries towards the same science, that I alone should be reserved to discover so astonishing a secret’. He creates a living being without considering the consequence of his work. He is a young scientist, thirsty for knowledge. He studies the forbidden sciences, questions the principle of life and gives birth to an ‘inhuman’ creature. In this venture, he overreaches himself. He gathers tremendous knowledge, defies his parents and dabbles in the supernatural. He shows a natural human tendency to pursue the forbidden. But his knowledge nevertheless leaves him ignorant of the consequences of his act. Victor undergoes emotional and mental change. He suffers from feelings of remorse and guilt at seeing the untimely deaths of the people around him. Though torn by remorse, shame, and guilt, Victor refuses to admit to anyone the horror of what he has created, even as he sees the ramifications of his creative act spiralling out of control. Victor Frankenstein also puts others' lives at risk, as well as his own, through his ambitious pursuit of knowledge. He neglects his loving family and allows his health to suffer greatly in his obsession to discover the secret of creating life out of death. Shelley makes it clear she believes knowledge such as this cannot lead to good. Some benefit may have come from finding a way to the North Pole for Walton, but no good is shown to come from Victor's creation.
Victor always prefers to be isolated as he cuts himself off from the world and eventually commits himself entirely to an animalistic obsession with revenging himself upon the creation. Victor is doomed by a lack of humanness, in comparison to the creation’s fatal flaw being the necessity of humanness. Victor rejects friendship, family, love and companionship, all things his creation desires. Victor’s rejection is responsible for the creation’s monstrosity as the creation sees Victor rejecting love and companionship for his unnatural and dangerous desire for knowledge. Victor’s character is negligent of his responsibilities; as a creator, a son, a friend and other various relationships, which are responsible for his deterioration in health and mind and for the creation becoming evil. As well as the reader becoming aware of Victor’s monstrosity, he, himself, becomes aware of his malevolence as he admits, ‘I not in deed, but in effect was the true murderer’.
Victor was unable to tell anyone the truth about the murders, but he is suffering a personal hell, in which he questions his own involvement in the murders. As the novel progresses and the reader understand Victor’s involvement in the creation’s monstrosity, Victor is also related to the deaths of William, Justine, Elizabeth and Henry. When Victor calls himself the ‘true murderer’, he rightly accuses himself as all the murders are directly linked to the birth of his creation followed by Victor’s rejection of responsibility towards him. Frankenstein wanted to be the author of life. He in fact becomes the author of life but on his own terms, which in effect means he creates a monster, which in turn destroys people he loves. The creation portrays William as a symbol of innocence and purity in society therefore hopes to gain his companionship, however William is frightened of the creation’s unnatural appearance, calling him a ‘monster! Ugly wretch! … an ogre’, which only frustrates the creation further into hating mankind. William’s death is the creation’s first act of revenge against his creator; he is influenced with the thought of ‘eternal revenge’ as ‘M. Frankenstein’ is William’s father. William’s death came about because the creation was further angered at mankind for rejecting him only because of his physical grotesqueness, but most importantly because he hoped for revenge against Victor. Justine’s death can also be placed upon the fault of Victor, as it was Victor’s cowardice to reveal the true murderer of William which misleadingly led to innocent Justine being hung and her life lost – ‘Justine also was a girl of merit and possessed qualities which promised to render her life happy; now all was to be obliterated in an ignominious grave, and I was the cause!?’. Victor’s selfish and inconsiderate character led him to accept Justine being wrongly accused of William’s murderer as he fears his ‘tale was not one to be announced publicly’. Victor also plays a part in the deaths of his ‘beloved Elizabeth’ and his ‘dear friend Henry Clerval’. The largest act of selfishness that Victor shows is when the creation threatens Victor that he ‘will be with him on his wedding night’. Even though Victor knows that the chances of death occurring are high for that night, he marries Elizabeth anyway – ‘I should almost regard him as invincible, and that when he had pronounced the words? I shall be with you on your wedding-night. I should regard the fate as unavoidable?’ In addition to Victor being selfish, he also shows acts of secrecy that alienates him human society and makes him a monster. The deaths of Victor’s loved one can all be related to Victor’s actions; although Victor is not directly responsible, his actions are the foundations of these deaths. Victor’s goal to generate life causes a great deal of pain through his ambition, selfishness and secrecy, both to himself and others. As a result, these acts cause him to become alienated from his friends and family, and turn him into the monster. He rightly admits himself as ‘the cause’ and the ‘true murderer’, when he says, ‘Justine, poor unhappy Justine, was as innocent as I, and she suffered the same charge; she died for it; and I am the cause of this – I murdered her. William, Justine, and Henry – they all died by my hands’.
In reality, the creation is a sensitive, emotional being whose only aim is to share his life with another sentient being like himself. The novel portrays him as innately intelligent and literate, having read ‘’, ‘’ and ‘’. He is driven by despair and loneliness to acts of cruelty and murder. He is a product not of collaborative scientific effort but of dark, supernatural workings; the worst kind of scientific experiment gone awry. And Victor lies at the heart of the blame for this disaster; doomed by overreaching ambition, selfishness and secrecy which alienates him from human society, much to the similarity of his creation. Contrary to initial perceptions, the creator, Victor is the true monster. To look further into the fault of Victor, the blame lies upon the society’s irresponsibility. Its irresponsibility lies in the heart of prejudice; where society links rejection to appearance just as in ‘Frankenstein’, the rejection and isolation from society of the creation because of his physical grotesqueness, results in his acts of cruelty, murder and monstrosity. It is mankind who teaches the creation evil.
