The monster is chased out of the city by the citizens who want to kill him this is because they think that he is the cause of the plague due to his appearance. When he runs off he finds a family of small French cottagers in the country and stays in their barn. There he learns to speak, and educate himself and this is the part where the reader starts to feel and sympathize with the creature and understand maybe he is not a monster. This is because he does many kind things for the De Lacey family “collecting wood for the family fire” and he also helped them to grow crops. This tells us he has a lot of goodness in him and he genuinely cared about the family, as “when they were unhappy, I felt depressed, when they rejoiced, I sympathised in their joys.” And when he was in a good environment he learnt to speak and so did we about his character. To educate himself he tried to speak the words the cottagers spoke i.e. “fire,” “milk,” “bread” and “wood” at this stage of the novel this tells us that the creature is only a baby. He tried to learn like a baby and similar to them you develop your character according and depending on your surroundings and so did he. From reading this novel I can tell that the creature genuinely cared about the family. Learning to read made him feel good about himself “delight I felt” this is because “knowledge might enable me to make them overlook the deformity of my figure.” Here we learn that the creature himself also understands why others detest him and all he wants to do is to make friends. We also learn that maybe the author is trying to get a message across about prejudice. He trusts that people will respond well if he is kind to them “Agatha listened with respect,” this is because he helped the family. When the monster goes to meet the blind man in the family he is very friendly to him “when unprejudiced by any obvious self-interest, are full of brotherly love and charity,” “it will afford me true pleasure to be in any way serviceable to a human creature.” The blind man is the only one who is pleasant to the monster; this is because he cannot see the monsters appearance, only his heart. We learn how judgemental humans can be about others’ appearance. The blind man understands his pain as he too has a deficiency, just like the monster.
When the family see the monster he is beaten and thrown out by the De Lacey family. At this stage the monster feels hurt and lonely about how they treated him. The reader also starts to really sympathize with him, as it is really unfair about how humans have behaved towards him. “Cursed, cursed creator!” the monster feels angry and bitter towards his creator: Frankenstein. He is angry about his own appearance he is in “rage” and wants “revenge.” The monster’s character has taken a turn from good to evil, he realised nothing good has came of being nice everyone hates him. “My daily vows rose for revenge- a deep and deadly revenge.” His character has learnt to be evil because people had rejected him because he is different (his grotesque appearance). He travelled to Geneva to find Frankenstein where he found Frankenstein’s son William when he was travelling in the woods. Even at that stage he was not pure evil as he had kindness for the youthful, all he wanted was a friend, a companion. He thought as William is young he probably is not prejudiced about the “deformity” of people but even the innocent rejected him and was by frightened by his looks. “Monster! Ugly wretch!” after this he probably lost the goodness in him towards humans. After finding out the boy is related to Frankenstein he decided make him his victim “you shall be my first victim” here I felt hatred for the creature because he killed an innocent, a little boy who had nothing to do with the way he is. Even though I felt it was right for him to get his revenge it makes his character seem pure evil because in my opinion it is a wretched thing to kill a young innocent, “ I grasped his throat to silence him.” He was so determined to get his revenge that he turned from good to ruthless; he learnt to be evil and to hold someone else responsible for his own crime. He realized like others if he wakes Justine up then she would curse him and tell everyone that he killed William therefore “thanks to the lessons of Felix” he learnt “how to work mischief” to someone else for his crime. This tells us that man taught him to be evil, his character changed from helping others to murdering innocents due to how humans have treated him. The reader still feels sorry for him at this stage but also knows it is the wrong way to go for revenge and will only cause severe consequences.
All the monster ever wanted was a friend or a companion but everyone rejected him then the monster realized that if he wants a mate, does not want to be alone for the rest of his life his “companion must be of the same species, and have the same defects” and he told Frankenstein that he must create his companion. This implies that if Victor Frankenstein does what he is told then he will be repeating his sin repeating the immoral process of creating another monster. However there is also to argue that all that the creature wanted was a friend. Is it too much to ask? If creating another one like him will make his life happy then… it may not be so bad? He just wants to be loved. Dr Frankenstein agrees to, only if the monster leaves “Europe forever and every other place in the neighbourhood of man.” The monster’s character has changed again from being evil to come to a negotiation with Dr Frankenstein. We learn here that the monster never truly wanted to hurt anyone and even though he vowed for “eternal revenge” he compromised with him because he knows killing anyone won’t help him to make a friend. Victor Frankenstein knows that he made a mistake and changed his mind because he thought if he could repair his mistake then it is worth it.
Victor destroyed his companion “I do break my promise; never will I create another like yourself, equal in deformity and wickedness.” I think the monster would feel so betrayed when Victor refused to do as he said and personally I think it is really injustice on him as he never to look like that. The least Victor could do is to sort what he has done wrong however he also has reasons and does not want to repeat the same mistake again. The monster’s reaction to Victor’s decision was to get revenge by killing Elizabeth this because, he thought why should everyone else find his or her mate and “I be alone?” the monster felt hurt and therefore wanted to get revenge. Why should only he be alone? When he killed Elizabeth “a grin was on the face of the monster” we learnt that he had a choice to be good or evil and by becoming evil he never got anything out of it he just received more hatred. Was it his destiny? He never meant any harm and we learnt that throughout the whole novel. It was just circumstances that led him to the murders. Even after Elizabeth was murdered I did not fell any sympathy for Victor Frankenstein he had created this problem; he never gave that creature a chance. The language he used to describe him was just horrible “a mummy,” “hideous.” Even though the monster had said to him with pure hatred “ I may die but first you” when Victor died the monster was extremely distressed- although he always hated him for making him the way he was and not making him a mate either and for despising him, he does not want to lose his own creator; like a father. Maybe because Victor was the only one he could call his own like a relative, the one who knew him the most. The monster wanted to die as well because there was nothing for him to live for. The life he lived so far was miserable and realised he was never going to get happiness. This makes us feel sorrowful towards his character and think about society: it was no different from how it is now. From the 1800s even before that to the present day prejudice is still here and especially in this novel has cost many lives and sorrows to the innocent.
The monster not meant to be created as a destructive person; he was supposed to be a positive outcome. The things that happened to him in his surroundings caused him to become bitter. However until the end of the novel after killing Victor’s family he did not want Victor to die, as he was his creator. Victor abandoned the monster because he thought it was evil due to the way he looked. But was it ever evil from the beginning? The monster was like a baby, he did not know how to speak and learnt how to behave from his surroundings. The moral that I have learnt from this novel is that looks do not determine who you are, your heart does. And you learn and develop your character from society, your own surroundings.