by Frankenstein is a classic story by Mary Shelley and is treated as one of the most influential texts of modern literature. The novel begins with a writer turned explorer finding an emaciated and frostbitten man in the arctic as he journeyed to the North Pole, with the following novel set up to be a retelling of the preceding events told in a series of letters to the explorer’s sister. Essentially, the man from the wastes was a scientist by the name of Victor Frankenstein, and he had created a monstrous creature in the form of an 8-foot tall man, and was pursuing said creature in a quest of revenge to the very ends of the earth. To most, this is a cut-and-dry story of a monster born of a man’s hubris and its monstrous instincts, though to a more discerning eye, the men become monsters, and monsters become human.
The readers are introduced to the Creature as a horrific amalgamation of human parts, born of dark and forbidden sciences that Victor pursued to push the very definitions of life and to explore the truly unknown. Piece by piece, as Victor put his creation together, it gained a beauty in his eyes, pushing his fascination for his work to a fanatical level as he worked day and night to bring his masterpiece to life. Unfortunately, upon opening its very eyes, Vircot recoiled in shock at his creation, finally seeing the Creature for what it was; an unholy life form devoid of humanity, and in the face of this, he fled. As the book progresses, the monster follows Victor’s life closely, seeming to doggedly pursue the scientist like a rabid dog on a path of destruction and violence.
Instead of leaving this story as a simple horror novel detailing the horrors of careless scientific advancement Shelley gives the monster a narrative of its own, giving a voice to the Creature otherwise thought to be a simple beast. From its birth, the Creature knew nothing of family and society, instead pushed to the wilderness by fear of others and their fear of it. After finding a small cottage, the Creature hides out and learns much of humanity from the family residing within, as well as a satchel of books from the wilderness. After many months of observation and longing, the Creature makes an attempt at genuine connection, having succumbed to its innocent desires, and is only met with fear and hatred. At this point in the book, the Creature is simply nothing more than a massive child, innocent and gentle, yet others immediately reject it and antagonize it for nothing more than its appearance. Had that family in the woods been more kind and compassionate, instead of being quick to fear, who knows what could have become of the creature.
While it was monstrous in appearance, it was not so in action, though this deeply traumatizing experience quickly catalyzed emotions like rage and indignance within the creature. It was these emotions that drove the Creature to pursue its creator for answers to its existence, and later on for a form of companionship so that it might retreat from humanity with its desire to cease its loneliness curbed. While its later actions in the book are nothing less than horrific, the monster was possessed by a simple desire to no longer be alone, and as the reader saw from its narrative, the Creature was no monster. It had emotions and desires, and was innocent before becoming tainted by unpleasant and unfortunate interactions. The Creature was only the monster that other people made it out to be, and even then, it retained its humanity and conscience.
Victor, on the other hand, was driven to madness by his grief and hatred, and refused to grant his creation its innocent wish in the hopes that its species would die out before ever getting the chance to wreak havoc upon the world beyond. His abandonment of the Creature, along with the actions of the family from the cabin, represented the worst in humanity. They showed the reader that not every situation ends as we will it to, nor does treating it with vulgarity and violence resolve it in the best manner for anyone involved. Frankenstein was a layered effort to highlight the fear and hatred we hold within our hearts of the unknown and the different, exposing the irrational and ultimately detrimental reactions we hold towards those that we perceive to be monstrous.