The Grotesque Monster In Mary Shelley's Frankenstein

His hatred for Victor was so intense, it fueled a mad desire for revenge. On page 102, when the monster learns that William is a Frankenstein, he says “you belong then to my enemy,” having never actually met Victor in person. He hated his creator to such a degree that he was willing to do anything to hurt him. The monster was right, however, in hating Victor because of Victor’s terrible treatment and disposition towards the monster. The first wrong that Victor committed was making the monster unbearably ugly.

However, after it is abandoned and mistreated first by Victor and then by the De Lacey family, the monster turns to revenge, it became blinded, and “...feelings of revenge and hatred filled [its] bosom… [and it] bent [its] mind towards injury and death” (Shelley 99). These events caused the monster to devote its sole purpose to enacting revenge on those who wronged it.

Victor realizes what he is doing is out of arrogance and stops the creation of the monster. The creature does not like Victor’s decision of ending the creation of the second creature, so he decides to commit one last crime. Due to the act of the monster he causes Victor pain. He killed Elizabeth, the only person he loved. Victor was unhappy due to many deaths that were committed by the monster.

He calls on the “spirits of the dead” and “wandering ministers” so that the “cursed and hellish monster drink deep of agony” and feel “the despair that now torments me”(179). The monster is also capable of wanton destruction when he burns down the DeLaceys’ house and dances “with fury around the devoted cottage”(123) like a savage. Finally, the monster seems to enjoy the pain he causes Frankenstein: “your sufferings will satisfy my everlasting hatred” (181) he writes to Victor. Were these pieces of evidence taken out of context, the reader would surely side with Frankenstein. But Shelley prevents such one-sidedness by letting the monster tell his version of the story.

Comparison can be made between Ahab and the monster in Frankenstein on the basis of revenge that the monster wanted to take from Victor. Victor lost all the power over his creation when the monster killed William. Frankenstein immediately felt responsible for the crime because he never made his creation to go around and kill people. After destroying the work of second creature, the monster threaten Victor saying that, “Remember that I have power; you believe yourself miserable, but I can make you so wretched that the light of day will be hateful to you. You are my creator, but I am your master;—obey!” (Shelly, 192).

The problem Victor tried to avoid was the reproduction of the two monsters. This would leave him responsible for an entire race of monsters, holding him accountable for all disasters and misery. Victor, also, is interested in creations by himself without the help of a woman. Victor’s destruction of the female monster can be viewed as an act of anti-feminism. Fearing the progression of a female monster, Victor destroys the almost finished female creature, leaving the first monster vowing vengeance on Victor because he has doomed his life of loneliness and despair.

The creation of Frankenstein's monster leads to murderous outcomes because of the constant rejection from its creator. For example, when Frankenstein runs away from the monster, his thoughts were, “I sought to avoid the wretch, whom I feared every, turning of the street would present to my view. I did not dare to return to the apartment which I inhabited” (29). Frankenstein’s thoughts towards his monster, is the way the monster sees himself. Being rejected by someone affects the way you carry yourself as an individual.

In the novel Frankenstein by Mary Shelley, the main protagonist, Victor Frankenstein, creates an indomitable monster who soon becomes a menace and threatens his existence. However, the creature was not primarily a belligerent being; the awakenings about the cruelties in society was what corrupted the innocent being. As a result, the creature longed for compensation for the pain inflicted upon him and soon resorted to destruction as a form of revenge. The monster, being left with no protection, was forced to understand the cruelties in life. When the monster in embarks on his journey of life, he comes across a fire which had been left by some beggars; he is “ overcome with the delight at the warmth [he] experience[es] from it ”, however

Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein follows the story of a scientist and his experiment gone wrong. Victor Frankenstein, the scientist, abandons his creature at the first sight of it coming to life. The monster, left alone and afraid, transforms from a warm, loving character to one that seeks revenge as the toils of nature and reality begin to take control. Their title changes of “master” and “subordinate” are often referenced in Frankenstein, and plays off the feelings of vengeance they have for each other. Shelley has built the novel around this relationship in a way that captures not only the audience’s attention but also the character’s feelings of regret and hatred as the consequences of exceeding these moral boundaries come to haunt them in the decisions they make and influence the people around them.

The word “monstrous” can be confused with the definition of “monster” as something inhuman, something or someone who has lacks of remorse or caring for things that a normal human being should care for. In literature, the word monster is used to refer to men/women who have done horrible mistakes like murder or those who have no regard for life and nature. Victor Frankenstein is the real monster of the story because he condemned everyone around him to dead because the isolation that he provoked by cutting everyone of his life caused him psychological damage. Through Frankenstein, Mary Shelley attempts to show the idea of how it is unnecessary to be a creature in order to be a monster. We could be human but we still act like monsters.