“I rushed out of the room and continued a long time traversing my bedchamber, unable to compose my mind to sleep.”
Are monsters born or are they created? That is a question that people have been asking themselves and each other for many years. You read about John Wayne Gacy and Ted Bundy, people who became monsters because of the brutal and evil crimes that they committed against their fellow human beings. The novel Frankenstein by Mary Shelly contains two monsters: the brilliant Victor Frankenstein of Geneva, and the creature he forms from the bodies of corpses stolen from the cemetery.
Victor set out to find the secret of life and after much trial and error he found it, but the secret was more than he bargained for. He crafted a being far larger than himself in stature and strength. When Victor sees the creature he has made he abandons it, not knowing if it lives or dies. When the creature learns of its birth it tracks Victor down after swearing his revenge. He exacts it by killing Victor's brother William, wife Elizabeth, and causing the deaths of his father and Justine Maritz. While Victor does not kill them himself, the monster he creates does. Those deaths are all on Victor's head. Victor is a bigger monster than the being he creates because he knows the difference between good and evil.
Victor Frankenstein is a man obsessed with creating life, but he does not care about what he does to get there or what happens afterwards. For instance, when Victor is creating the creature he does nothing else with his time whatsoever, “I seem to have lost all soul or sensation but for this one pursuit “. Victor cuts off all contact with his family and friends, becoming in essence a recluse. As he works Victor slowly gets sicker and sicker, both in body and mind. Working only on the creature shows that Victor is slowly growing insane, even if he will not admit it to himself.
Victor knows that robbing graves is a sin and he does it nonetheless, throwing the consequences to the wayside. Another way that Victor is shown to be a bigger monster is how he reacts to his creation after he has endowed it with life, “I beheld the wretch-the miserable monster whom I had created” . Victor sees the creature he has created and hates it based solely on its looks, and because of this he soon abandons the creature. This leaves the creature alone and without guidance. Victor does not care once the creature is gone, even though he does not know what has become of it. All he is satisfied with is his own knowledge, not the responsibility to his creation.
The creature might look like the bigger monster on the outside, but inside he is an innocent child in a world filled with evil and corruption. The first thing he learns is that man can be cruel to those who are different, “One of the best of these I entered, but I had hardly placed my foot within the door before the children shrieked, and one of the woman fainted. The whole village was roused; some fled, some attacked me, until, grievously bruised by stones and many other missile weapons, I escaped to the open country and fearfully took refuge in a low hoved, quite bare, and making a wretched appearance after the palaces I had beheld in the village”.
During the first part of his life the creature is innocent, not knowing the ways of the world and of man. He does not know that there is a set of rules that must be followed in order for civilization to exist. Since the creature is hardly a few days old he does not know this. If he breaks a rule by mistake it is not his fault because he did not know that the rules existed. Once the creature learns the rules of living he decides to track down Victor to seek his revenge, “I will revenge my injuries; if I cannot inspire love, I will cause fear, and chiefly towards you my arch-enemy, because my creator do I swear in extinguishable hatred”. The creature wants to find Victor so he can share the pain he has suffered with his creator. All he received was hate, so all he knows is hate. He was corrupted by the fear and hate that men shunned him with. In essence he is changed into a monster. That is why the creature is less of a monster than his creator.
Of the two Victor Frankenstein is a bigger monster than his creation. He goes against everything that humanity holds sacred in order to bring life to the dead. Victor cuts off all contact with the people in his life that he cares about to be totally devoted to his work. Once his creation is complete and endowed with life Victor runs and abandons it, leaving the creature alone to fend for itself. The monster leaves and wanders out into the world. He soon learns that all humanity sees him as a monster and want him dead, based solely on his appearance. When he learns how he was created he swears vengeance on the creator that abandoned him. The creature wants revenge because he wants Victor to know the pain he has caused his creation.
The creature never asked to be endowed with life, but he was. Victor gave him his life, and then left him without even waiting to see if his creation would be a success of a failure. If Victor had waited he could have taught his creation how to behave in civilization. Instead the creature became a lost soul, tainted by the hate of man. It was nurture, not nature that made him into a monster. If the people he met had all been like the blind man he could have been met with love, keeping his soul like it was when he was born. Instead the hatred turned him from a pure creation to a tainted abomination, a living Lucifer in Adam's shape. Victor became a monster when he let his greed and ambition blind him, making him cast away friend, family, God and his soul.
