Palestinian American literary theorist and cultural critic Edward Said has written that “Exile is a strangely compelling to think about but terrible to experience. It is the unhealable rift forced between a human being and a native place, between the self and its true home; its essential sadness can never be surmounted.” Yet Said has also said that exile can become “a potent, even enriching” experience. In the novel, Frankenstein, author Mary Shelley explores the nature of exile as a sometimes enriching experience, but more prominently by looking at it's devastating impact when it is imposed on the creature by not only society in general, but by Victor Frankenstein himself. Exile has positive consequences -- the creature's desire to educate …show more content…
He tries in vain to end his exile by finding someone to accept him. But, he fails every time. He eventually even seems to understand why the world has trouble including him: his outer appearance and strange stature. Although that knowledge doesn’t make it any easier for the creature to deal with his reality. "Believe me, Frankenstein: I was benevolent. My soul glowed with love and humanity; but am I not alone, miserably alone? You, my creator, abhor me; what hope can I gather from your fellow creatures, who owe me nothing? They spurn and hate me..." (103) The creature is rejected by society (Like the blind man and his family and by the man accompanying a young girl he saves from drowning) but more importantly by his parent-figure, and his …show more content…
By calling Victor the creature's "creator", Shelley refers to him as both a parent and a God-like figure. This rejection by his “parent” negatively effects the creature’s personality in a way that’s more intense than any other kind of experience. “’I expected this reception,’ said the daemon. ‘All men hate the wretched; how then must I be hated, who am miserable beyond all living things! Yet, you, my creator, detest and spurn me, thy creature, to whom thou art bound by ties only dissoluble by the annihilation of one of us…I ought to be thy Adam, but I am rather the fallen angel, whom thou direst from joy for no indeed. Everywhere I see bliss, from which I alone am irrevocably excluded.’"