The Importance of Compassion Compassion. It is a word that can be described as pity or concern. For some, compassion is often associated with the word kindness which means is the characteristic of being friendly and understanding. Through Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, she reveals that a lack of compassion leads a person to make negative actions towards others. Before the creature, created by Victor Frankenstein, realized that Victor doesn’t care about him, he reacted with kindness and amiability towards others. For example, when the creature told Victor his tale and said, “When I returned as often as it was necessary, I cleared their path of snow...” (pg 72). This illustrates that the creature liked to show kindness towards others by making …show more content…
For example, when Victor glances out the window and sees a shadow ,as he stares at his wife’s dead body he states, “…A grin was on the face of the face of the monster; he seemed jeer, as with the fiendish finger he pointed to the corpse of my wife”. This shows that the Creature seemed to enjoy the fact that Victor’s wife was lifeless and seeing he was in pain. This is significant because it showed how the creature had went from being kindhearted and sympathetic to the complete opposite due to Victor’s lack of compassion. If Victor showed the Creature more compassion it would have shown him sympathy instead of smiling in that situation. Another example of the Creature acting negatively towards others is when it states “...Besides some months have elapsed since the commission of his crimes [the Creature’s crimes]” (pg 148). This highlights that months after finding out Victor’s lack of compassion, the Creature finds himself causing havoc and committing many crimes. This proves that compassion is a very important aspect in everyone’s life and when it is missing it causes rash actions such as killing and other crimes to occur. The death of William was extremely hard for Victor and it is proven when he states “Remorse extinguished every hope….lived in daily fear lest the monster whom I created should perpetuate some new wickedness” (pg62). This highlights that Victor felt guilty for creating the Creature that has killed someone so dear to him. This is significant because it proves that Victor’s lack of compassion towards the Creature lead it to commit crimes to really make Victor ashamed of