in stark contrast Victor’s speeches are absurdly melodramatic, with words “expressive of furious detestation and contempt”, reflecting the violence of his feelings. Through the juxtaposition of their language, with Victor’s uncivilised, savaged passions contrasting to the creature’s eloquent, harmonious arrangement of words, Victor’s superiority and intelligence is usurped by his creation. (Through Shelley, we come to a heightened understanding of the significant dangers of humanity’s flawed nature as it provokes a lack of
Victor’s abandonment causes him to have to face the consequences of his greed for creating life, for after he abandons the creature bad things start to happen to him. An example of this is the death of William, Victor’s younger brother. The creature “grasped his throat to silence him, and in a moment he lay dead” (134). The creature uses his strength to harm people Victor loved, forcing Victor to have to face the consequences of his corruption and belief that he could defy God and create a new race. The creature continues with his path and murders Victor’s long-time friend Henry Clerval (171).
He learns from his previous rash actions. But still, Victor doesn’t take on complete responsibility. Victor isn’t at Mary Shelly’s ideal yet. Taking on full responsibility would mean either taking the creature into his own arms as a father would a son, or killing the creature. Instead, Victor sets out to make a female companion for the creature, so that Victor doesn’t have to see the creature ever again.
Victor conveys that any human cannot withstand the ugliness of the face of the monster. A simile is used to compare a mummy risen from the dead is not even as close to disturbing as the despicable monster he created. The Dante references to Dante’s Inferno, Dante has come across many demons in hell but, even Frankenstein’s monster is viler than any demon in hell. In response to the monster being born Victor flees in horror. He wants nothing to do with the monster it frightens him so that he deserts it to fend for itself in his apartment not caring about any sort of trouble the monster can cause: “I then reflected, and the thought made me shiver, that the creature whom I had left in my apartment might still be in there, alive and walking about.
In order to not associate with it, Victor decided to abandon it. Leading the Creature to be lonely for the years to come, and because the Creature was lonely, this was leading the Creature to do malicious
The fact that Victor sees the creature as such a vile thing shows us that Victor doesn’t have any respect whatsoever for it. The creature states that he was ‘dependent on none and related to none’ which also
From the moment he is created, the creature knows he is not wanted by Victor. Shelly writes, “Unable to endure the aspect of the being
Victor continues to push the monster out of his life and believes that the monster is pure evil and the monster just wants love and acceptance, the monster states, “I was benevolent and good; misery made me a fiend. Make me happy, and I shall again be virtuous.” (Shelley 105) This portrays the monster and Victor's complex relationship because the monster puts all the shame on Victor so that Victor will accept and love him. Victor still detest the monster as he has ruined Vitor's life.
Conversely, when the monster imagines his creator, Victor, he curses “‘his crimes & malice”’ thoughts of hatred and revenge consume him (Shelley 96). This dichotomy highlights the incompetence of Victor as a parent. This helps to reassert that the monster’s “wickedness originates not with his soul but his treatment,” (Ferguson). Victor’s negligence as a parent, a trait caused by his poor upbringing, caused the corruption of his
Victor is stirred by his work, but not in a positive manner. He goes on to explain his feelings towards the creature by saying, “… my heart sickened and my feelings were altered to those of horror and hatred” (136). Victor is so bewildered and repulsed by the creature that he misses key signs of violence, from the creature, that may have saved Victor’s family had he not been so
His appearance scares the people he encounters, and his only desire is love. Further in the novel, there are many situations where the Monster is the victim. Shelley uses words that provide imagery for her readers. Readers will think Victor is the antagonist. He realizes if he would show the Creature love, the Monster would not kill the people.
Victor selfishly creates the Creature to gain prestige, pretentiously claiming himself as a human god when he succeeds and saying it was for the sake of humanity. In reality, he creates a grotesque being and abandons it the moment his illusions shatter, making the creature a victim because he denies the responsibility of raising it causing hardships for it. Victor also believes the creature is a reprobative individual since it kills his brother and foists Justine’s execution, thus he acts inimical towards it throughout the whole novel as he invectively exclaims, “Abhorred monster! Fiend that thou art! The tortures of hell are too mild a vengeance for thy crimes” (93).
Being abandoned by his creator, the monster has no one to guide him, no one to teach him right from wrong and good from evil. When the creature is first abandoned by Victor, he’s confused and doesn’t understand that he has been abandoned. The creature explains how he felt when he woke up, “A strange multiplicity of sensations seized me, and I saw, felt, heard, and smelt at the same time; and it was indeed, a long time before I learned to distinguish between the operations of my various senses” (Shelley 99). The creature won’t fully realize the impact of being abandoned until later in the story. Victor also suffers from isolation from his
In reality, he is disgusted by the sight of his creation so he abandons it leaving it all alone in the world without any guidance and runs away to the next room. Victor himself suffered from being a social outcast and now he bestowed the same feeling onto the creature by abandoning him. By treating the creature as an outcast, “he will become wicked … divide him, a social being, from society, and you impose upon him the irresistible obligations—malevolence and selfishness” (Caldwell). Not only is Victor selfish for abandoning his creature but he is shallow as well. Instead of realizing that he achieved his goal of bringing life to an inanimate body he runs way because of how hideous it is.
This automatically denied the creature in society, making him feel isolated. Once Victor was treated the same way and used animal cruelty, the creature had seen his "god" act a certain way, giving him the idea to get revenge. “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!”(Shelley, Chapter 16.) The different treatment the creature received from Victor, led him to further feel rejected, mixing his emotions from sadness and anger.
