Morality In Frankenstein

He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster (Nietzsche, 1886, Aphorism 146). It is important to know that one who indulges too much in something will eventually become the embodiment of it. Someone who fights monsters may eventually begin to justify the perpetration of monstrous acts in order to succeed, without realising that this has turned them into the very thing they have been fighting against. But what exactly is the definition of a monster? How does a man throw away his morals and humanity to become one? The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines a monster as a horrible creature. Normally, this describes fantasy creatures – those which do not exist. But to some people, they are very real, like strangers

In order to define a monster, we need to know what a man isn't. A man is somebody who is moral, someone who follows his moral obligations. Very different from our definition of a monster, who is someone without morals – they (almost) entirely disregard morality. Morality is the decisions one makes when one is not the only one who will be affected by the choices they make. Those who do not follow what society dicates is good and well will be seen as a monster, someone who has departed from the customs set by everyone else. Immorality is the exact opposite of being moral - being in conflict with traditional principles held by society. Someone who is immoral knows what is good and what is bad, but chooses to do the wrong thing. Amorality, however, is either being unaware of moral standards, or being indifferent to them. Someone might do an action without regard to the consequences that would arise from it, or simply do things out of self-interest without regard to how society perceives the action. The concept of being right differs between everybody. Someone who follows their own interests might be called selfish, or arrogant, but it depends on the actions, and how the person interacts with

When we do, unintentionally, we naturally express remorse towards the person. Some people enjoy inflicting pain on others, even going out of their way and spending extra effort to do this. There are two terms to describe this behaviour, the German word Schadenfruede, or epicaricacy, and sadism. Epicaricacy is described as the malicious, mischievous satisfaction gained from the misfortune of other people, while sadism is the gaining of pleasure from intentionally inflicting pain. Some people find it difficult to believe that there are those who attain some sort of benefit from seeing someone else suffer. Whether this is towards other people, or even towards animals, those who enjoy this are already so used to it that they consider it a perfectly normal thing already, even if others may not share the same viewpoint. Rational or not, the enjoyment of seeing others in pain isn’t as bad as being completely indifferent to violence. Some people are so used to the suffering of others that it does not affect them anymore, and they become accustomed to it – some even indifferent to it. It may be called evil by some, but after seeing and observing the same thing day after day, one has to consider that we grow used to it and eventually start to disregard it because it has stopped being important to