Solitude In Frankenstein

The creature also takes on a role as a Byronic Hero through his forced isolation, intelligence, traumatic life events, and manipulative skills. The creature begins his life by being abandoned by his creator and forced to develop from the mental stage of a human newborn to an adult on his own. After the initial confusion from waking, he leaves Victor’s apartment, and finds himself in a desolate area by a brook where he is frightened, cold, and completely alone (73). Only knowing solitude, the creature doesn’t know how to interact with other beings because he is unaware that his appearance causes fright in everyone. When he stumbles upon them, he doesn’t understand why they run from him. As one man ran screaming from him upon catching a glimpse,

Before he goes through with his plan to meet the family, observing the De Laceys is the creature’s Eden. He is not aware of evil until people are evil to him. The creature is wrong of course when it comes to them accepting him, however, as his appearance is too frightening for anyone, even people he loved from afar to overlook when found near someone or something valuable to them. When the creature is discovered in their cottage, the young De Lacey “darted forward, and with supernatural force tore [the creature] from his father, to whose knees [the creature] clung, in a transport of fury, he dashed [the creature] to the ground and struck [him] violently with a stick” (Shelley 93). This experience, combined with the treatment of other humans toward him, traumatized the creature. The De Lacey’s actions prove that “a refusal of sympathy toward a friendly monster provokes a hostility” (Randel 203). After this moment, he frequently asks his creator why he had let him live. This mentality leads him to declare “everlasting war against the species, and more than all, against him who had formed [the creature] and sent [him] forth to this insupportable misery” (Shelley 94). The abandonment by his creator is really starting to wreak havoc in the creature’s mind. He calls Victor Frankenstein a “heartless creator. [He] had endowed [the creature] with perceptions and passions and then cast [him] abroad an object for the scorn and horror of mankind” (96). He travels to Geneva next, Victor’s hometown. He is livid, and “the nearer [he] approached to [Victor’s] habitation, the more deeply did [he] feel the spirit of revenge enkindled in [his] heart” (96). He is willing at this point to commit any act that would hurt his estranged creator. Mary Shelley insisted that “the monster is naturally good, ... but