Why Is Victor Frankenstein's Monster Misunderstood?

Amanda Hudson

Graydon

2nd Period

2 December 2014

The Brain of a Beast

Behavior of the mentally unstable is often mistaken for criminal behavior. Is Victor Frankenstein’s monster completely incorrigible, or is he simply misunderstood? Taking a closer look at the science of the brain and the psychology behind the monster’s actions can give an interesting insight as to why Victor is not to blame for his creation’s wrongdoings. In Frankenstein by Mary Shelley, Victor Frankenstein creates a being that eventually kills three of the people that are closest to him. The problem could very well originate in the monster’s brain. Leaving an innocent being with little to no developed morals to fend for himself is not the most brilliant thing that Victor

When mothers give birth, they don’t exactly plan on raising a criminal. When Victor creates the creature, he does not foresee it going off and murdering innocent people. He relates his work in creating the monster to the birth of a child. He describes how “the moon gazed on my midnight labours, while, with unrelaxed and breathless eagerness, I pursued nature”(39). Shelley uses certain vocabulary to relate his “labours” in creating the monster to those of a mother in labor with a child and how he did so with “unrelaxed and breathless eagerness”. The length of three seasons is also nine months, the length of time from conception to birth with natural babies. He uses He was not conceiving a being out of negativity, but rather, optimism. Some might argue that the monster should not be compared to a human, but it was made out of human flesh; its brain once belonged to another

Here, he is officially giving up any chance that he has at the life that he ultimately wants. Revenge on Victor for abandoning him consumes his mind and soon becomes his sole purpose on Earth. The monster fights an upward battle, being abandoned and shunned, but the average person would not express their frustration by going off and murdering three innocent people, they would think about the potential consequences of their actions and follow a more sensible and generally safer route. A lack of dopamine activity in the frontal lobe can cause worse reasoning and memory performance. The monster may not fully understand that killing people is bad and will make others scared of him even more if they find out about it. He does try to break through to Victor and then to the DeLacey family, among others, before he declares war on mankind, but that does not excuse the fact that what the monster wants more than anything is to be loved and accepted by someone. If one wants something that bad, they will not do something that will cause that something to be eternally unattainable, unless of course, they are not fully aware of the repercussions that their actions will cause. This is similar to teenagers being infamous for their rebellious nature and impetuous decisions. The frontal lobe doesn’t reach maturity until one reaches their late twenties. When something goes wrong