Frankenstein Essay

The Creator and the Creation: One Identity In the dark, gothic novel Frankenstein a young Victor Frankenstein, out of a desire for knowledge, creates a monster out of a combination of corpses out of his years of work. The people who encounter the creation hate him and are disgusted by him. Victor’s desire for knowledge, his emotions, and ideas are manifested and reflected in the monster. The monster is created with no understanding of basic things like light or noise. He says, “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 92) The creation begins his journey out into the world quickly learning and adapting. He first discovers fire and then civilization in a small village. The monster is drawn in by the life of the village, but the villages attack him and drive the monster away. Victor’s creation wanders through the wilderness trying to find a home. The creation finds an old shed behind a quaint cabin. He acquires a fondness for the family inside, the De Lacy’s, and watches them through a hole in the shed. The creation says, “What chiefly struck me was the gentle manners of these people; and I longed to join them, but I dared not.” (Shelley 99) The monster slowly learns to talk, to write, geography, history, and just like his creator, natural philosophy. The creation finds a bag containing the novels Paradise Lost, a volume of Plutarch 's Lives, the Sorrows of Werter. He soaks up everything from the books, further extending his knowledge, conscience, and understanding. The monster begins to understand what an abomination he is, and his hatred toward himself and creator for giving him this burden of a conscious existence. His knowledge drives him to hate, just as Victor had done before. Also, Victor Frankenstein gives not just life to his creation, but he gives emotions as well. The emotions and personality of Victor live on in his creation. Frankenstein’s monster is naïve and kind in his first days and weeks after his creation. The monster searches for a home, friends, and someone to love him back. He believes he can live happily with the De Lacy’s saying that, “I looked upon them as superior beings, who would be the arbiters of my future destiny. I formed in my imagination a thousand pictures of presenting myself to them, and their reception of me.” (Shelley 103) The monster was so naïve. Upon introducing himself to the family, he was beaten and driven away. The peasants gave up the deed and moved away as quickly as possible. The more the creature learns though, the more his heart was clouded with hate for his creator. The creature slowly kills off Victor’s family and friends until all he has is his future wife, Elizabeth, and his best friend, Henry. The creature then demands Victor to create a female monster as ugly as him so that they can be together. Disgusted of himself for making another monstrosity, Victor destroys it and dumps the body parts in the lake. Victor says to the monster, “The hour of my resolution is past, and the period of your power is arrived. Your threats cannot move to do an act of wickedness; but they confirm me in a determination of not creating you a companion in vice.” (Shelley 149) The creature kills Henry and swears to Victor that he will get his revenge on Victor and Elizabeth’s wedding night. The monster does get his revenge, but He kills Elizabeth instead of Victor. This leads Victor on a manhunt all across Europe and even into the Arctic Ocean. The creator tried to kill his creation, and creation kills the creator’s family. Victor kills the monster’s lover, and the monster kills Elizabeth. In addition, the Monster and Frankenstein are much alike in their obsessions. Frankenstein becomes obsessed with creating life, but then the science that created the life of the monster disgusts him, so Victor vows to destroy it, “I had formed in my own heart a resolution to pursue my destroyer to death.” (Shelley 176) The monster becomes obsessed with destroying Victor for creating this way and then abandoning him, but when Victor dies the monster claims that he was not always evil, that the world made him this way. Victor and his creation were both disgusted with what had been made, and in the end, the monster completes Victor’s work and destroys himself. He leaves to go on the journey of his destruction with this, “I shall no longer see the sun and the stars, or feel the wind play on my cheeks. Light, feeling, and sense will pass away; and in this condition must I find my happiness.” (Shelley 196) Victor Frankenstein’s creation becomes an extension of Victor and many things that Victor does are reflected back by the monster. Karren Karbiener writes, “Our confusion of creator and created, as well as our interest in depicting the creature’s human side, indicate an unconscious acknowledgement of a common and powerful reading of Frankenstein: that the monster and his creator are two halves of the same being who together as one represent the self divided, a mind in dramatic conflict with itself.” (Karbiener xvii) The monster and the creator reflect each other’s actions and clash together. Victor’s desire for knowledge, his personality and emotions, and his ideas are all manifested in the monster.

Works Cited
Karbiener, Karren. Cursed Tellers, Compelling Tales– The Endurance of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. New York. Barnes and Noble Classics: 2003. Print.
Shelley, Mary. Frankenstein. By Mary Shelley. 1818. New York: Bantam, 2003 (xiii-xxxi). Print.

Cited: Karbiener, Karren. Cursed Tellers, Compelling Tales– The Endurance of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. New York. Barnes and Noble Classics: 2003. Print. Shelley, Mary. Frankenstein. By Mary Shelley. 1818. New York: Bantam, 2003 (xiii-xxxi). Print.