Open Question Essay

Frankenstein’s Monster is considered to be one of archetypes for villainy and evil. With his grotesque appearance and his desire to kill off everyone that Dr. Frankenstein holds dear there seems no saving grace to his character. What of the monster itself? Mary Shelley wrote the monster to have feelings, human intellect and a sense of morality. The monster could be a victim of a cruel fate to some even though his hatred runs deep. So how can any reader even begin to like or respect this monster of foul deeds?

            In Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, the monster is brought into being by Dr. Victor Frankenstein of which the creature was named after. This creature soon vanished for a couple months soon after Victor fled his lab in horror only to re-appear later demanding that Dr. Frankenstein create a female being for him or else he would kill all he loved. When Dr. Frankenstein refused, the monster started to throttle all his loved ones starting with his newly wed wife. Slowly the monster picked off every conceivable member of his family and all of his friends until Victor Frankenstein was only a bitter and vengeful husk of what he once was. Only when Victor was crushed by his sorrow and hate and thus died did the monster abate his killing spree.

           Despite the monster having to kill everyone, the monster could have lead a very different and less bloody life. While Dr. Frankenstein fled from the lab, the monster was up to his own devices for a couple of months in the book. In that time he learned who and what he was and tried to befriend some local villagers to take him in. Everywhere he went people were terrified and hated him because of his looks. Only a blind old grandfather showed him the slightest form of compassion. The monster is human in all ways but physically and so wants to be accepted and cared for just like other living sentient being. Later he turns to Dr. Frankenstein in hopes that if he cannot be accepted by mankind that he would be accepted by another of his. This is where he makes his earlier demand. He is so desperate for kindness and so jaded by outright rage against him that he hopes that his creator of all people could understand the value of love when ones own love is threatened or non-existent. It does seem a little over the top in how he goes killing everyone though; but in the end of the book, he tells the person at Victor’s deathbed that he is going to the north to destroy the creation that Victor made so that no man will ever be able to perform such an atrocity again and the secret of life would be lost again.

            Yes, the monster is truly a villain to be remembered. If however anyone would have shown him the least bit of kindness, this so called monster’s actions would have been quite human. Who knows? Maybe even a human hated since birth could do the crimes the monster committed and therefore make the monster seem not so monstrous after all.