Ketao Wu
Kathryn McEwen
IAH 206
09/28/13
Who is the real monster?
“I was benevolent; my soul glowed with love and humanity; but am I not alone, miserably alone?”(Frankenstein, Mary Shelley, 2007) This is what the creature said when he last met Frankenstein on the ice. As a creature, why he didn’t act like monster but looks pathetic? In the novel, Frankenstein looks his creature as a monster, but does the creature is? Or the person who made the monster isn’t a monster? No, Neither of them is not a monster. First, we should ask ourselves what is the monster? In many situations, people describe the person or creature, which they are unknown as “monster”. However, I more prefer to call “monster” to what is dangerous and evil. For example, the zombie in many movies or books, they are dangerous and none of humanity. But did Frankenstein or creature in the novel is evil or dangerous? No, this novel is not a horrible story; it is just a story of two wretched souls stand in a different position and what happened to them. In the position of Frankenstein, who had a great achievement to make the monster but got a sad result. I took him as a normal unlucky person rather than a monster. Frist, Frankenstein loved science when he was in college, and one day he found that he was interested in creature a life with the dead body. I believe most of the scientist in the world have this chance would like to take a risk to try it, just like Frankenstein did. Nevertheless, unfortunately, the god makes a joke to him. He created an “ugly” creature. “His yellow skin scarcely covered the work of muscles and arteries beneath; his hair was of a lustrous black, and flowing his teeth of pearly whiteness; but these luxuriance’s only formed a more horrid contrast with this watery eyes, that seemed almost of the same color as the dun-white eyes.”(Frankenstein, page 58) From Frankenstein’s description, we can see that the monster outside doesn’t look like a human. Even as the person who made this creature, Frankenstein is still in fear of the creature, and this show why Frankenstein is a normal person because he acts like other normal person would act when they meet an unknown creature. If God gives him a chance to regret, I believe he won’t try it again. “ ‘he can tell.—Oh, save me, save me!’ I imagined that the monster seized me” (Frankenstein, page 62) From he created creature, his life is connected with this creature whatever he wants or not.
In the other way, when the period that creature runs away, he was suffered but most time he lived like a normal person until the creature came back to him. Creature asked him to make a companion to him, as a human, Frankenstein refuse to make the companion, because he knows, as the inhumane higher wisdom species like creature, human society may accept an individual creature, but won’t accept a group inhumane higher wisdom species especially they could breed. Looking at human history, when a race met another race that is looks different than they are, the final result is one race destroying another race. If there are many creatures, the only consequence of this is war, and then Frankenstein would become the sinner who makes this happened. So stand in Frankenstein’s position, he can’t accept the creature’s requirement. Even after the creature got angry and killed his all family members, “I refused, and I did right in refusing, to create a companion for the first creature.”(Frankenstein, page 220) Even at the last, he still believe he did right to refuse make another creature. This is why I believe he is an unlucky normal person because he doesn’t have a choice. However, standing in the position of the creature, I think he is a wretch human soul with a monster outlook. People always said that you couldn’t choose whom your born. I believe this is the best sentence to describe the creature. He was born with an ugly outside. When he was first time reading the numerous books, he must be
