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Mitchell Shannon

Ms. Winter

English 12, Period 1

28 January 2022

The Monster and The Monster’s Monster (Prompt #4)

You find yourself at a wedding just as it is time for the ceremony, and you get grabbed by

someone with a huge grey beard and a large raincoat. When you look closer, your jaw drops in

shock and horror as you find that it is me in a disguise trapping you to listen to my essay. The

novel Frankenstein (1832) by Mary Shelley was released during the British Romantic period and

was influenced by other pieces of literature such as The Rime of the Ancient Mariner by Samuel

Taylor Coleridge. The British Romantic period was filled with many works of art made to

question different parts of the current society, one of which being the relationship between the

creator and created. Frankenstein relates to this question with the relationship between Victor

and the creature as they interact and more often avoid each other. Mary Shelley proves that what

a creator owes to it’s created is knowledge, safety, and a healthy transition into the world,

through the lack of interaction between Victor and the creature causing tragedy to strike again

and again.

Knowledge is an important part of anyone’s development, without learning to speak or

write there would be no way for someone to communicate, make meaningful relationships, or

really do anything at all. In the novel, the creature finds that it loves to learn new things about

different people and is fascinated by the history of man as well. But the creature never learns

these things from Victor, it actually has to find a family in a cottage where it would hide
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“watching and endeavouring to discover the motives which influenced their actions”(Shelley 98)

instead of it being taught by Victor. Because of this the creature was lucky to learn French with

Safie being an abnormal case for most households at that time (I have to assume). With the

creature learning from sources not meant for someone new to existence, it picks up Paradise

Lost and immediately understands it as actual history. The creature compares the nature of the

characters in the book and itself, and concludes that “[m]any times [it] considered Satan as the

fitter emblem of [it’s] condition” (118). The creature is now going through it’s life with the

understanding that it is worse than Satan because it doesn’t even have companions like Satan

does. Victor could have stopped this by educating the creature about the difference between

fiction and reality along with other important things you might teach to a child. With Victor's

absence of education to the creature, it has to learn in other ways, and those other ways caused it

to have a misunderstanding of history that taught it to hate itself, leaving it confused and feeling

more alone than ever.

An important part of growing and existing is being protected and feeling safe, growing is

a vulnerable time both physically and emotionally and so there should be a safe place to do it.

Throughout the creature’s story to Victor, it talks multiple times about it being attacked, and that

treatment continues for the rest of the novel. During it’s story, the creature finds a drowning girl

and immediately jumps in the river to save her and succeeds in doing so. When they are found by

some man who knows the girl he takes the girl and flees as soon as he sees the creature, then as

the creature tries to follow them, the man “aimed a gun, which he carried at [it’s] body and fired”

injuring the creature so that they could escape (130). The creature getting shot is a pretty clear

indicator that it is not very safe on it’s own, and there is definitely no one protecting it. During

the creature’s time with the De Lacey’s (The Cottagers), it finds itself in a bad situation after
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trying to confront them. The creature is not well received when the younger De Lacey’s come

back, Felix “dashed [it] to the ground and struck [it] violently with a stick”(123-124). The

creature has no instincts to protect itself and once again gets injured by humans, it knows “[it]

could have torn [Felix] limb from limb” but didn’t (124), it would have been a bit extreme but it

could have at least disarmed him and tried to communicate. Without any defensive instincts, the

creature could have found itself in a lot more danger and was lucky to only have a few bad

interactions with humans (that are known). Late in the novel, Victor finally gets married to

Elizabeth while he knows the creature is trying to mess that up. Victor sends Elizabeth to bed and

gets ready to face the creature when he hears a scream and realizes his fatal mistake. He rushes

into the room and finds Elizabeth dead, while he recovers himself (because he got sick and

fainted dramatically like always) he looks outside to see the monster (because at this point it is),

“rushed towards the window, and drawing a pistol from [his] bosom, fired” (187). While the

circumstances might call for it, shooting at the creature is one of the worst ways to keep it safe,

that action has a tendency to actually cause harm to the recipient. There was not a single point in

the novel where the creature was safe except for before it was created, or maybe after Victor dies

(unless Walton feels like fulfilling the dying wish of a mad man).

After a child is all grown and it is time to leave into the world to make their own lives, it

is the parent’s responsibility to make sure the child is ready to be on it’s own. The creature is

likely the least prepared thing to ever be thrown into the world. When Victor finishes his project

and finally brings the creature to life he instantly feels “horror and disgust”, and “[u]nable to

endure the aspect of the being [he] created, [he] rushed out of the room” (43), after avoiding the

creature for the rest of the night, he doesn’t see it again until it kills William. The creature is a

fully grown newborn at this point and Victor leaves it on it’s own to exist. The creature doesn’t
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even know how to process emotions or feelings yet, the only reason it survives is because it’s

instincts kick in. Victor doesn’t help the creature adjust because he just isn’t there when it needs

him most. The creature’s time with the De Lacey’s is also notable with how it tries to befriend

them. The creature knows that it's hideous looks cause people to panic so it decides “to enter the

dwelling when the blind old man should be alone” (121). It’s plan makes sense because of how

ugly it is, but it was so emotional and excited when it went down that it caused the old De Lacey

to panic and not help the creature with the rest of the family. The creature has no relationship

building skills and it really shows during it’s time with the De Lacey’s, children usually learn to

interact with people in school but the creature never had this opportunity. Victor could have

helped it, but ran away instead. Even after Victor learns of the creature's experiences, he decides

not to help it out. Victor becomes angry with the creature because of the things it has done but

fails to understand the reason. He sympathizes with the creature a little bit until “[t]he latter part

of [it’s] tale had kindled anew in [him] the anger that had died away while [it] narrated [it’s]

peaceful life among the cottagers” (134). Victor then refuses to fulfill the creature's request to

give it a wife and that leads to the rest of the tragedies in the novel. Victor made many mistakes,

and the circumstances are strange so a few mistakes are reasonable, but he never goes and fixes

anything. Victor has many chances to help the creature with introducing it to the world or letting

it live it’s life with a partner away from society, but he constantly choses to make his and the

creature's situations worse.

The relationship between Victor and the creature is frustrating to watch because the

creature appears to be a perfect fit for society, but Victor didn’t take the time to help the creature

in any way. The creature had to learn from spying on people. The creature was never safe from

angry humans. The creature never had a chance to be peacefully on it’s own in society. What
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Victor owed his creature is a fighting chance to exist without him, but instead he chose to make

everyone suffer, including himself, making the novel start with no monsters and end with two.
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Work Cited

Shelley, Mary Wollstonecraft, and Diane Johnson. Frankenstein. Bantam Dell, 2003.