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Molly Lada

Ms. Dill

AP Literature and Composition

31 October 2020

The Importance of Parental Nurture

Victor Frankenstein creates a monstrosity by giving life to human parts in his laboratory.

The creature begins his existence as if he were a newborn, naive to the world. In the beginning of

his life, he learns and exhibits kindness and compassion. Throughout the novel, his character

changes and descends into darkness. The hardships of his life and abandonment by his father turn

him into a monster. His anger towards Victor’s lack of affection overpowers his goodness and

forces him to commit immoral acts, which he later regrets. Shelley presents his dynamic

character in a way where it is impossible to classify him as purely good or evil. However, with

parental nurture the creature could have lived a good, virtuous life. In ​Frankenstein​, Mary

Shelley uses the monster’s morally ambiguous character to portray the theme of the importance

of parental nurture.

At first, the creature learned to be good and displayed kindness in his character. After

traveling alone for months, he takes shelter in a hut near the De Lacey family’s cottage. Here he

observes the poor family and learns human morals. He steals from their food supply to feed

himself, but admits, “when I found that in doing this I inflicted pain on the cottagers, I abstained”

(Shelley 109). From then on he gathers wood for the struggling family. The character is

thoughtful for aiding them, and while he longs to be a part of his own family he is not hateful

towards the De Laceys, even calling them his protectors. Victor, the being’s creator, abandoned

him from birth, yet when they meet again the monster is not cruel to him. He asks Victor to listen
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to his story and try to understand. The creature explains, “I was benevolent and good; misery

made me a fiend. Make me happy, and I shall again be virtuous” (96). He believes that he was

good at one point, and it was the world that eventually made him corrupt. He agrees to let Victor

live out his life peacefully if he complies, showing his compassion. Here Shelley is portraying

the monster’s benevolent side, and this builds on his ambiguous character type. The De Laceys

taught him kindness and righteousness, and he started life as a considerate being. The monster

was not born evil.

The creature learns cruelty after 1 year watching the family. Desperate for companions,

he enters the cottage under the ruse of being a traveler, and talks with the old blind man. The rest

of the family is horrified when they find them. Felix strikes him and the creature flees into the

woods. The rejection he experiences, combined with his own father’s rejection, turns into

feelings of anger and vindictiveness. His protectors abandon him, and he discloses, “for the first

time the feelings of revenge and hatred filled my bosom” (Shelley 139). He burns their cottage

down in his rage, and then directs it towards Victor. While telling his story to him, the monster

proclaims, “You had endowed me with perceptions and passions and then cast me abroad an

object for the scorn and horror of mankind” (141). He desires to get revenge on his father for

abandoning him. His evilness is not without reason, as he only focuses on the man that wronged

him. He learned to be violent after experiencing harsh injustice and abandonment.

The monster continues to attempt to be kindhearted, but he is pushed towards depravity.

On his journey to Geneva, Victor’s hometown, he goes through even more maltreatment. He

saves a little girl from drowning in a raging river, but upon finding them, the girl’s father pulls

her away and shoots the monster. As a result, he is enraged and vows “eternal hatred and

vengeance to all mankind” (Shelley 143). He was only trying to help the girl, thus the unjust
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shooting only adds fuel to his burning, fiery rage towards humans. When he nears Geneva, he

sees a young boy and seizes him. He only intends to keep the boy as a companion, not to hurt

him. However, when he learns that the boy is Victor’s brother, William, he decides that the child

will be his first victim. At first he had pure intentions, but then Victor’s absence in his life

pushed him to want to hurt his father’s precious family. The monster strangles William and

exults at the fact that his death will torment his creator. Similar to a troubled child, he will do

anything to get his father’s attention. The monster is evil for killing the innocent boy, but at the

same time he has a reason for doing so. Victor then causes his further path of destruction. When

the scientist destroys the creature’s potential wife, he cannot help but kill Victor’s wife,

Elizabeth, in revenge. He travels far to find his victims, yet never kills anyone unrelated to

Victor. His violence is a direct result of Victor’s absence and his hatred for him. The monster

acts out to both gain his father’s attention, and to hurt him because he feels aggrieved.

Perhaps the most compelling evidence to the monster’s ambiguity comes at the end of the

novel. After chasing his monstrosity for years, Frankenstein passes away peacefully on Robert

Walton’s ship, and not long after Walton finds the creature standing over his body. He is

grieving over Frankenstein and seems to feel remorse for killing those close to him. He explains

that he pitied the man after murdering his best friend Henry, but was so angry when he found

that he was still getting married that he was compelled to kill Elizabeth. The creature calls

himself “the slave, not the master, of an impulse which I detested yet could not disobey” (Shelley

229). While his life experiences caused him to become malevolent, this ended with his last

victim, Frankenstein. He expresses that he does not want sympathy, and abhors himself. He

remarks to Walton: “I cannot believe that I am the same creature whose thoughts were once

filled with sublime and transcendent visions of the beauty and the majesty of goodness,” and
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even compares himself to a fallen angel (230-231). He understands that he grew evil over time

and hates this, even professing that he is remorseful for strangling William. For these reasons, he

cannot be classified as truly good or evil, and remains ambiguous. Shelley expertly crafts his

character, making the reader want to empathize with the monster even after he committed

heinous acts. He plans to kill himself to find happiness and release in death, showing that he is

not proud of his malicious deeds and cannot live with himself. In the end, he claims that his pain

is greater than Victor’s ever was. Presented here is a troubled, complex creature, not a purely evil

monster.

Ultimately, Victor could have prevented the monster’s violence if he had not deserted

him. When children are born, their parents normally take full responsibility for looking after and

nurturing them. Yet, Victor births his creation in his lab and then runs from it. The scientist

robbed him of having a normal, supportive mother and father. As soon as the creature’s eyes

open, Victor recounts, “one hand was stretched out, seemingly to detain me, but I escaped and

rushed downstairs” (Shelley 49). Here his creation is not trying to hurt him, but merely reaching

out for his father. From this moment Victor abandons him, helpless in an alien world. He never

accounted for the monster’s feelings when creating him, and only focused on his own twisted

aspirations. He did not even bother to give him a name, and the monster spends his days longing

for an identity. Just creation is not sufficient. Victor had to care for his child to prevent him from

becoming the violent and despaired being he now is.

With intervention and parental nurture from his creator, the monster could have turned

out differently. The abandonment he faced seems to justify his actions. Shelley uses his

equivocal character to show how he is not purely evil. His monstrousness is a result of the

injustices imposed on him by people he had done no wrong to, and most of whom he tried to
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befriend at first. Confused, he yells to Walton, “Am I to be thought the only criminal, when all

humankind sinned against me?” (Shelley 231). He asks why the captain does not hate Felix or

the drowning girl’s father for spurning and wronging him. He claims that he is an abandoned,

miserable creature who has only ever been hated, revealing his disdain for his absent father.

Victor was never there to love his creation and teach him right from wrong. When he felt rage or

sadness there was no one to calm him down or comfort him, so he acted on his impulses. If

Victor had been there for his creation he never would have killed Victor’s family, as he did this

mostly to cause his father to suffer like he did.

All in all, the monster is an ambiguous character. While he began life open and excited,

thinking he could befriend the De Laceys, he quickly fell victim to circumstance. The father

shooting him in the forest and Victor destroying his female creation caused him to crave revenge,

and his father figure was never there to soothe his rage. He cruelly murdered Victor’s friends and

family, but later on he feels remorse. Shelley causes the monster to be easy to empathize with by

revealing his good side. His father deprived him of a normal human experience when he

abandoned him, and he needed a parent’s love and support to control his evilness. Victor’s lack

of parental nurture and guidance ultimately drove the monster to commit his evil acts. Mary

Shelley is asserting that the love of a parent is essential to a child’s development. The author’s

romantic perspective on writing caused her to emphasize the importance of emotional

connections, as is present throughout ​Frankenstein.​ She tells the story of a dynamic, complicated

character who only needed some fatherly love.