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Ella Regondola

Mrs. Albin

Honors English 11, Period 5

27 December 2021

The Humanity of Victor Frankenstein’s ‘Monster’

Humans are inherently social creatures: wired to live in companionship and community,

dependent on others from the moment of birth, and fueled by the love given and received

throughout a lifetime. Without the numerous forms of love entrusted to an individual– the

nurturing received in infancy, guidance throughout childhood and youth, and support throughout

adulthood– humanity’s survival would fail. The purpose of love varies throughout life, but never

ceases to be imperative to living; all humans seek to know love no matter culture, era, or

individual circumstances. In her novel Frankenstein, Mary Shelley chronicles the life of

protagonist Victor Frankenstein, a talented scientist, and his success in reanimating life into

collected pieces of human cadavers. The work follows Victor’s abandonment of his creation, the

creature’s subsequent alienation and rejection from society, and the ensuing vow of revenge on

his creator. Shelley emphasizes the creature’s humanity through his longing for love. The

creature’s actions, desires, motivations, and characteristics reflect human nature in that his desire

for love drives all his activities.

Humans are born with the capacity for evil as well as love; the path one takes depends

entirely on circumstances and learnings. With the potential for both evil and love, sin is intrinsic

to human life. The creature’s crimes of violence, vengeance, and murder directly contradict all

moral reasoning and his one desire: love. The creature’s conscience leads him to guilt and the

recognition of the fault in his actions: “My heart was fashioned to be susceptible of love and
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sympathy; and, when wrenched by misery to vice and hatred, it did not endure the violence of

the change without torture, such as you cannot even imagine” (Shelley 212). The “torture” and

mental anguish endured by the creation is a testament to his potential to love and be good, as he

acknowledges that this vile person is not who he wants to be. At his core, the ‘monster’ is an

intelligent creature desperate for companionship and love. His deprivation of these elements

essential to human life drives him to “vice and hatred”. Humanity and sin are inseparable, and

Victor’s experiment and Victor himself are no exception to such wrongs. The creature is the only

one labeled as a monster, despite the similar evils of other characters in the work. This is not

because of a lack of merit, but rather stemming from the creature’s grotesqueness. “Am I to be

thought the only criminal, when all human kind sinned against me?... I, the miserable and the

abandoned, am an abortion, to be spurned at, and kicked and trampled on. Even now my blood

boils at the recollection of this injustice” (Shelley 214). Furthermore, the sins committed by

humanity are often against the creature himself, and such evils drive the creature’s vices. The

being is the only victim of this dehumanizing title, as it robs him of all sympathy and compassion

for mankind. The label of “monster” is applicable to more than just Victor’s creature, but is used

in reference to him with no regard to its effects on his self-view and how deserving he is of it.

The being’s crimes and errors are of a fundamental element of human nature: mankind is not

made faultless.

From his first moments of life, the creature is abhorred and rejected by mankind. Victor

deems his awakening creation as a wretch, a catastrophe, and eventually a monster. The creature

is rejected for reasons beyond his own control, purely because of his physical appearance. This

rejection drives the creature to corruption: “I am malicious because I am miserable; am I not

shunned and hated by all mankind? ...I will revenge my injuries: if I cannot inspire love, I will
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cause fear” (Shelly 136-137). Victor’s creature is not evil by nature but is driven towards

malignance by the brutality inflicted upon him by society, and is transformed into a ‘monster’ by

the deprivation of love in his life. The alienation endured by the creature drives him from virtue,

joy, and goodness. The creature’s state of misery causes the witnessing of others’ joy to be a

painful experience: “Every where I see bliss, from which I alone am irrevocably excluded. I was

benevolent and good; misery made me a fiend. Make me happy, and I shall again be virtuous…

Believe me, Frankenstein: I was benevolent; my soul glowed with love and humanity: but am I

not alone, miserably alone?” (Shelley 91). The ‘monster’ is humanized by his desire, openness,

and hope for love. The rejections he faces expose the real monstrosity of the story: not the

creature, but rather society itself for its characterizing of Victor’s creature as a monster solely

because of his bizarre physicality. Human beings cannot survive alone without love; to endure a

life without love is one of the greatest calamities a human can experience. The essentiality of

love to human existence is reflected in the creature’s vices that stem from its absence.

Victor’s creature knows the pains of perpetual solitude all too well, and deliberately

chooses this alienation and lack of love as his form of revenge for his creator. For Victor’s

experiment, the epitome of misery is to see his creator experiencing the love of his family,

friends, strangers, and eventually, his wife. He chooses to make taking these things away from

Victor as his reason to live in lieu of devoting himself to loving another. He finds delight in

letting Victor squirm at the thought of his plans: “’Shall each man…find a wife for his bosom,

and each beast have his mate, and I be alone? ...Are you to be happy, while I grovel in the

intensity of my wretchedness? You can blast my other passions; but revenge remains’” (Shelley

162-3). The creature sees it as unjust that Victor, who he believes to be the origin of his misery,

may relish in the joy of love whilst he is intensely miserable in his solitude. The passion that he
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had once reserved for finding love is transformed into his adamance for making Victor feel as

unloved and isolated as he feels; the creature’s evil purport stems from the absence of love in his

life. The creature knows that his intentions are immoral, and his choice to act on hatred instead

of love leads to a deep self-loathing:

I abhorred myself. But when I discovered that he, the author at once of my existence and

of its unspeakable torments, dared to hope for happiness; that while he accumulated

wretchedness and despair upon me, he sought his own enjoyment in feelings and passions

from the indulgence of which I was for ever barred, then impotent envy and bitter

indignation filed me with an insatiable thirst for vengeance… Once I falsely hoped to

meet with beings, who, pardoning my outward form, would love me for the excellent

qualities which I was capable of bringing forth…now vice has degraded me beneath the

meanest animal. No crime no mischief, no misery, can be found comparable to mine

(Shelley 213-4).

The being begins his life with benevolence and a generous heart hopeful for love but is reformed

into a bitter, vengeful creature. He envies the love in his creator’s life and aches to experience

companionship firsthand; coupled with his hatred of Victor, the creature’s jealousy drives him to

the extremes of revenge– murder of the innocent, psychological manipulation, and malignance.

The creature’s choice of alienation as his form of revenge makes evident the suffering of

isolation, and how benevolence is not innate to mankind.

Victor Frankenstein’s creation, although anomalous in figure, suffers from the same

affliction that is central to the human condition: a need for love. When love is lacking from life,

it is dangerously easy to fall prey to vice and malignance. The ‘monster’ never experiences a

morsel of love, sympathy, nurturing, or companionship and this absence is evident in his anger,
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wickedness, and lack of a moral compass. Such afflictions of isolation persist in contemporary

society, as ceaseless loneliness leads individuals to rage and acts of violence. As humanity

continues to use the presence or lack of beauty as a primary factor in the determination of an

individual’s worthiness such violence will persist. To stray from goodness is of human nature;

humans have the capacity for evil, but having humanity does not guarantee rectitude. All the

same, one’s humaneness is not determined by integrity. Victor’s creation’s final condition as a

miserable, lonely, and corrupt creature is not something that developed from his nature, but

rather a lifetime of rejection, seclusion, and pain. Without love, Victor’s creature suffers a

lifetime of agony from which forms his desire for revenge. The danger of love is evident in

Victor’s destruction that follows his creature’s revenge, making apparent that in love there is no

place of safety. To practice love is to face the constant threat of the feelings that follow its

absence– pain, loss, and hurt. The creature knows all too well the agony of loneliness and knows

that love is essential to survival. At the core of his nature, the creature’s yearning for love serves

as his life’s underlying force.

Works Cited

Shelley, Mary. Frankenstein: The 1818 Text. Penguin Classics, 2018.