Iida Post One

Through the character of Frankenstein, Shelly shows that nurture influences the creation of a human’s personality more than the nature that they are born with. Because the reader is hearing this story through the eyes of Doctor Frankenstein, the creature that he creates seems to be inhuman and purely a scientific experiment. However, this changes when Doctor Frankenstein confronts his creation face to face, in the barren ice and snow of the desolate mountains. “’I expected this reaction,’ said the daemon, ‘All men hate the wretched; how, then, must I be hated, who am miserable beyond all living things.’” (p68). This first contact with the creature that Frankenstein created shows a very different picture than the soulless devil that Frankenstein believed it to be. Frankenstein’s creation is a sentient being, full of emotion, and believes that because of the way that he has been treated by the human race, that he deserves to be angry and resentful. “ Believe me, Frankenstein,” the creature said, “I was benevolent; my soul glowed with love and humanity; but am I not alone, miserably alone? You, my creator, abhor me; what hope can I gather from your fellow-creatures, who owe me nothing? They spurn and hate me.” (p69). Frankenstein’s creation is a sentient being, something that did not hate the world when it was brought into being but has learned to hate it because of the mistreatment it has suffered at the hands of the world. Perhaps if his features had been less inhuman and strange, if he had not been so large or disgusting to look at, he would have become a different creature. But the world intervened, and Frankenstein’s creature was treated as a monster. When something is treated as a monster, it becomes one.