There are so many additional levels to humanity than just ‘good’ and ‘evil’ and Frankenstein shows the vengeful, passionate, and vehement level -- one that often causes many to make mistakes. The novel illustrates the difficulty in having to decide whether or not we are born good or born evil. Both Victor and the monster shifted morally, in my mind, as their actions contradicted their thoughts. In the beginning the monster showed a naïve and innocent side of life and living. He notices emotions and feeling like never before, especially when he witnesses Felix and his family in the cottage. The monster analyzed their faces and saw that “they were not entirely happy. The young man and his companion often went apart and appeared to weep. [The monster] saw no cause for their unhappiness; but [he] was deeply affected by it” (p.77). He doesn’t understand why these people who are so beautiful and loving should be unhappy, and concludes that someone as ugly as he shouldn’t find joy in life if the villagers can’t. As the book progresses down a dark and solemn path, so does the monster, but he admits that he is “malicious because [he] is miserable” (p.104). He concluded that he doesn’t deserve to be happy because he is alone, ugly, and hated by all that gaze upon his stitched together face. How can someone who never was taught to be a certain way be labeled as ‘inherently evil or ‘good’? He had to interpret his own existence for himself, leading to multiple flips in his character.
Victor Frankenstein is a different story when it comes to being evil or good, because he’s had time throughout his life to decide what he wants to be and how he should act. In the beginning of the novel I believed he was evil due to his desire to create life just for the hell of it, and then his decision to abandon his creation, taking no responsibility, once it went awry. But as his character developed along with the story, Victor showed remorse for what he had done. His creation had taken away the people he loved most. His creation had taken time and years from him. His creation had taken his heart, as its mammoth hands rung the life out of Elizabeth, leaving her body to be found by Victor -- thus creating two lifeless bodies between the two lovers, Victor’s heart still beating, but just barely. He was out to destroy what he had created, due to his creation destroying the things around him. But, once he realized that he inadvertently had killed those around him by creating their murderer, he releases the sorrow that he had kept in for so long. He weeps, “I am the assassin of those most innocent victims; they died by my machinations. A thousand times would I have shed my own blood, drop by drop, to have saved their lives” (p.137). This is perhaps the first incidence of Victor showing selflessness. Showing that he isn’t evil and has good inside of him, adding to the fact, that people are not just one or the other.
People have so many sides, angles, and edges to them that you cannot say someone is “this” or “that”. The idea that a human is born either good or evil is preposterous because throughout life they change and form and mold due to the environment around them and the experiences they go through. I think Mary Shelley also believes in a human’s ability to not take a single form, since her characters shift so rapidly from antagonist to protagonist and vise versa. To try and define someone by simply one action is unfair, just like it was unfair for the villagers to define the monster by his “ugly” face. By slapping a label on something, we disregard everything underneath, leading to a one-dimensional, flat world.
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