Alam 1

Mohammad Sadav Imtiaz Alam

Professor Maureen King

English 102, Section A05

11 Jun. 2019

The Question of Responsibility for the Creature’s Crime in Frankenstein

The novel, Frankenstein, also known as The Modern Prometheus by Mary Shelley

portrays the creation of an individual and the responsibility of the actions that take place as it

proceeds. In this novel, Victor Frankenstein goes beyond human possibilities and gives life to the

Creature, who is a new born and knows nothing about the inhabitants of its world and how to

live. The Creature eventually causes the destruction of Victor’s family and hence he regrets

making it. If clearly noticed, the choices the characters make in this novel give course to the

actions of their own and their fellow characters as we progress further into the story; causing a

permanent effect in the lives of the characters, thus the novel as a whole itself. As we proceed

further we will see how the violent actions taken by the Creature are not his fault, rather were

caused due to the ill treatment and ignorance of Victor Frankenstein himself and other characters

in the novel.

Having three narrators to the novel, there are multiple first person views and as a result of

which we are able to view the perspective of the Creature and make reason, and analyze what is

going on with it. The first of the violent actions that the Creature commits is by killing Elizabeth,

who is Victor Frankenstein’s wife. It is followed by another heinous act by the murder of

Victor’s youngest brother William. Even though it might seem that the Creature himself is

responsible for the death of Victor’s family, there still lies a question of why it acted like this

because being born it had no such knowledge.

As we can see from time to time, the Creature struggles to be acknowledged by the ones

he encounters. It is clearly seen that at the beginning of the story, the Creature starts out as a kind

and peaceful being; “His jaw opened and, he muttered some inarticulate sounds, while a grin

wrinkled his cheeks.” (Shelley 84; vol. I, Ch. IV) much like a newborn when he first greets

Victor as he is born. It is pretty clear that initially the Creature did not intend to harm Victor and

even decides to leave him because it knew that he felt disgust during the periods that they

encountered each other afterwards. The Creature, even though referred to as the “Monster”, it

has strong emotions and stumbles upon the worst kind such as fear, cold, sadness, and anger

during the first weeks of isolation and also during the short encounters with the people in the

community. It starts living in a nearby forest on the second morning of its birth where it

experiences hunger, thirst, and warmth; the basic human instincts. As seen in the novel, “some

fled, some attacked me, until grievously bruised by stones and many other kinds of missile

weapons, I escaped to the open country, and fearfully took refuge in a low hovel,” (Shelley 124;

vol II, Ch. III), the Creature has never been warmly welcomed by the society and is rather hated

and attacked upon, looked at as a fear; and since that incident the Creature is also fearful to

interact with humans in a normal manner. Due to this behavior by the society it begins to hate

itself and began to question the cause of his creation. But if this same Creature was treated with

love and respect as a normal human being, circumstances would have been very different. This

behavior of hatred is displayed by the Creature through the murder of Victor Frankenstein’s

friends and family members. It is seen that at some point in the novel, the Creature develops

strong affection for the De Lacey family, who live poorly in a cabin; and attempts to befriend the

blind old man of the family. But it is hurtfully chased away; “When I thought of my friends, of

the mild voice of De Lacey, the gentle eyes of Agatha, and the exquisite beauty of the Arabian,
 Alam 3

these thoughts vanished, and a gush of tears somewhat soothed me. But again, when I reflected

that they had spurned and deserted me, anger returned, a rage of anger;” (Shelley 151; vol. II,

Ch. IX). It is very clear that the rough behavior from the De Lacey family devastated the

Creature’s perseverance of social bonding and changed its behavior towards the entirety of the

human society; filling its mind with hatred and vengeance.

Victor Frankenstein created an individual that lives with his consequences and faces a life

of disappointment and sadness, the result of an ambitious want to discover and create the

impossible. Although the Creature’s features were very carefully handpicked, the overall vision

of his life’s work collapses as it comes to life. Seemingly Victor runs away from the reality and

pretends that the Creature was never born while attempting to live his old life again. Regardless,

the truth quickly caught up to him. “I had conceived a violent antipathy even to the name of

natural philosophy.”(Shelley 92; vol. I, Ch. V) considering anything involving the Creature. Due

to negligence from his creator, the Creature takes the pain and directs to Victor’s happiness, i.e.

his family and friends. A very good example would be the murder of Victor’s childhood friend

Henry Clerval, enlarging the hate that he holds towards it. These vengeful acts from the Creature

cause Victor to become wild and bitter towards it, as a result the death of either becomes the one

and only solution. Sylvia Bowerbank’s journal, The Social Order vs the Wretch: Mary Shelley’s

Contradictory-Mindedness in Frankenstein, explores the relationship between the Creature and

Victor. Bowerbank notes that the Creature’s need for a companion became too strong that the

death of Elizabeth “he ensures that Victor will be his companion in misery until death.”

(Bowerbank 428). Apparently it seems that the Creature figured out that by killing the important

people in Victor’s life would make him hunt it for the next days to come till one dies. If we think

from a certain perspective, Victor could have been the bond, a major connection, to channeling
 Alam 4

the Creature’s emotion but he does not take responsibility for its actions and causes it to rely on

others who only judge by appearance and not by character or personality.

Victor Frankenstein, as the creator, should have looked after the Creature like a mother

who would nurture her own newborn as suggested by the academic journal, Frankenstein and the

Miltonic Creation of Evil, by David Soyka. Victor is given an opportunity by the Creature to

repair the hostility between them, but his “lack of foresight, couples with his male egocentrism,

fails to anticipate the evil he lets loose by not owning up to this responsibility to alleviate his

creation’s loneliness, a reaction that would normally be instinctive in any good mother.” (Soyka

173). The failure in properly nurturing the creature caused the visible evil to develop and grow

within the Creature each time it faced rejection and was stumbled upon by loneliness. Victor

being the only one to know the origin of the Creature does not nurture it properly; and even

though after being given a second chance to mend the things between them, he decides to push it

away until his grief became the only goal in life for the Creature.

The Creature was not given any choice on his looks and as a result, its feelings of sadness

and hatred are the cause for his dismay in life as well as in the trust and respect for humanity as a

whole. It could not convince people to like him for its true initial nature. The Creature’s outward

appearance is the only reason that transforms its innocent nature to hate and sadness. In short, the

creator, Victor Frankenstein created such circumstances for the Creature that lead to both of their

demise and misfortune; it is simply because Victor could not uphold his duties as a mother and

as a creator. It could have been a simple solution to the problems, either help the Creature live

the life that he created, or end its misfortunes through death. Regardless of how the Creature

shapes itself, it’s treated the same way. Overall, Victor’s actions and denial of his creation’s

existence changed his future, Hence, Victor is to blame for the actions of the Creature, because
 Alam 5

with the determined ambition to do things no man had done before comes huge responsibilities,

which he ignored and paid the price for.

Works Cited
 Alam 6

Bowerbank, Sylvia. “The Social Oder vs. the Wretch: Mary Shelley’s Contradictory -

Mindedness in Frankenstein.” ELH, vol. 46, no. 3, Fall 1979, pp 418 – 31.

Shelley, Mary Wollstonecraft, Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus. 1818. Edited by D. L.

Macdonald and Kathleen Scherf, 3rd ed., Broadview Press, 2012.

Soyka, David. “Frankenstein and the Miltonic Creation of Evil.” Extrapolation, vol 33. No.2,

Summer 1992, pp 166 – 77.