The Morality of Frankenstein, Research Paper Example

Mary Shelley’s novel Frankenstein is about Victor Frankenstein, a doctor who creates a monster. Frankenstein creates a monster because he wants to be recognized for his scientific greatness. Although, Frankenstein would be recognized for such an achievement, it would also haunt Frankenstein and become a great burden. The monster is a burden to Frankenstein because the monster that he created was not able to speak, instead the monster lashed out at Frankenstein in aggressive movements. Frankenstein’s monster was not an achievement, and did not represent an ideal of man the way that Frankenstein wanted the monster to represent, instead the monster is a burden to Frankenstein because the monster then represents Frankenstein’s failure in the following ways: father, scientist, and as a human being. This essay will portray how Frankenstein realizes he is a failure and needs to seek revenge for the very thing he created that represents his failure.

The very thing that made Frankenstein want to seek revenge is how the monster started to, one by one, kill each of his relatives. Once Frankenstein realized that the monster had killed his wife, Frankenstein was outraged, leading up to Frankenstein going after the monster. After some time Frankenstein had not heard from his relatives and come to understand the monster was getting revenge Frankenstein spent the rest of his life looking for the monster; “There is an expression of despair, and sometimes of revenge, in your countenance that makes me tremble” (Shelley 105). Frankenstein dedicates the rest of his life to finding the monster, Frankenstein isolates himself and can only think of one thing; killing the monster that he created that was his biggest failure.

Frankenstein creates a monster in order to prove something not only to himself but to the scientific world. It is a pursuit steeped in attaining greatness. This greatness however comes at a cost to Frankenstein. Although Frankenstein achieves bringing back a man from the dead, Frankenstein’s ideal is not achieved. There is a very symbolic relationship between Frankenstein and Frankenstein’s monster: one of God and Adam. God creates Adam in His image and Frankenstein desires to create from his image as well. Thus, Frankenstein’s pursuit is the lofty goal of playing God. Frankenstein wants to create something beautiful and idealistic, something that would be recognized as not only greatness but beauty to the scientific community. Frankenstein creates instead a monster. Frankenstein’s ideal of creating a man is thwarted as what lies in the operating table in some backdoor experimental room in London isn’t an “Adam” figure but instead Frankenstein has created a monster: the opposite of a human man: “…the hubris of the scientists who play God by creating artificial life: crazy little men locked up in their dungeons and masturbatory chambers prey to matrix-envy and trying to turn shit into gold or petrified matter into new life, swapping anatomy for a new destiny” (Braidotti 204). Before Frankenstein’s monster can respond to his environment, Frankenstein rebuffs him, shrieks, runs and the monster is left with feelings of abandonment, depression, and exile. Not only does Frankenstein fail at creating something the scientific community would see as an act of genius, but Frankenstein also fails as being a father to the monster as well as a mentor—a guiding presence to help the monster navigate what is being done to him. Eventually, because of Frankenstein’s rebuff of his creation, his monster, the monster lashes out; “When I reflected on his crimes and malice, my hatred and revenge burst all bounds of moderation” (Shelley 105). Frankenstein says this after the monster kills his family and loved ones. This further expounds on Frankenstein’s failure in the scientific community (Kostelanetz 101). Not only has Frankenstein not achieved success in creating something from dead tissue, but he has also failed in curtailing it’s aggressive actions, and it’s more base responses to the human world.

Victor Frankenstein tells the reader his personal fear of the monster, “There is an expression of despair, and sometimes of revenge, in your countenance that makes me tremble” (Shelley 105). Frankenstein says this about the monster and it further reveals Frankenstein’s failures in the scientific community. Frankenstein sought to create a man, a beautiful creature full of purity, knowledge, and brilliance and instead the monster keeps showing Frankenstein that all he has achieved in creating is a true monster full of pathos, despair, and rage. It is these negatives feelings that truly showcase Frankenstein’s failure; he wanted to create a man in his image, to play God, to make a community of peers bow at his genius but the monster keeps showing his creator in what very specific and fundamental ways he should be rejected from that coveted community (Knight 178).  Thus, after pursuing the creation of a man, and instead creating a monster, Frankenstein then tries to destroy the thing he created because he has love in his heart for the monster (Knight 178).

Frankenstein further exemplifies his feelings about revenge for the monster, “When I reflected on his crimes and malice, my hatred and revenge burst all bounds of moderation” (Shelley 103). Thus not only has Frankenstein created a monster and will be rebuffed from the scientific community, but he in turn becomes a monster as revenge possesses him body and soul and he drops from his life and the duties of that life and hunts the monster down to kill it. Frankenstein wants to kill it, to play God one more time, because in killing the monster he is vanquishing his failures from the earth and hiding his shortcomings.

Frankenstein expresses to the reader what his plan for revenge is, “For the first time the feelings of revenge and hatred filled my bosom, and I did not strive to control them, but allowing myself to be borne away by the stream, I bent my mind towards injury and death” (Shelley 165). Frankenstein fails at trying to be God and in fact, becomes so consumed with the thought of revenge that not even his own death would stop him in his pursuit. In many ways, Frankenstein achieves success; he set out to re-animate a human being from dead tissue and he did this. The image Frankenstein had in his head about what the re-animated tissue would look like, however, was the deterring point. Frankenstein  sought worship from doctors and others from the medical field and beyond for creating something of worth, something notable, and something most definitely beautiful. Frankenstein wanted to present to the scientific world a supreme specimen of man; that is why the monster had many different parts: Frankenstein was pulling the best parts from different bodies because he wanted to achieve this ideal, and the only way to accomplish this was to create something altogether new and different. Frankenstein fails at his own ideals both in creating man in his own image (and thereby being Godlike) and being treated with a type of hero/genius status from his peers (i.e. fellow doctors). In the end, Frankenstein fails in his Promethean ambition.

Works Cited

Braidotti, Rosi. Metamorphoses: Towards a Materialist Theory of Becoming. Cambridge: Blackwell Publishers, 2002. Print.

Knight, David. Science and Spirituality: The Volatile Connection. New York City; Routledge, 2003. Print.

Kostelanetz, Anne. Mary Shelley: Her Life, Her Fiction, Her Monsters. New York City; Routledge, 1988. Print.

Shelley, Mary. Frankenstein. Clayton, Del. : Prestwick House Literary Touchstone Classics, 2006. Print.