Sympathy for the Monster - Essay Example

 Sympathy for the Monster Throughout Frankenstein our sympathies are with the creature not the creator.’ Show how far you agree, or disagree, with the above statement. Frankenstein is the masterwork of Mary Shelly and the magnum opus which makes it unlikely that the literary world will ever forget her name. However, it is a lot more than a gothic novel since as noted by Oates (1984), “it is a unique blending of Gothic, fabulist, allegorical and philosophical materials (Oates, 1984, Pg. 543)”. Undoubtedly, the first element of being Gothic makes it an essential part of Gothic literature since it becomes the story of a man and a monster as much as it is a story of a creator and the creation. Every story has a hero and a villain and the audience is generally supposed to sympathize with the hero and hate the villain. However, like many stories which have gained fame over time, the hero may not be entirely free of blame and the villain may obtain the sympathy of the audiences as well. Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice comes to mind as a classic example of such a story where the villain may receive sympathy and pity from the audience since he loses his family as well as his worldly wealth along with his forced conversion at the very end of the play. The same sympathy can be given to the creature in Frankenstein since the story of the monster begs for sympathy. Undoubtedly the monster commits homicide and engages in violence by killing Frankenstein’s brother, his bride and more or less ruins Frankenstein’s life, yet he has his reasons for it. He was motivated by revenge and the need for revenge was created by the unfulfilled promises made by Frankenstein to the monster (NLM, 2002). The unnamed monster is driven by the need to be with someone who is like him and needs a mate. This desire is certainly understandable since he desires to have someone to help escape his loneliness. This was the primary reason which forces him to seek out his creator in order to ask him to make another monster like him. It is easy to sympathize with such motives since loneliness and not having someone to share life with can have devastating consequences (NLM, 2002). The monster gains our sympathy because we all know what loneliness is and what a burden it can be on the mind. Those who cannot deal with it would naturally seek out like company which is exactly what the monster was doing when he went to ask Frankenstein to create another like the monster. In effect, this makes us realize that the monster could have had everything else such as the good fortune of life, of being able to enjoy the natural surroundings of the wilderness, but he sought out a mate due to a need for contact. In the rather simple viewpoint on life presented by the monster, his motive for abducting the bride is simply to get revenge since Frankenstein took away his duly promised female counterpart (Wikipedia, 2008). As a matter of fact, the monster deserves our sympathy for the earlier part of his existence as he has been abandoned as nothing more than a child, society refuses to accept him due to his physical features and despite his intelligence, he has no value to anyone who can see him physically (NLM, 2002). Even the monster recognizes that he is an outsider when he sees himself in the mirror and knows that he is a grotesque creation (Wikipedia, 2008). His kind and gentle nature is only known to those who cannot see him while those who see him see only a monster. This injustice manifests itself as the violent acts which the monster commits against Frankenstein and members of his family (Wikipedia, 2008). The audience here may be forced to make a judgment if such acts are justified and most likely, many would think that such acts are cruel and unjust. At this point, the sympathy of the audience may switch from the monster to the scientist knowing as how he would have to bring together pieces of his life and the love which he lost. Again, the need for revenge is what fuels Frankenstein to go out to the coldest region of the planet to seek the monster he created. In his condition and knowing the strength of the monster, it is very unlikely that Frankenstein would ever be able to kill the monster in physical combat yet it is the need for revenge which drives him onwards. At this point, the reader could be forgiven for sympathizing with Frankenstein since he has lost more or less everything which was ever held dear by him. Thus the sympathies of the readers may not entirely be with the monster throughout the work since Frankenstein only has the upper hand over the monster for a very short while. As the monster reveals his true nature and shows how far he could go in his search for revenge, the readers start feeling sorry for Frankenstein and the situation he has placed himself in. Perhaps at the end of the story, the reader is expected to feel sorry for both the major players in the story since none of them comes out on top. In conclusion, the statement is difficult to agree with completely since the creator also deserves some sympathy especially when we consider the narrators description of how he was found and when we consider that it was merely his quest for knowledge which led him to create the monster in the first place. Neither of the two characters deserved the end they received but their actions and their behavior certainly pointed them in the precise direction which led to their eventual ends. Therefore, it is perhaps more correct to say that throughout Frankenstein, our sympathies keep changing from the monster to the creator and at the end of the story the reader cannot help but feel sorry for both the protagonist and the antagonist. Word Count: 1,052 Works Cited NLM (National Library of Medicine). 2002, ‘Frankenstein: The Modern Prometheus’,[Online] Available at: http://0-www.nlm.nih.gov.catalog.llu.edu/hmd/frankenstein/frank_modern_2.html Oates, J. 1984, ‘Frankenstein’s Fallen Angel’, Critical Inquiry, vol. 10, no. 3. pp. 543-554. Wikipedia. 2008, ‘’, [Online] Available at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frankenstein Read More