Julia McGrath
Professor Hobson
EL 5010-W0L: Senior Seminar II
11 May 2020
Victor Frankenstein's creature is a lonely child who seeks love but never gets it. Mary Shelley's gothic novel, Frankenstein, tells the horror and saddening tale of a creation gone wrong. The main character, Victor Frankenstein, creates a gigantic person, but because of its non-resemblance to people, Victor abandons his creation. The creature fights for love and affection while being treated as an anomaly by humanity. The creature's abandonment, isolation, and alienation lead to damaging consequences to the creature himself and Victor Frankenstein.
The focus will be on how the creature's difference in visage left him feeling and experiencing abandonment from his family, isolated because people separated him from themselves based on his facial features and gigantic stature and alienated because he is isolated from people. The creature does not fit the societal standard of beauty, and it is because of unconventional beauty that he is ignored and unloved. The second part of the main focus will be to analyze the effects of the creature's mistreatment and his point-of-view of Victor's treatment toward him.
Three different stages lead to the creature's behavior. The first stage is when Victor abandons him. Abandonment is the act of abandoning someone or someone being abandoned. The creature feels abandoned because Victor Frankenstein created him and wants nothing to do with him. Frankenstein showed no compassion or remorse in the way he left the creature because his creation looked "ugly," (38), so he betrays the creature by rejecting him. The consequence of the abandonment is that the creature feels rejected. The effect of the rejection is that the creature consistently follows Victor around when the De Lacey family freaks out after seeing the creature. The creature decides that he wants Victor's attention while Victor pushes his creation away more. The more the creature is pushed away, the more he seeks Victor's affection because no one else will notice him.
The creature's abandonment leads to feelings of isolation. Isolation is the process of isolating someone, segregating someone because the isolated person does not fit "the standard." The creature feels that he is pushed to the curb because his physical countenance and his giant stature are anomalies. The creature deals with the isolation by hiding in the mountains and the woods because he has no relation to humanity, and the only way to stay safe is to hide where people will not travel. The creature's isolation causes him to feel lonely over what he cannot control. The consequence of the isolation is that the creature fears to have a relationship with people.
The final straw is when the creature is alienated by society. Alienation is the state or experience in which someone is isolated from a group or activity when they should belong. Alienation also causes estrangement (unfriendliness, hostility, or indifference). Alienation explains the creature's behavior toward Victor Frankenstein, who created the creature's alienation by abandoning him. Anyone in the book that caught sight of the creature either screamed and ran away, shouted cruel words, or attacked him; Frankenstein is verbally abusive to the creature. The consequence of feeling alienated by society is revenge. The creature seeks revenge on Frankenstein to teach him a lesson, and Frankenstein feels isolated since his loved ones are killed.