Man or Monster?

In Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, the character of Victor Frankenstein is a very interesting and complex one indeed. An obsessed scientist who comes to hate his own creation, Victor has a very complicated relationship with his own work. Shelley depicts Victor as a misguided, demoralized man, and she sets this tone early on in the novel through Victor's description of his work. In the passage on page 32, Victor describes his devotion to the creation of life, and the motives he is given by Shelley show her attitude towards Victor as a character. Victor explains how the reason for his work stemmed from an obsession with becoming the creator of a "new species" and giving birth to life. It seems that Victor views himself as a godly being, and he will do anything to fill these shoes. Yet, later on in the novel, when Victor finally achieves his goal, he resents his own creation, and hates the very sight of what he has done.

Shelley provides a twist of irony in her novel that occurs between the creature and Frankenstein himself. While the creature is viewed as a monster by nearly all he encounters, including his own creator, he is the furthest thing from it; kind-hearted, gentle, and filled with sadness and remorse (until he is pushed by the hatred of others, that is), the creature is perhaps the more human character of the two. Meanwhile, Victor is the true monster, as he cannot even bring himself to love what he toiled so greatly over. The contrast between who these two characters truly are and what they seem to be is very important in the novel, and Shelley first shows this through Victor's motives for and thoughts on his own work.