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Name : Ahmad Shadiqi

Reg. number: 0810732046

Course : Literary Criticism I

Lecturer : Edria Sandika, M. Hum

Submitted on : January 21th, 2011

Frankenstein: Creator, not God

Frankenstein, a novel written by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, is a

story of the creation of human. In Geneva, Dr. Victor Frankenstein had a

perfect life and family until his invention distracted his life and ruined

everything. The story becomes terrifying, appalling when the character,

Dr. Victor Frankenstein, succeeded to create a living creature based on his

science. Instead of creating human, he invented a monster. He was scared

by the monster and abandoned it. The monster was then rejected and

even assaulted by society. It made him decide to take revenge of his

creator. Mary Shelley with her monster in this novel was the one who

developed the role model horror monster in science fiction.

There are always lessons to be taken from a literary work. The

lessons are commonly wrapped in the term of moral messages. Those

messages can be derived from some perspectives of philosophy. For some

case, the monster’s life and his creator’s can be concluded as the sample

of absurdity. Absurdity characterizes a world that no longer makes sense

to its inhabitants, in which rational decisions are impossible and all action
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is meaningless and futile (Galens 2007). However, the moral message can

still be taken from this meaninglessness.

It is normal for human to have desire in finding something new

since the basic characteristic of human is to ask, to question. Dr.

Frankenstein’s desire is good in some ways, the same as other discoveries

and inventions on this world. However, he touched a sensitive point of

God’s omnipotence. His goal was to reveal “the deepest mysteries of

creation.” He succeeded in creating life, but his mind had no capabilities

to control this feeling of creating such a living creature. Moreover, Instead

of creating a normal human, he invented a monster. His intention to

generate “a new race of human”, so that he can be remembered as its

founding father, became a failure. Indirectly, he failed to be God. This

event on the story emphasizes the existence of God, for human race need

to have faith in an almighty presence that creates, rules, and controls

them. The story tells us that human race is not perfect, that no matter

how smart or how strong they are, they can reach the power of God.

The monster’s attitude demanding his creator about happiness

shows how humans try to find the meaning of existence, and how they are

not able to find any. Human tends to ask “where did we come from?”,

“why do we here?”, “what is the meaning of life?” The monster is driven

by those questions. He found out that his life have no point. All characters

in the story assumed that the monster is dangerous due to his

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appearance. In fact, the monster was originally warm and open hearted.

He received rejection and event assault from everyone he met: “Was

there no injustice in this? Am I to be thought the only criminal, when all

human kind sinned against me?”(Shelley, 1818)

This prejudice led him to hate human beings and, further, his own

existence. His thought indicates the absurdity of human existence. If

somebody lives to be loathed that bad, why does he have to live? Did his

creator ever give him chance to choose, to live or not to? These questions

were always in his mind so that he struggled to find his creator to make

another creature like him. This is where Victor Frankenstein fell. He failed

to receive and realize that he had responsibilities on his creature. He did

not tell the monster the purpose of his creation. He should have accepted

the monster since he was the one who gave life to him. This demonstrates

how human is imperfect, and once again, it underlines the existence of

God. The meaninglessness of human life will be fulfilled by the existence

of God, a presence where humans belong to.

Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein presents human’s tendency to seek

the meaning of life and inability to find any. However, there is an abstract

presence that human can rely to. The novel describes that no matter how

they try, humans will not reach the power of God. This is a novel

explaining God’s existence by touching a very sensitive issue, “the

deepest mystery of creation”.

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References:

Galens, David. "Absurdism." 2007. BookRags, Inc. 2011

<http://www.bookrags.com/studyguide-absurdism/>.

Litcharts, Getlit. n.d. <http://www.LitCharts.com/>.

Shelley, Mary W. Frankenstein. London, 1818.