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Bob Marley

Professor Queen

English 101

04 October 2008

The Significance of Responsibility in Frankenstein and Its Effects

The novel, Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, depicts the creation of an

individual and the accountability of the actions that take place in the story. The creator, Victor

Frankenstein, is a respected individual who strives to go beyond the human possibilities and

generates the creature whom he inevitably regrets making. The Creature is brought into this

world as a newborn, who knows nothing of its inhabitants and how to live, but eventually causes

destruction that tears apart a once joyful family. The choices that the characters make define

themselves and also those around them. Because of these choices, the lives of others and oneself

may eternally be altered for better or for worse. This story explores the concept of responsibility

and the duties to oneself as well as to other surrounding individuals.

Shelley writes this novel in the multiple first-person point of view, which effectively

allows the readers to view the perspective of the Creature and to sympathize with him. Two of

the heinous deeds that the Creature commits are the killings of Elizabeth, Victor’s wife at the

moment of her death, and William, Victor’s youngest brother. In these cases, one could say that

the Creature himself is solely responsible for their deaths. However, there is a possibility that the

terrible events that have happened to the Creature in turn spur his crimes. The Creature, time

after time, strives to be accepted and loved by those he encounters. At the beginning of the

story, the Creature starts out as a kind, peaceful being as a “grin wrinkle[s] his cheeks” (Shelley
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86; vol. 1, ch. 4) much like a newborn baby, when he first greets Victor on the morning of his

creation. Initially, he does not intend to harm Victor and even decides to leave him because the

Creature knew that Victor felt remorse and disgust during the brief periods when they encounter

each other. Although he is most referred to as the “monster”, the Creature has strong human

emotions and experiences feelings just like any other individual would. The creature stumbles

upon the worst emotions and pains such as fear, cold, sadness, and anger during his first weeks

of solitude as well as in the short moments the people in the community encounter him. On the

second morning of his birth, he starts living in a nearby forest where he discovers basic human

needs such as hunger, thirst, and warmth and struggles to overcome all these difficulties. When

he first steps foot into a small village, the villagers “attack [him]… and [he] fearfully [takes]

refuge in a low hovel” (Shelley 132; vol. 2, ch. 3) Since that incident, the Creature has been too

terrified to interact with humans in fear that he will be abused again. Because of his lonely

isolation from the rest of humanity, he harnesses only these emotions and begins to hate himself

as well as the cause of his creation. On the other hand, if the creature was surrounded by human

society and treated with the same respect as any other person, there would be little to no cause

for his crimes. The Creature shows inconsistent behaviours of hatred, through the murder of

Victor’s friends and family members, as well as fear, such as his concealment in the hovel. The

reasons for inconsistent behaviours are explained in the book, Psychology: The Science of

Behaviour, by Neil R. Carlson et al. These reasons are characteristics of motivation, which

“affect[s] the nature…strength…and persistence of the behaviour” (Carlson et al. 405; ch.13) and

is evident when the Creature struggles to find a lifelong companion as a reason for living. One of

the Creature’s motivation in life occurred when he develops strong affections for the De Lacey
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family, whom lives poorly in a cabin, and attempts to befriend the blind old man of the family

but is hurtfully chased away by the other occupants. The negligence from the De Lacey family

devastates the Creature’s perseverance of social bonding and changes his behaviour drastically,

thus altering the Creatures motivation. The Creature was not given the choice on his looks and as

a result, his feelings of sadness and hatred are the cause for his dismay in life as well as in the

trust and respect of humanity.

Victor Frankenstein leads an ambitious life wanting to discover and create the impossible

in addition to doing things that no man has done before. But by doing so, Victor creates an

individual that lives with his consequences and faces a life of disappointment and sadness. Even

though Victor had carefully selected the Creature’s features, the overall vision of his life’s work

crumbles when the Creature comes to life. Instead of living with this mistake of his, Victor runs

away from the reality that is the monster and chooses to pretend that the Creature was never born

while attempting to live his old life again. Regardless, the truth quickly catches up to Victor and

he knowingly “conceive[s] a violent antipathy” (Shelley 95; vol. 1, ch. 5) towards anything that

involves the Creature, including his earlier years of studies. Because of Victor’s obvious

avoidance from his own creation, the Creature takes his pain and directs it to the happiness that

was Victor’s life. An example of the Creature’s vengeance is the surprising murder of Victor’s

childhood friend, Henry Clerval, which utterly devastates Victor and enlarges the hate that

Victor holds for the Creature. These acts of revenge from the Creature cause Victor to become

wild and vengeful and as a result, a game of pain is created between the creator and his Creature

until the death of one another becomes the only solution. Sylvia Bowerbank’s journal, The Social

Order vs. the Wretch: Mary Shelley’s Contradictory-Mindedness in Frankenstein, explores the
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relationship between the Creature and Victor. Bowerbank notes that the Creature’s need for a

companion became too strong that the death of Elizabeth “ensures that Victor will be his

companion in misery until death.” (Bowerbank 428) By killing the most important person to

Victor, the Creature realises that his creator will forever hunt him down and this hunt forms a

game of revenge for the Creature that bonds the two individuals. Victor could have been a major

connection to the Creature’s humanity but he does not take responsibility for his actions and

causes the Creature to rely on others who only judges his outward appearance but not his

character and personality. Victor, as the creator, should look after the Creature like a mother

would nurture her own newborn as suggested by the academic journal, Frankenstein and the

Miltonic Creation of Evil, by David Soyka. Victor is given an opportunity by the Creature to

repair the hostility between them, but his “lack of foresight… [and] his male egocentrism, fails to

anticipate the evil he lets loose” (Soyka 173). Victor’s failure to properly educate the Creature

causes “evil” to develop and grow within the Creature each time he is faced with rejection. No

one else knows the origin of the Creature except for Victor, who even after given a second

chance to mend the peace between them, decides to push away the Creature until Victor’s grief

became the only goal in life for the Creature.

The Creature had no choice in his creation and could not convince people to like him for

his true initial nature. The creature’s outward appearance is the only reason that transforms his

innocent nature into hate and unhappiness. Victor Frankenstein, in short, created the ghastly form

of the Creature that leads to both of their demises and misfortunes because Victor could not

uphold his duties, as the creator, to either help the Creature live the life he created, or end the

Creature’s misfortunes through death. No matter how much the Creature tries to change himself,
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he is still treated the same way. Nothing he did matters because of his grotesque appearance,

which was chosen by Victor. Overall, Victor’s actions and denial of his creations existence

changed his future for the worst since he could not live up to his responsibilities and chose to

ignore them. In the end, Victor ends up with the same hardships as the Creature because his

consequences, which built up over many years, at last caught up to him and demonstrated to him

that each lifelong determined ambition comes with responsibility.

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Works Cited

Bowerbank, Sylvia. “The Social Order vs. the Wretch: Mary Shelley’s Contradictory

Mindedness in Frankenstein.” ELH 46.3 (1979): 418-31. Academic Search Complete.

Wed. 24 Nov. 2010

Carlson, Neil R, et al. Psychology: The Science of Behaviour. 4th ed. Toronto: Pearson, 2010.

405. Print

Shelley, Mary Wollstonecraft. Frankenstein; or, the Modern Prometheus. 1818 Ed. D.L.

Macdonald and Kathleen Scherf. 2nd ed. Peterborough: Broadview, 1999 Print.

Soyka, David. “Frankenstein and the Miltonic Creation of Evil.” Extrapolation 33.2 (1992):

166-77. Academic Search Complete. Wed. 24 Nov. 2010