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Jack Hammond

Mrs. Acosta

English 12

March 18th, 2022

The Definition of a Monster

When we think of monsters in our world we believe that they are horrible people, due to

their previous actions. Examples of these people would be serial killers and other people who

harm others without any morality to their actions. I would like to argue that Victor, from the

book Frankenstein, developed to be one of these monsters. There were multiple times in the story

where Victor does something absolutely insane and does it without any side reaction or any

moral compass thinking that his actions are wrong. With the story of Frankenstein being written

in the early 1800s it could be said that there were reasons behind his madness back then, but in

society nowadays, this man would be a confirmed psychiatric patient. I believe that Victor is a

Monster because of his constant separation from people who cares about, his constant ignorance

to his creation, and his general creation of the creature.

Throughout the story we hear through Victor’s narration of the story that he had multiple

letters written to him by his future wife Elizabeth, and you realize with these letters that Victor

does not answer to her letters. You can also read that Elizabeth is worried about Victor and all of

his studies and knowledge that he refuses to let out. This creates a separation from him and his

closest friends which in most common times causes people to become the worst versions of

themselves and do extremely abstract tests and experiments which have led multiple others down

a line of madness or even irrational ideas. Knowing that he has successfully pushed away his

future wife and bestfriend growing up, he now has plenty of time to find the one answer he
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hunted for without any one else there letting him know his rights from wrong. Eventually this

radical mentality of isolation and complete separation from anyone and everyone.

Oftentimes in the world, some people are quoted to be monsters when they leave their

own children and attempt to forget all about someone that they bring fully into the world, this is

exactly what Victor does with his own creation he brings into the world, he abandons him. From

the first day that the creature is ‘born’, Victor has wanted absolutely nothing to do with his

creation and utterly regrets his decision of creating such a monster in his eyes. With this

complete abandonment of his creation he truly is a monster to not just his closest friends, but a

monster to anything and anyone he wants absolutely no correlation to be with anymore. This first

starts off with Elizabeth and continues down the line with his creation until he realizes that he is

not doing anything for the good but is selfish with everything he has done. All of the knowledge

he wanted to learn and the egotistical nature of creating life, he utterly regrets it all, which is the

true nature of somebody with monstrous intent in the world.

Lastly I would like to point out how absolutely immoral his actions were to create the

monster in the first place. On a literal level he took body parts of people who have lost their

lives to attempt to create his own life to prove that all of his studies have been useful. He then

takes these parts of other humans and performs some surgical maneuvers and creates a

completely new person. To make an absolute huge connection to the real world, his actions have

some extreme parallels to one of the greatest monsters of all time, Ed Gein, who would have his

victims body be transformed into furniture and other forms of basic household items and believe

that he was in the right to do so. So in that extremely literal sense, he was a monster in the

scavenging of the parts for the creation. This goes in line with the spirituality of a person, for

those who believe in spirituality and believing in having spiritual health, when passing away and
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having your life be over, your spirit will finally be at rest. Now some people may say that

affecting someone's spirituality is not a thing a monster would do. However, Victor has created

this most and tampered with the dead bodies to get the parts for his creation, and has completely

messed with all of the spirits of the fallen people that he used to create his monster.

As the final statement I would enjoy to say, Victor had no Moral right to do any of the

action he did throughout the novel. The self isolation of himself from everyone else, the

abandonment of his ‘child’, and the tampering of corpses to create his creation, I do believe that

Victor is a Monster. However he does realize all of these actions he commits throughout the

novel, when talking to his father while he was on his deathbed he confesses that everything that

has happened has been his fault, and he owned up to the fact that he did commit everything that I

have just mentioned. Does this still make him a monster? I will just have to leave it at the fact

that some people just do not change, no matter what they confess.