Shelley sets pages 94 and 95 where Frankenstein meets the creature, in the mountains because it is bleak and desolate just like the creature’s life. Frankenstein says the creature ‘bounded over the crevices in the ice, among which I walked with caution.’ Frankenstein here is trying to disassociate himself from the creature and say he’s nothing like him. There is lots of words associated with ‘awful majesty’ and swelled’. This is all associated with the size of the creature and how much the mountains and out is how much the creature stands out.
Frankenstein says its ‘unearthly ugliness rendered it almost too horrible for human eyes’. This is saying the creature is not human and makes the reader think he is a monster. Shelley presents the creature as a monster at this point to contrast a different point of view. This is to make sure that the reader doesn’t feel too much sympathy towards the creature or else they would be biased towards it and take away their understanding of the story. This is different from today because disfigured people today are not treated this way. There still may be some hostility towards them, but they’re not thought of as freaks or cast out of society or ridiculed anymore.
The reader feels increasingly angry towards Frankenstein because he says ‘Devil, do you dare approach me?’ This is ironic, because Frankenstein was the person who created the creature, but the creature has never asked to be created. Frankenstein has subjected the creature to this torture so the creature is just taking revenge with the murders. We fee sympathy for the creature here because he is being completely rejected even by the one person who does have responsibility towards him. Frankenstein uses some extremely harsh language towards the creature such as ‘Abhorred monster’ and ‘Wretched devil.’ It is ironic that Frankenstein trying to take over the role of God ended up creating what he thinks of as the devil.
We also feel sympathy for the creature because he’s being calm, yet he’s obviously angry at Frankenstein but he’s not taking it out on him; Frankenstein’s threatening him instead. This could show that the creature’s actually human and can control his temper, or it could be that the creature realises that being alive with no-one is worse than death and he wants Frankenstein to suffer like he has. We feel sorrow for the creature because he has been rejected all through his life because even at ‘birth’ he said he felt ‘half frightened’. This length of rejection provides some reasoning as to his behaviour in the later parts of his life.
Mary Shelley puts the creature’s story in because this gives us some insight into how the creature feels. The creature’s story from pages 98 – 129 is written as a monologue. This is significant because this makes the creature seem even more isolated because he’s telling the story all on his own. The creature says ‘Darkness then came over me and troubled me.’ This makes the creature seem unlike a monster because monsters and evil are normally associated with the dark.
Next, the creature sat down and wept. This makes the reader feel deep compassion towards the creature because he’s obviously upset. Even today in modern society when a man cries we think that something really bad must have happened because men aren’t ‘supposed’ to cry. It’s seen as weak so this makes the creature seen weak also. We also feel sympathy for the creature because he said ‘sometimes I tried to imitate the pleasant songs of the bird but was unable,”the inarticulate sounds which broke from me frightened me into silence again.” Trying to make sounds of the birds make him seem gentle. Inarticulate sounds are what babies make and this also makes him seem powerless because babies are weak. Also we feel sorry for him here because he scared himself with these sounds. This makes the reader think it must be hard for the creature and extremely frustrating because he’s got no-one to learn from because he’s been left; so he will not be nurtured
At the end of page 103 the creature has a mixture of feelings. He feels pain and pleasure because he’s sees the old man being so kind to the little girl. He feels pleasure because he’s seeing so much kindness but pain because he’s never received it himself. This is almost jealously or longing for something that you don’t have. This is still crucial in today’s life because people today are still never satisfied with what they have. Also, people today are still living in poverty or neglected like the creature.
The creature notices that the family wasn’t entirely happy and their happiness is tinged with sadness. It upsets him because he thinks if ‘such lovely creatures were miserable, it was less strange that I, an imperfect and solitary being, should be wretched.’ Because he’s had no guidance in life he assumes that he should be upset because they are. The creature can’t understand why the family are upset because they appear to have everything. This refers to my earlier point that people are never satisfied with what they have got.
Mary Shelley makes lots of references towards God throughout this book to accentuate more that Frankenstein acted out God’s role. She says that the cottagers’ talking was God like science. This is ironic because to people of the time they would have thought that God would have given them the power of speech but to the creature Frankenstein is God so he should have given him the power of speech by looking after him. But he didn’t, so this means the creature hasn’t really got a God. This would make people of the time think that he was a monster because religion was very important to people back then, much more then today. Today, this would be less important because religion isn’t embedded in culture as much as back then. This is maybe why the creature would be less likely to be though of as a monster today.
The creature asks Frankenstein to make him a female. At the time this would be preposterous because this means they could mate and may be able to produce children. This would be like an alien race and this would be disastrous. The creature says ‘Shall I respect man when he condemns me.’ The creature is saying why should he be kind to man when they just shun him. He’s saying it’s Frankenstein’s fault that he’s here so he should do his best to make him happy. There is still a message here today that people have to be responsible for their actions. He say’s he’s malicious because he’s miserable so this also provides reasoning for the murders.
