Frankenstein: Isolation & Compromise with Nature
What are human emotions? Do we deserve them
On the morning of my history class, where we learned about Norman Rockwell’s Four Freedoms, I was intrigued by “Freedom of Worship”, focused on the faces of the crowd, mixed by the grayish colors of sentiments, depicting human beings’ closed eyes and low heads praying for a brighter future.
At the same time, on my journey of studying the art of horror for the improvement of my journey, “Frankenstein” was near my side as a mentor to give lectures of prose. On the preface, written as letters by a captain isolated on the cold land of Arctic, there described the protagonist, Victor Frankenstein:
“I have found a man who, before his spirit had been broken by misery, I should have been happy to have possessed as the brother of my heart.”
Those were the words for a broken man with a small heart, killed by miserable tragedy like us, the simple human beings, fallen deep into the hole of sufferings by the work of the monsters called “emotions”. The characters in the novel were similar to the humans in Freedom of Worship; they all desired ambitions and happiness deeply. In the end, those passionate characterizations led to to destruction and hopelessness. The novel presented a miserable and desperate view on humans as creatures who could only destroy themselves because of emotions.
When the early chapters presented the youthfulness of Victor Frankenstein, the protagonist, he was a different man in my mind, a scientist. As a person who also had interest in the discipline of natural science, especially the branch of physics, I felt strong empathy for the curious man who desired nothing but the discovery of nature. However, accompanied by this feeling was the strong difference between me and my companion. While I studied the standardized works of Newton, Coulomb, Bernoulli, Archimedes, and the ones admired by others for realistic approaches to science, he, on the other hand, only had his eyes on the books by Cornelius Agrippa, Albertus Magnus, and Paracelsus, the children from ancient periods who contributed nothing but imaginary writings of nonsense as considered by most of the scientists in the modern era. Despite my disagreement with this method of studying, I found comprehensible reasons for this tendency and claimed that this obsession had its root in complex nature of humans. We all had our own impulses of claiming something we didn’t have—for Victor, it was the discovery of life, and during our journey on the mountain, when we reached a peak, we fell down into the hole of darkness. In chapter II, as Victor shared this ambition, he presented a rhetorical speech to us readers, an aesthetic prose remaining memorable to me:
“When I look back, it seems to me as if this almost miraculous change of inclination and will was the immediate suggestion of the guardian angel of my life—the last effort made by the spirit of preservation to avert the storm that was even then hanging in the stars, and ready to envelope me. Her victory was announced by an unusual tranquility and gladness of soul, which followed the relinquishing of my ancient and latterly tormenting studies…It was a strong effort of the spirit of good; but it was ineffectual. Destiny was too potent, and her immutable laws had decreed my utter and terrible destruction.”
Mary Shelley incorporated figures like angel, spirit, and destiny. Compared to scientific nature of Victor Frankenstein, this use of superstitious words created a complicated depth of hubris inside him, making him a character full of passion for the novel’s plot. However, as we understood from the preface and his reflection over the event, “decreed my utter and terrible destruction”, his sinful pride would bring this life to a tragic end.
Before the next chapter was read, I recalled the nature of the novel as a story of Romanticism, the ideology promoting the emotions of humans. This feature indicated the strong passion of characters from this novel, including Frankenstein and the creature which he created. Both of them had the same similarity, the unstoppable emotion of being that ruined their lives. For Victor, this passion started with his desire to question nature, bringing the science of animation to reality. To the creature, it needed a companion, who could comfort it from all of the evils of mankind. In both cases, the characters tried to fight against nature and exceeded it. However, as the novel progressed closer to the end, it was clearly shown that the nature of emotions could never be overcome, and those who endeavored or attempted to conspired against it met terrible fates of tragic sufferings. It also claimed that our nature as humans was to let the monster inside us corrupted everything in life:
“The words induced me to turn towards myself. I learned that the possessions most esteemed by your fellow-creatures were high and unsullied descent united with riches…but, without either, he was considered, except in very rare instances, as a vagabond and a slave, doomed to waste his powers for the profits of the chosen few! And what was I? Of my creation and creator I was absolutely ignorant; but I knew that I possessed no money, no friends, no kind of property. I was besides, endued with a figure hideously deformed and loathsome: I was not even of the same nature as man…When I looked around, I saw and heard of none like me. Was I then a monster, a blot upon the earth, from which all men fled, and whom all men disowned?”
Many interpretations considered Victor and his creation the true monsters because both of them caused sufferings to other people through the intense passions. This strong extremism led to unmoral decisions of killing other people for the lack of virtues like Victor’s intention of leaving the creature and breaking the promise of making a mate. Similarly, the creature let its emotional nature dictate itself when it killed other humans for treating it horribly. At this point, emotions were the sole evil of humanity because it brought corruption into human heart. This corruption acted as a cycle, depicted like the chemical reactions that Victor studied; both characters’ actions created more revenge and hatred to each other: Victor abandoned the creature, leaving it alone in a cruel world, and the creature killed the loved ones, making motivations for its creator to take revenge. Like Joker once said, “All it takes is one bad day for a person to go crazy”. This pessimism of emotions reached its peak when both of them confronted each other on the mountain after Justine’s death. To me, this was the best moment of the novel because for the first and only time in the story, two rivals shared their thoughts to each other. They listened and comprehended the situations. All of the conflicts could be resolved only by listening and giving out love like how Victor sympathized with the creature. That moment was for both of them to change and start a new friendship. However, it could never come. Like other times, Victor betrayed his creation by breaking the promise of making a mate, which fueled hatred inside the monster. As a final act of wrath upon the humans, it killed Elizabeth, the person who Victor loved the most. Their relationship concluded for Victor throwing society, money, property, and family away to chase and kill the monster. Their wrath for each other, not only appeared again, but also reached new height of pure evil from nature. As shown, this sequence of events proved the author’s pessimism of showing us humans as the monsters who only connected with each other through hatred.
After this moment, I believed that there was no resolution for these rivals to make peace with each other. They had gone through tragedy after tragedy, getting granted to revenge by nature. There was no love in a single dialogue of them for each other nor any act of a benefactor for the other. No one could change the purposes of their lives because darkness was the only thing that could live in their hearts. When I got to the last chapter, I thought about the never-ending chase between them and the satisfied conclusion for no character, and...I was wrong.
In the final scene of the novel, Victor reached the edge of death and could no longer continue his journey of revenge to satisfy his hateful passion. Near the place where he laid was the monster. Although both of them had been pure enemies for the rest of their lives, the creature displayed no grudge of torturing for its creator. Instead, it felt for the first time true sadness of losing someone. It was then revealed that it never wanted to kill other people; for the whole novel, it had been hiding the depth of its heart which was vulnerable to emotions. It could still feel love, but the world left no place for this love to flourish. For the last moment, the love spread out in the monster’s heart. At last, it killed itself as a way to end its existence and sufferings for all humankind.
“It is true that I am a wretch. I have murdered the lovely and the helpless; I have strangled the innocent as they slept, and grasped to death his throat who never injured me or any other living thing. I have devoted my creator, the select specimen of all that is worthy of love and admiration among men to misery; I have pursued him even to that irremediable ruin. There he lies, white and cold in death. you hate me; but your abhorrence cannot equal that which I regard myself. I look on the hands which executed the deed; I think on the hearth in which the imagination of it was conceived, and long for the moment when these hands will meet my eyes, when that imagination will haunt my thoughts no more.”
“He was soon borne away by the waves and lost in darkness and distance.”