The term monster is an often exaggerated term. I will be frank and ask what actually defines the term monster? Most people would usually believe the definition as some sort of hideous or terrifying form that seeks to cause destruction or extinguish mankind. That is actually partially true, but in Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein, there is a different perspective taken into consideration. When the young scientist Victor Frankenstein falls in to despair and terror at his creation, he confronts it shortly after to find that the homunculus that he created is not the wicked and mindless brute that he had thought it to be.
It is actually thinking and speaking figure with a category of its own that Victor unknowingly created. On the exterior, the creation gives the appearance of what humans fear and dub the term monster upon. Only upon the appearance, but do not understand that it is much more complex on the inside. The creation will be referred to Frankenstein’s monster as the term monster is used too loosely. As the creation recounts its tale of the few years since the instilling of life, it tells the tale of how it survived and how it wanted to belong among the humans even though it was an outcast. This comparison reminded me strongly of a short book called Blood & Honor which told a story that followed a similar concept.
It told of the world a few years after the war between the brutish Orcs and the humans that ended ultimately in the fall of the Orcish horde, in which the remnants of the horde were both rounded up and set up in special prisons or massacred if they resisted. This story told of a human finding an Orc exiled and shunned by its own brethren, but was willing to live in peace without any war or conflicts, but wished to live in harmony with the humans. Frankenstein’s creation strived to do the same, although it woke u to fear and loneliness, it wished to live among humans, but knew that it could not because of what it was seen as in appearance. The next portion of the comparing book told of multiple humans capturing the Orc and treating it lesser than a barn animal while they laughed at it. This comparison isn’t as strongly integrated in Shelly’s work, but the concept was separating who were really the monster and the human. When Frankenstein’s creation attempted to make contact with the family it observed for over a year, it was driven away and considered a monster only due the appearance, disregarding any of its inner feelings, its intellectual side and any form of speech that spoke of its true nature of wanting to make peace. Even when he risked its existence to save a young girl from drowning, it was repaid for with a shot from a gun by a male due to its very existence. Before Victor Frankenstein stood before him not the hideous creature he shaped from various body parts, but a figure of understanding, mercy, and passion that in truth was actually gentler than an average human despite its powerful strength and height. This poses the question, when Shelly wrote this portion of the story, did she intend to portray the humans as the monster role switched in regards to Frankenstein’s creation or was the creature categorized as the same inhuman form that people feared?
