Shelley plays with ideas of nurture vs. nature throughout Frankenstein. Early on in the monster’s story we begin to understand that he is not “evil” in the sense that Victor describes him in the first volume of the story. Though he has committed unforgivable crimes, following his story, we learn that his most innate desire is the same as any human’s – to be loved and accepted by others. It is only when he is rejected by those he cares for most (the De Lacey family) that he begins to identify with the darker side of human nature. His nature is shaped by the perceptions of the humans around him, more than any “good” or “evil” force that is within him. He discovers Victor’s letters and learns how much his creator detested him; the De Lacey children and Safie are horrified at the sight of him. However, even after the hurt of these rejections, he continues to display an innate desire to be helpful to humans, saving the young girl from drowning (suggesting that there is innate good in him) only to then be shot by her protector. Even though he has grown increasingly cognizant of humans’ negative feelings towards him and has been hurt and reproached repeatedly, he has not, up until this point, enacted violence towards the humans.
The defining moment of the creature’s turn to evil is when the young boy, Victor’s brother, looks at him with disgust. He looks at the boy and exclaims, “…an idea seized me. That this little creature was unprejudiced and had lived too short a time to have imbibed a horror of deformity” (p 166). He imagines that they boy will not look at him in disgust the way that those who have been socialized against deformities like his. However, the boy responds “Monster! Ugly wretch you wish to eat me and tear me to pieces — You are an ogre” (p 166). The child, like the creature, is a product of his upbringing. The child’s use of “ogre,” a creature from folklore, to describe the monster suggests a tacit form of socialization – one which comes through storytelling, an arguably harmless form of education that many children are exposed to. The inescapable nature of the mythology and negative connotations that precede the monster’s existence feel, in a sense, like the final straw. He recognizes that humans may never transcend their own constructions of what it is to be human – that they may never accept him. At this instance he is driven to violence.
Arguably, these forces or good and evil exist within us all and are brought to the surface through our interactions with others and through the knowledge we acquire. Shelley presents a complicated picture of the balance of nature and nurture in human existence. The monster’s evil nature is spurred by the scorn he receives from those who he hopes would love him. What do we learn from the monster’s interactions with the young girl he saves and they boy he destroys?
