The question seems obvious at first. So that's the monster, right? Green skin. Worth adding: the one Boris Karloff made famous in 1931. Bolts in the neck. A flat head and a lumbering gait. The one who shows up on cereal boxes and Halloween decorations every October.
But Mary Shelley never wrote that creature Small thing, real impact..
She wrote something far more unsettling — a being who reads Paradise Lost and weeps over it. Who learns French by spying on a family through a crack in the wall. But who saves a drowning girl and gets shot for his trouble. The popular image and the actual character have almost nothing in common. And that gap? That's where the real question lives.
What Is the "Real Monster" Debate Actually About
When people argue over who the real monster is in Frankenstein, they're not really debating plot points. They're wrestling with what the novel says about responsibility, creation, and what happens when we abandon the things we bring into the world Easy to understand, harder to ignore. That's the whole idea..
The term "monster" does heavy lifting here. But it can mean a creature of unnatural form. This leads to it can mean someone who commits monstrous acts. It can mean a warning — the original Latin monstrare, to show or demonstrate. Shelley uses all three meanings, sometimes in the same breath.
Victor Frankenstein calls his creation "monster," "daemon," "fiend," "wretch" — over and over, like a mantra. The creature calls himself "Adam" at first, then "the fallen angel.Consider this: " Neither name sticks. The book never gives him a proper name at all. That absence matters. Worth adding: names confer humanity. Without one, he stays categorically other And that's really what it comes down to. Still holds up..
The Two Candidates
Most readings land on one of two answers: the creature, for his murders — or Victor, for his abandonment. But the novel resists that binary. The horror isn't that one of them is the monster. Because of that, it's that they make each other monstrous. Every cruel act by the creature traces back to Victor's refusal to parent him. In real terms, every cruel act by Victor traces back to his horror at what he's made. They're locked in a feedback loop of mutual destruction Turns out it matters..
Why It Matters / Why People Care
This question has survived two centuries because it keeps getting more relevant, not less.
We live in an age of creation without consent. So aI systems trained on human work without permission. Genetic editing that could alter future generations. Also, algorithms that shape what billions see and think — built by people who never asked if they should. Victor Frankenstein is the patron saint of "move fast and break things.That said, " He wanted the glory of creation without the grind of care. Sound familiar?
The novel also speaks to anyone who's ever been rejected for how they look, where they're from, or what they are. The creature's tragedy isn't that he's ugly. So people treat him like a monster → he becomes one. And it's that his ugliness becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. That cycle plays out in schools, prisons, and comment sections every day.
And there's the parenting angle. Even so, victor is a terrible father. He brings a being into existence, takes one look, and runs away. On the flip side, no guidance. Also, no love. No "here's how the world works.Because of that, " Just abandonment. The creature begs for a father figure. Also, he tries to earn one. Victor refuses. Every parent who's ever felt overwhelmed, every child who's ever felt unwanted — there's a version of their story in these pages.
How the Novel Builds the Case Against Victor
The evidence against Victor starts before the creature even wakes up.
Obsession Without Ethics
Victor doesn't stumble into creating life. Love? Those questions don't interest him. He chases it. Day to day, what does a created being need? Day to day, rights? He never stops to ask what happens after. Community? So he spends years grave-robbing, experimenting, pushing his body to collapse — all for the "glory" of animating dead matter. He wants the achievement. The rest is someone else's problem Not complicated — just consistent..
His own words condemn him: "I had worked hard for nearly two years, for the sole purpose of infusing life into an inanimate body. Even so, for this I had deprived myself of rest and health. I had desired it with an ardour that far exceeded moderation; but now that I had finished, the beauty of the dream vanished, and breathless horror and disgust filled my heart Easy to understand, harder to ignore. Worth knowing..
Notice the timeline. Because of that, not during the months of feverish work. That said, the horror comes after success. Only when the thing opens its eyes. Not during the grave-robbing. That's not ethics. That's squeamishness Simple, but easy to overlook..
The Abandonment
This is the pivot point. In real terms, the creature wakes up. Victor flees. He leaves a newborn — eight feet tall, yes, but newborn — alone in a strange city with no language, no resources, no understanding of fire or cold or human society Small thing, real impact..
This is the bit that actually matters in practice.
Imagine dropping a toddler in a foreign country with no money, no language, no contacts. Now imagine that toddler is strong enough to kill you. That's what Victor does.
He doesn't just leave the room. Doesn't alert authorities. He spends the night in the courtyard, then wanders the streets until his friend Clerval finds him. Which means he leaves the building. The creature is gone. The creature? Doesn't post notices. And he's sick for months. Think about it: victor doesn't look for him. He just hopes the problem disappears And that's really what it comes down to..
The Refusal to Create a Mate
This is where Victor crosses from negligence into active cruelty.
The creature tracks him down. "I am malicious because I am miserable. Even so, tells his story — the cold, the hunger, the family he watched and loved, the rejection, the shooting, the burning of the cottage. He makes one request: a female companion. Am I not shunned and hated by all mankind?
Victor agrees. On top of that, then he changes his mind. Plus, he destroys the half-finished female in front of the creature. His reasoning? Which means fear they'll breed a race of monsters. Fear the female might refuse the male and he'll rage. Fear, fear, fear.
But here's what he doesn't do: ask the creature what he'd actually do. Practically speaking, offer alternatives. Propose a supervised life. Still, negotiate. He makes a unilateral decision that sentences the creature to eternal solitude — then acts surprised when the creature kills his best friend and his wife.
The Wedding Night
Victor's final failure of imagination: he assumes the creature's threat — "I shall be with you on your wedding night" — means Victor will die. He never considers Elizabeth. On top of that, he leaves her alone in a separate room, armed with... nothing. A pistol he keeps for himself.
His narcissism is absolute. His suffering. Here's the thing — " The deaths of William, Justine, Clerval, Elizabeth, his father — they're all his tragedy. Plus, even in grief, he makes it about him: "I was seized by remorse and the sense of guilt, which hurried me away to a hell of intense tortures such as no language can describe. His story Turns out it matters..
Worth pausing on this one It's one of those things that adds up..
How the Novel Builds the Case Against the Creature
But the creature isn't innocent. He chooses violence. Still, repeatedly. Deliberately.
The Murders
William Frankenstein — a child. Day to day, strangled in the woods. The creature frames Justine Moritz, the family servant, knowing she'll be executed. Even so, that's not rage. That's calculation.
Henry Clerval — Victor's closest friend. That's why strangled in Ireland. The creature follows Victor there to do it Most people skip this — try not to. Still holds up..
Elizabeth Lavenza — strangled on her wedding night. The creature waits until Victor is out of the room.
These aren't crimes of passion. They're targeted strikes at everything Victor loves. The creature understands exactly what he's doing: "I, too, can create desolation; my enemy is not invulnerable; this death will carry despair to him, and a thousand other miseries shall torment and destroy him The details matter here..
The Framing of Justine
This might be the cruelest act. Justine is innocent. The creature knows she's innocent
The creature knows she's innocent. He watches her arrest. He hears her confession — coerced by a priest threatening hellfire — and her execution. triumph. And he feels... On the flip side, he plants the locket in her pocket while she sleeps in a barn. "I gazed on my victim, and my heart swelled with exultation and hellish triumph: clapping my hands, I exclaimed, 'I, too, can create desolation Easy to understand, harder to ignore..
A child. A bride. Even so, an old man who dies of grief. On top of that, a servant girl. On the flip side, a friend. The body count rises with mechanical precision And it works..
The Creature's Defense
And yet. And yet.
When the creature finally speaks — really speaks, in those long chapters on the glacier — he makes a case that the novel never fully lets you dismiss. He didn't ask to exist. He didn't ask to be beautiful or ugly, strong or sensitive. He was given consciousness and then abandoned to figure out morality, language, social norms, and survival alone, with the cognitive equipment of a newborn and the body of a giant That alone is useful..
"I ought to be thy Adam," he tells Victor, "but I am rather the fallen angel."
He learns ethics from Paradise Lost, Plutarch's Lives, and The Sorrows of Werther — books he finds in a satchel. And he learns love by watching the De Laceys. He saves a girl from drowning and takes a bullet for it. He tries, repeatedly, to connect. Every door slams shut And it works..
His violence begins after the final rejection. Day to day, after the shooting. In real terms, after the cottage burns. After Victor destroys the mate.
"Was there no injustice in this?" he asks Walton at the end. "Am I to be thought the only criminal, when all humankind sinned against me?
The novel refuses to answer Easy to understand, harder to ignore. Turns out it matters..
Walton: The Mirror
Robert Walton, the Arctic explorer framing the narrative, is the control group. Now, he also pursues forbidden knowledge at terrible cost. He also isolates himself from human connection — his sister Margaret, his crew — in service of glory. He also meets a stranger on the ice and chooses to listen Still holds up..
But Walton turns back.
When his crew demands return, when the ice closes in, when the mission fails — he yields. He chooses life over glory. That said, connection over conquest. So he survives. Victor doesn't.
The creature watches this. Consider this: he sees in Walton the capacity Victor lacked: the ability to stop. To value something beyond the self It's one of those things that adds up..
The Funeral Pyre
The ending is often misremembered. The creature doesn't die in the novel. He builds a pyre, climbs onto it, and waits for the flames. Here's the thing — he plans to die. But the last words aren't his death — they're his departure Easy to understand, harder to ignore..
"I shall ascend my funeral pile triumphantly, and exult in the agony of the torturing flames. But the light of that conflagration will fade away; my ashes will be swept into the sea by the winds. My spirit will sleep in peace; or if it thinks, it will not surely think thus. Farewell.
He springs from the cabin window onto the ice raft. "He was soon borne away by the waves and lost in darkness and distance."
Gone. Not dead. Gone.
What Remains
Frankenstein refuses the comfort of a clear villain. Victor is arrogant, negligent, selfish, and cruel — but he's also brilliant, passionate, and capable of love. The creature is a murderer — but he's also articulate, self-aware, capable of profound empathy, and made by his circumstances.
The horror isn't the monster. The horror is that monstrosity is manufactured.
Every "monster" in the novel was once something else. Victor was a beloved son. The creature was a blank slate. Now, justine was a trusted servant. So naturally, elizabeth was a cherished cousin. Clerval was a loyal friend. In practice, the De Laceys were decent people. Walton was a brother.
Systems — scientific hubris, patriarchal law, class prejudice, gendered power, the refusal of responsibility — transform them into victims and perpetrators both.
The novel's final image isn't the creature burning. It's Walton, writing to his sister, choosing to return home.
That's the only victory available in this world: the decision to stop. To turn toward the living. To bear witness without becoming the story.
The ice closes. Which means the letters end. The darkness and distance swallow everything — except the warning, carried back across the frozen waste by the one man who listened, and turned back Not complicated — just consistent..
