Monsters are Created, Not Born

The biggest idea I took from reading the end of Frankenstein is that monsters are created, not born. Through inability to receive love and acceptance in society the monster is created. He is over and over again rejected and outcasted from the norms of society. Not one of the humans he encountered could look past his hideous nature and give him a chance. I think humans perceive largeness and ugliness with danger, and that is the underlying reason for their terror.

“One of the best of these I entered, but I had hardly placed my foot within the door before the children shrieked, and one of the women fainted. The whole village was roused; some fled, some attacked me, until, grievously bruised by stones and many other kinds of missile weapons , I escaped to the open country and fearfully took refuge in a low, hovel, quite bare, and making a wretched appearance after the palaces I had beheld in the village.”(123).

Over and over again, he is attacked. This leaves him with one possible reason for existence, to be evil, to attack as they attacked him. To seek revenge on the man who created his ugly nature that leads him to exile of society. The monster tale is one of sadness, he is beaten down until he can take the pain and suffering no longer and acts on all he has left. Seek revenge.

The monster was not a monster in the beginning, he resembled an infant. He was a sponge to knowledge, wanting to learn and be accepted. The norms of society he could not fit, and to exile he was doomed.

“Was I, then, a monster, a blot upon the earth, from which all men fled and whom all men disowned? (141)

Did Frankenstein create the monster or did the normalities of society and human race?