This allows the reader to feel some empathy towards this ‘wretched creature’, as we imagine an abandoned child, but also reinforces her exploration of human nature as potentially good. ‘ Shelley portrays the monster in child-like ways throughout the novel, as he learns empirically ‘it was a long time before I was able to distinguish between the operations of my various senses,’ and he burns himself with fire as a child with no awareness would. ‘ Satan’s ruin also came from his pursuit of knowledge, leading both ‘men’ to their exile from the people they sought acceptance from.Īccording to Stephen Boyd*, Shelley’s husband believed that ‘men are not inherently corrupt, and that they are perfectible,’ adding to the influence of Frankenstein being to blame for the monster’s feelings of ‘vengeance to all mankind,’ and Frankenstein’s own corruption when trying to discover ‘the elixir of life. His good intent could also be interpreted on his hearing Saphie play music that he found ‘so entrancingly beautiful that they at once drew tears of sorrow and of delight from my eyes. ‘ The monster states, after reading Paradise Lost and other literature he has found after eating the metaphorical apple, that ‘sorrow only increased with knowledge’, as he became aware from the De Lacey’s, of such things as love and acceptance that he came to long for. He also shows altruistic behaviour in saving a drowning girl, and lighting a fire to warm his creator, making him possibly more sympathetic than Frankenstein, who forgot his family in his aspirations to ‘become greater than his nature will allow. It is Satan and the monster who initially invoke the readers compassion, as the monster seems of a benevolent nature as he watched the ‘beloved’ De Lacy family and took ‘pleasure’ in aiding their labours. Satan, at least, had ‘his host of rebel angels’ and had experience of a ‘father’ and being loved, his demise was through choice, as was Frankenstein’s. The monster however, ‘considered Satan as the fitter emblem’ of his condition and continued sufferings, but his hell was also a personal one, to be lived out on earth, and unfortunately alone. ‘ This dark depiction echoes the fate of Frankenstein, the monster and Milton’s Satan, as they all endure an experience of Hell Frankenstein’s personal hell was of ‘of intense tortures such as no language can describe,’ and his endurance of a ‘deep, dark, death like solitude, ironically echoes his creation’s feelings of loneliness and despair.
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