I don’t know when people began
calling Victor Frankenstein’s creation “Frankenstein.” Those attempting to be literarily proper
usually say, “Frankenstein’s monster.”
Fair enough, though it’s a little awkward and some more casual sorts
might accuse the purists of being pedantic—if they use words like pedantic.
Most expectant parents usually have
at least one or two names in mind before a baby is born. Prior to ultrasounds
they usually picked out a name for a boy and a name for a girl. Victor Frankenstein apparently never thought
that far ahead. Perhaps that’s why the doctor so often called his creature, “the
daemon;” and once addressed him as “Abhorred monster! Fiend…[w]retched devil,”
names not likely to build the lad’s self-esteem. Instead, might Frankenstein have suggested
“Vic, Jr.” and called him “Sparky?” Had
Frankenstein been American instead of Swiss he might have nicknamed his
eight-foot creation, “Shorty.” But I
digress.
Keeping Frankenstein’s vision in mind,
I’ll call his creature, “Manlike.”
Manlike, we shouldn’t forget, was
capable of acts of kindness and heroic courage.
He once, secretly, helped a poor family gather their firewood, thus
saving the beleaguered householder hours of backbreaking work. On another occasion, he saved a little girl
from drowning, risking his own life.
Yet, these acts became rare as Manlike surrendered to bitter self-pity.
Manlike could appreciate beauty. He
spoke of wandering the woods at night reveling in the sounds and sights. An incident in the life of his unwitting
hosts further reveals how his “soul” could be touched by beauty. It involved the old blind man, his daughter
Agatha; and an exotic newcomer, a beautiful woman Manlike called “the
Arabian.” From his hiding place, he
observes this scene:
The
next morning Felix went out to his work, and after
the usual occupations of Agatha
were finished, the Arabian
sat at the feet of the old man, and
taking his guitar, played
some airs so entrancingly beautiful
that they at once drew
tears of sorrow and delight from my
eyes. She sang, and her
voice flowed in a rich cadence,
swelling or dying away like a
nightingale of the woods.
From culture to culture, around the
world, men and women appreciate beauty whether visual or aural. Long before William Congreve (1670-1729) put
the idea into words, we have known “music has charms to soothe the savage
breast.” Manlike would even attempt to
produce music himself as he “… tried to imitate the pleasant songs of the birds
but was unable.” Yet, in the end, his
rage drowned out the soothing sound of music and made him destructive. He burned down the house where he had heard
the soothing music, perhaps even destroying the old man’s guitar.
Manlike vented his rage so indiscriminately
even innocents were injured. He
mercilessly kills Frankenstein’s pre-adolescent, “angelic” brother William, whom
he accidentally encountered, he kills Frankenstein’s friend Henry; and he kills
Frankenstein’s bride Elizabeth on their wedding night—fulfilling a veiled
threat made months before. While
Manlike’s anger at Victor Frankenstein may have been justified, these victims
had done him no harm—in fact, they didn’t know he existed! Of course, most of humanity’s wars have
brought death and destruction to the innocent.
But the concept of innocence seems foreign to the creature.
Manlike readily blames others for
his pain. Certainly Victor Frankenstein
did nothing to impede the growing anger and resentment in the heart of his
creature but it seems too easy to let Manlike off the hook by pointing to his
ignorance or to his lack of proper upbringing (none at all, actually). Some have tried to exonerate the creature;
they claim, for example, Manlike did not know William was a mere child since he
had never been a child. Yet, the novel
presents Manlike as one capable of learning and using his keen powers of
observation to understand life. The
creature Robert Walton meets on the night of Victor Frankenstein’s death was
not mentally deficient. He should have
known, as most of us eventually know, you can get only so much mileage out of
having had bad parents.
In many ways, Frankenstein’s
creation shows the telltale signs of what the Bible and Christian theology calls
sin.
Indeed, the monster may have been
more manlike than we might wish to admit.
