Mary Shelley's Frankenstein was a novel created to generate questions. If we as people strive for self-cultivation, it is a necessity to fulfill the obligation of progress. Whether it be progress within ourselves or for others, one factor remains constant: incessant questioning. Opinions change according to the opinionated. When change does not occur, stagnation can only persist, and those creatures involved must partake in all of the consequences that should arise.
The dominant question that one is faced with when reading of Frankenstein's exploits with his monster is the inquisition into the monster himself, or itself. What is a monster? What makes this creation of man a monster? Did he not come from man himself? This has always been an incredibly interesting question for me personally, because the very nature of the question generates a thousand more.
When it comes to the idea of a 'monster', or the disdainful nature of things, the only aspect of these manifestations that make them so repulsive and hateful is that they are only aspects of ourselves that we wish to deny, nothing more. Human nature is exactly that. There is no divine and no cursed, just as there is no black and no white. One would be hard-pressed to go out into nature and find something that does not contain both aspects of life and death. The most beautiful of trees still has bugs inside of it, rotting it from the inside out.
And yet in Frankenstein we find what is essentially two antagonists. Frankenstein himself goes against nature to bring what is dead and inanimate back to the living, and once doing so cannot bring himself to the understanding and responsibility that the creature needs. By having only one opinion of things, to view life(and his monster), only as black, he ended his own life. The creature he created didn't kill him, he murdered himself when he murdered his understanding of humanity. Frankenstein sought to wrench the idea, even the memory, of his own creation from his mind. He could only understand one aspect of life, and in the monster's unfortunate case, it was only in the most shallow of aspects.
From my understanding of the book, there were two creatures, and only one possessed humanity. The monster was able to observe humans, and thus understand their nature. Unfortunately, it seemed that the monster only observed only those compassionate aspects of man at first. It is true that he was abandoned by his master and could not have the opportunity to observe him, but he very soon after discovered the family in the cottage. He saw only good and decency in them until he met with their wrath, and in turn responded directly to the environment.
Frankenstein's monster isn't a monster, but he is also not human. He is a mirror. He reacts to the world around them, soaks in its information, and learns. He recreates himself constantly because he really has no other avenue. When he is shown kindness, always not directly, he responds with kindness and understanding. When he is shown wrath and anger, he responds in turn. On the days when the cottage people were sad, he mourned with them, and when they rejoiced, he celebrated. He was like that until the very end, and really had no sense of self within the book, other than that of his relationships, or lack thereof, with others and his outward appearance.
As I mentioned before, the book was created to generate questions, and the discussion of such could be endless. Overall, I really enjoyed the theme that questions what the terms human and monster mean, as well as that of what is perceived as 'good' or 'evil'.
