It is All Meaningless Anyway:An
existential critique on Frankenstein.
How does
one achieve self-preservation in a society bombarded by rules and social norms?
Does someone, perhaps, need that society to be completely fulfilled?
Or does that someone need to reject those laws and barrel through their own
individual life because this is all meaningless? Does one get to decide what
comes next in life or is it fate? These strenuous questions are raised
in Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein.
Existential philosophy has a variety of different schools
of thought and themes. Individual existence has a great importance within
this philosophy. Individual freedom of choice allows human beings to
chose their own destiny. Freedom gives humans the means to create his
or her nature, for which one must then take responsibility. Human beings should
exert their freedom of choice to make a goal or purpose and passionately follow
through with it while keeping in mind that one is eventually going to die
anyway so this is all meaningless. In Frankenstein, Victor defines
his goal and purpose, which raises a tension between how far one will go
to fulfill a goal and the outcomes of reaching it. Victor is unable
to take responsibility for the outcome of his goal, creating another life.
The monster of Frankenstein may be the embodiment of existential beliefs,
furthermore, the novel itself is an allegory for how a person, or human beings
in general come to terms with taking responsibility.
The monster embodies the purpose or goal that one chooses to fulfill throughout
life. Victor is a scientist who uses science to find concrete answers about
life or human existence. He completely submerges himself into
science and the “goal” he has chosen for himself, for instance, Victor explains,
“so deeply was I engrossed in my occupation”(60). Victor’s goal is not only
to manipulate science but also human existence: “I succeeded in discovering
the cause of generation and life; nay, more, I became myself capable of bestowing
animation upon lifeless matter”(57-56). He isolates himself from society
to fulfill his goal, which suggests that, for human beings to have self-fulfillment,
they must withdraw from society. On the other hand, society offers
a sanctuary for Victor. When he decides to go back to society, to his
family, Victor seems to get a break from himself or the life of science he
has created for himself. Existentialism teaches that life’s most important
questions are not accessible to science or reason and that one can never fully
understand why they are here. Thus Victor is going to fail at achieving
his goal because he uses science to give meaning to life.
Victor does take the risk of exerting his personal freedom of choice, but
it is the goal itself that dooms him to a life of misery. He not only
wanted to reanimate life, but create “a new species [that] would bless me
as its creator and source; many happy and excellent nature would owe their
being to me”(58). With the creation, however, he wants to create
a nature for it, which defies the monster’s freedom of choice to create his
own nature and to fulfill his own life goal.
Victor’s creating another humanlike life form raises the question of what
role God plays if there is any place for one? Existentialism contemplates
the question of whether God creates us or do we as human beings create God.
Also, the issue of God raises the question of whether God determines one’s
destiny or one determines one’s own. In Frankenstein, both sides
of the concept are explored. With the mindset of human beings create god,
the monster is the embodiment of a Godlike figure because he is created.
By being created, the monster has control over Victor’s fate. The monster,
in a sense dictates Victor’s happiness based on how Victor can fulfill the
monster’s requests. When Victor is contemplating whether he should or
should not create a companion for his lonely creature, he states, “Or (so
my fond fancy imaged) some accident might meanwhile occur to destroy him,
and put an end to my slavery forever”(134), which shows that he feels as
if he were a slave to his creation. However, it is not that Victor became
a slave to his creation; he is a slave to the God that he created, which
implores if a human being believes in or creates a God /religion, one will
then become a “slave” to fulfilling the ideas or ideals that that particular
belief system provides and not the basic individual goal one creates.
Yet, again, Victor is doomed because of his poor choice in choosing his goal
because he chooses to not only create life, but also God.
The monster realizes the complexities of Victor’s struggle. When Victor
and the creation are conversing about the companion that Victor is supposed
to make, the creature states, “Slave, I have reasoned with you, but you have
proved yourself unworthy of my condescension. Remember that I
have power; you believe yourself miserable, but I can make you so wretched
that the light of day will be hateful to you. You are my creator, but
I am your master; --obey!”(146). Basically, since Victor created
him, the creature recognizes that he can exert an authority over him,
a godlike authority deciding fate.
On the other hand, the novel shows God as providing a guidance. When
in need, the creature turns to its creator for help, even though the creature’s
God turns out to be a malevolent one. The creature’s “goal” is to become
a part of society, but having realized that society will only shun him, he
asks for a companion. After describing what happened to him at the cottage
he states, “Cursed, cursed creator! Why did I live? Why in that instant,
did I not extinguish the spark of existence which you had so wantonly bestowed”(121),
and then goes on to say, “You must create a female for me, with whom I can
live in the interchange of those sympathies necessary for my being”(128).
Because the creature yearns so badly for social expectance, he becomes a
slave to society not his God. The creature searches for its place in society.
It is his appearance, which his creator bestowed upon him, that excludes him
from society. It is society’s standards that deny the monsters acceptance.
The creature contemplates where he fits in by saying, “When I looked around,
I saw and heard of none like me. Was I then a monster, a blot upon
earth, from which all men fled and whom all men disowned”(109).
The Marxist critical essay by Warren Montag defines the monster’s place
in society. A key point Montag makes in relation to the novel and its historical
time period is that “At the very moment that Frankenstein was first published
the British state suspended various civil rights (including that of habeas
corpus) in order more effectively to counter the growing combatively of the
unemployed and the working poor”(Montag 387). With this in mind, Montag
defines Frankenstein’s monster as being aligned with the emerging proletariat.
The monster as a product dismisses the issue of God. It is less of an
individual issue but a social issue. Montag states, “For the monster is a
product rather than a creation, assembled and joined together not so much
by a man (if such were the case the monster might be allotted a place in the
order of things) as by science, technology, and industry…, whose overarching
logic subsumes and subjects even the greatest geniuses”(Montag 388).
This idea that the monster is a product rather than a creation is a contrast
to how existentialism would define the monster. In both Marxist and existential
critiques, the creature/ monster is denied its rights or individual freedom.
Montag describes the monster as being denied its legal rights because of the
bourgeois’s fear of the new masses. The monster, in a sense, embodies
the struggle of the proletarian to gain rights as workers. From an existential
perspective, however, the monster is a creation because Victor created him.
The monster, in a sense, embodies the struggle a person has to go through
to keep the integrity of individual freedom in society. Both of these
ideas suggest that society can and will shape an individual, but what is
important is what that individual chooses to do with social norms.
With the community or society in mind, existentialism suggests that every
human can decipher between right or wrong and good or bad. In determining
a goal, should one keep in mind the community, or should a person form goal
and selfishly go for it at all costs? The instinct of right or wrong
should kick in, benefiting the community outside the self. Deciding
a proper goal is problematic because how one subjectively interprets society’s
ideals of right and wrong, and an individual’s personal beliefs may not always
have in mind or benefit the community. Ultimately, it may not be the
goal that an individual chooses, but whether the individual can hold themselves
accountable. Marxism seems to only give excuses for the individual to
not take responsibility for their actions.
Victor does not take responsibility for the choices he makes. The
internal suffering and misery is a way to take responsibility upon himself,
but the lack of responsibility outwardly projected is hurting others and
the community. For example, Victor makes himself physically ill rather
than speaking up for Justine. Though by the end of his story Victor
keeps saying he is the murderer of his kin. Since the monster or creation
is his goal, Victor ultimately fails at achieving self-fulfillment and preservation,
which would suggest that it is up to the individual to choose the right goal
or purpose for his or herself. Perhaps, society could be a guide in
the decision, but society could alter the decision or may confine it by roles
and social ideology.
The scene where Victor meets his animated creation is the beginning of Victor
denying responsibility. Also, this is the beginning to Victor’s realization
of existential beliefs. In a psychoanalytical criticism of Frankenstein,
David Collings describes the scene where the creation and the creator meet
as being the moment when Victor “sees what it would be like to be an image
and complete, too appear in the world and lack nothing”(286).
Collings uses not only Freudian thought but also Lacanian, he refers
to the idea that one “will always seek what it is lacking: object a”(285).
This suggests that Victor sees in his creature what he lacks. Collings states,
“we can only recognize ourselves in an image that in fact fails to depict
us: we become human when something essential is subtracted from us.
What shocks Victor is simply that the image comes to life, as the essential
thing has been added back”(286). When Victor runs away and locks himself
up from the monster, he is not running away from what is lacking in his wholeness
as a person, but he is running away from responsibility. In Lacanian
terms combined with an existentialist’s viewpoint, perhaps this object a that
everyone lacks or desires is the ability to take responsibility for one’s
actions. Sense it is the monster he is running away from, the monster
is the embodiment of responsibility. In a more optimistic view than
Lacanian theory and even Existentialism, humans have the ability to recover
the object a that is missing.
In telling his story, Victor slowly, half consciously comes to realize or
starts to take into consideration some ideas or themes of existentialism.
At the beginning of the novel, Victor states, “It was a strong effort of the
spirit of good; but it was ineffectual. Destiny was too potent, and
her immutable laws had decreed my utter and terrible destruction”(49).
Victor leaves everything up to fate or destiny instead of taking responsibility
for his actions, and responsibility for the personal choices he makes and
how he deals with these personal freedoms. Towards the end, a shift
is made. Victor states, when talking about making a companion for his lonely
creature, “But I now felt as if a film had been taken from before my eyes,
and that I, for the first time, saw clearly. The idea of renewing my
labours did not for one instant occur to me; the threat I had heard weighed
on my thoughts, but I did not reflect that a voluntary act of mine could avert
it”(148). When this “film” is lifted from his eyes, Victor realizes that
he has control and is responsible to make the right choice or decision.
The power is in his hands.
Works Cited
Collings, David. “The Monster and the Maternal Thing: Mary Shelley’s
Critique of Ideology.” Frankenstein. 2nd edition. Boston: Bedfords/St.Martin’s,
2000.
Montag, Warren. “The Workshop of a Filthy Creation: A Marxist
Reading of Frankenstein.” Frankenstein. 2nd Edition. Boston: Bedfords/St.
Martin’s, 2000.
Shelly, Mary. Frankenstein. 2nd Edition. Boston: Bedfords/St.Martin’s, 2000.
