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| The Creature and His Victor: Or, Frankenstein and His Monster | |||||||||||
| 6 March 2001 | |||||||||||
| A fantastic way to seem to be the literary expert at a dinner party of the non-literati is to shock with audience with the true identity of Frankenstein; no, the name does not refer to the monster but to the scientist who created him. This is a popular misconception of Mary Shelley's novel Frankenstein (1818), but one that may not be so far off base. Much has been said about the precise relationship between Victor and the creature. There are those who see the two as purely dichotomous with the whole interaction between the two as polarized; the story is the creator versus the created, the giver-of-life versus the taker-of-life. Then are there those that think that the creature is both literally and figuratively an extension of Frankenstein; in this scenario, the two characters are not antithetical but are complimentary, the different sides of the same coin; thus calling the monster "Frankenstein" would not be far from the truth. In reality, the relationship between Victor and the monster may be impossible to establish, or rather, established both ways. This is due in part to the ambivalent language used to describe both characters, namely the words "Prometheus," "creature" and "Victor." | |||||||||||
| The trouble begins with the title page itself, which gives the complete title as Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus. Since the book is about the scientist, one can assume that this characterization of Prometheus refers to Victor. Prometheus, in Greek mythology, was the Titan who gives life to clay to create humans and then endows them with fire to make them superior over all other living things (Columbia Encyclopedia). Victor, like Prometheus, gives life to an inanimate object. Had his experiment been successful, Victor, like Prometheus, would have been able to "save the human race from extinction" (Columbia Encyclopedia). Yet this myth seems to refer to the creature as well. Prometheus was a member of the giant Titans; the creature is also created with a gigantic stature. Likewise, the creature is associated more with fire than Victor; the creature "gives" this gift to the De Lacy homestead. The myth of Prometheus does not end with his gift of fire, however; he is also given the first human woman, Pandora, to wed. Had Frankenstein created the female monster he promised, the creature too would have married the first woman of his race. This sharing of Promethian attributes by Victor and the creature seem to indicate that a connection lies between the two characters, that they are part of the same mythic continuum. Yet neither character embodies the primary characteristic that gave Prometheus his name: forethought ("The Pantheon"). Victor does not embody this trait; had he, he would have anticipated how the monster appeared once animated (he did build the creature, after all), and he would have known that by creating a female creature without a uterus he could have kept his promise and avoided the ensuing murders of his friends and family. Likewise, the creature seemingly acts without regard for or consideration of the consequences of his actions. He kills William in a blind rage and then kills Clerval for revenge. Neither of these actions makes Frankenstein more willing to give in to the creature's demands. Then, without considering his course of action or the possible results, the creature leads Frankenstein on an ultimately fatal (for Frankenstein) journey to the Arctic Circle. After Frankenstein dies, the creature realizes that he killed Victor without clear intentions of doing so. If anything, both Frankenstein and the creature suffer from an extreme lack of foresight. Thus neither the creature nor Frankenstein has this paramount feature of Prometheus. They are both similar to and different from this mythical father of mankind; the relationship remains inconclusive. | |||||||||||
| Another interesting word that Shelley uses through the novel is the word "creature." This word, which seems to indicate a marked contrast between the person designated as "the creature" and Victor, or the "non-creature." This word has peculiar and various meanings; according to the Oxford English Dictionary, it can mean either "a human being," "a living created being distinct from man," and in an obsolete form, "creator." Thus this term applies both to the not-quite-human monster and to Frankenstein himself. This word does nothing to denote the specific differences between the two of them, though it appears to mark them as opposites. Though the word is used more to describe Victor or humankind rather than the monster (46 uses as opposed to 23 uses in the 1831 version of Frankenstein), the fact remains that it does qualitatively distinguish the monster either from Victor or from the entire human race. The creature is "merely" a creature, while Victor has the additional titles of "human" and "man." In fact, the word "creature" actually encompasses humans (and, by default, Victor). Thus once again, a word that should delineate the differences between Victor and the creature is rendered ambivalent by its applicability to both; it shows neither similarities nor differences. | |||||||||||
| The name "Victor" stands as another seemingly dichotomizing word. It sets up a stark difference between the named (Victor) and the unnamed (the creature). A certain social value is attached to Victor that is not applied to the creature. Victor has the privilege of being given a word by which he is to be identified in relation to other humans. This presupposes that he had a need to be identified, first because other people care about who he is, and second because he looks similar enough to other people as to be indistinguishable by his looks alone. The creature, however, being a unique anomaly of nature and evolution, does not need an artificial identifier; he can be identified purely by his physical features since he is distinct from normal human beings. Apart from his physical features, his remaining unnamed suggests that he is somehow inferior to other humans, that he does not deserve a title that is (nominally, anyway) his very own. In actuality, it is Victor who does not live up to his name and thus is the more undeserving of the two. He fails to "pour a torrent of light into our dark world" (Shelley 32) with the creation of manmade life. Later, after his ambitions change from aiming at lofty scientific discoveries to the more base, savage notion of revenge, he still fails in his endeavor. "Think not," Victor says, "that in the last moments of my existence I feel that burning hatred, and ardent desire of revenge, I once expressed, but I feel myself justified in desiring the death of my adversary" (Shelley 151). By the end of the novel, Victor is a failure in many ways; he is not victorious in the battles of his life that mattered the most to him - creating a race of noble creatures, protecting his family, and then killing the creature. In the end, his human frailties overcome him, and he dies. The monster, however, is still alive as the novel ends. While it is true that he does not win social acceptance or have a fellow creature with whom to commiserate, he achieves his revenge on Victor, though this comes at a high cost emotionally. Even this one "victory" is bittersweet; upon finding Frankenstein dead, the creature expresses remorse for what he has done. Yet he is the last man (or creature) standing between the two of them, making him the "victor." As such, the name "Victor" presents a problem when trying to determine the relationship between the creature and Frankenstein. It seems almost a misnomer, or with some dual applicability: one character is Victor, the other the victor; one's name lives only in memory, the other lives namelessly.� | |||||||||||
| The duality and duplicitous nature of the words use to describe Victor and the creature make it difficult to establish a definite relationship between these two characters. It is not clear whether they represent polar opposites or complimentary natures. Since this underlying dilemma of the novel can not be reconciled, a more intensive attempt to unify the opposing factors in the novel is bound to fail. Like the nebulous meanings of the words "Prometheus," "creature," and "Victor," the true relationship between the two main characters remains illusory. | |||||||||||
| Works Cited | |||||||||||
| Columbia Encyclopedia. 6thed. 2001. Online: http://www.bartleby.com/65/pr/Promethe.html | |||||||||||
| Oxford English Dictionary. 2nd edition. Online: http://dictionary.oed.com/cgi/findword?query_type=word&queryword=creature | |||||||||||
| "The Pantheon," 2001. Online: http://www.the-pantheon.com/prometheus_and_epimetheus.htm | |||||||||||
| Shelley, Mary. Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus. 1818 ed. Ed. J. Paul Hunter. New York: Norton, 1996. | |||||||||||
| Shelley, Mary. Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus. 1831 ed. Electronic Text Library, University of Virginia Library. Online: http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/toc/modeng/public/SheFran.html | |||||||||||