Victor Frankenstein works relentlessly for nearly two years with the "sole purpose of infusing life into an inanimate body." He cares for nothing else and deprives himself of sleep as he works, but once his creation is finished, he is filled with sudden shame and disgust: "the beauty of the dream vanished, and breathless horror and disgust filled my heart. Unable to endure the aspect of the being I had created, I rushed out of the room and continued a long time traversing my bedchamber, unable to compose my mind to sleep" (chapter 5).
Victor's disgust and his decision to abandon the creature could result from a number of factors. For one, before the creature is brought to life, Victor concentrates only on finishing the task ahead of him, but once the creature opens its eyes, Victor sees it in a new light and is frightened. Victor creates the monster to be beautiful, but when it opens a "dull yellow eye," Victor realizes that the beautiful parts did not necessarily work together to create a beautiful living creature. The frightening appearance of the creature highlights the disturbing nature of Victor's project—even if one could infuse life into dead tissue, would it look the same as new life?
Another factor to consider when discussing Victor's decision to abandon the creature is Victor's passive personality. A major theme throughout the novel is that Frankenstein does not take responsibility for his actions. He allows himself to be acted upon—by his friends, his professors, his parents, and the creature—but he rarely, until the end of the novel, takes responsibility for what he has created.
Frankenstein is a very ambitious scientist. He is eager to discover the secrets of life. The monster he creates is an experiment he performs in order to see if there is a way to put life into a body that is not alive. Unfortunately, though he intends the creature to be beautiful, Frankenstein is, in the end, only able to put together a body of grotesque appearance. Even though his work at times disgusts him, and even though he is eventually plagued by exhaustion and anxiety, he decides to continue with the experiment because he wants to know if he can successfully give life to the body he is assembling. After all, he has spent two years working on this experiment and does not want to simply give up at the final stage. So, his experiment turns out to be a success, and the body comes to life, but Frankenstein himself is so frightened at the sight of this live monster that he runs away.
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