I'm not entirely sure that the Monster is evil. Apart from anything else, he is innocent in that he has no true understanding of right and wrong. This is because he's never been given the chance by his creator—Dr. Frankenstein—to grow and develop morally as an individual. As such, he's all alone in the world, abandoned by the man who gave him life and incapable of acting in a normal, civilized fashion.
The Monster understands that the murders he commits will not meet with the approval of his creator, but he still carries them out anyway as a means of taking revenge on the man who abandoned him to wander the earth. In addition, killing people becomes the only way that the Monster can assert his individuality. He wasn't created to fit into existing society but to start a new one. This means that he effectively has to make up his own values as he goes along.
If we could go back in time to the dawn of civilization, I'm sure we'd see similarly murderous behavior by our distant ancestors. Whether or not you would regard such behavior, as with the Monster's, as being evil, largely depends on how much influence you think the environment has on one's moral actions.
This question is a very interesting one because the tension between fate and free will is a significant theme in Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. The creature is abandoned by his creator as soon as he is "born," and he is forced to live a lonely and confused existence without any guidance from a parent figure. With those circumstances in mind, the inevitability of the creature's evil ways might seem clear, especially if it is in his nature to do terrible things. He has been treated badly, so he goes on to treat others badly. But, would things have been different had Frankenstein nurtured the creature as a loving parent nurtures an innocent child? It is hard to say. Mary Shelley does not make the answer to this question clear for the reader, and the answer depends on the reader's own beliefs about free will and fate, nature and nurture.
No comments:
Post a Comment