Love-Hate Relationships - Novel Blog 7 (Frankenstein)

"For while I destroyed his hopes, I did not satisfy my own desires. They were forever ardent and craving; still I desired love and fellowship, and I was still spurned. Was there no injustice in this? Am I to be thought the only criminal, when all human kind sinned against me?"

~ Frankenstein, page 165

Throughout the novel, all the people give the creature crap about being a hideous, horrid beast. Which is true. However, if you think about it, the creature is the only character (or at least one of the only characters) who shows emotional depth and multiple sides of his personality. He is by far the most round character in the whole novel. When he does his narrative, we see how he feels; his emotions are very, very extreme, and we witness a gamut. We see pain when he is abused by the villagers for his appearance, sadness when he weeps with Safie for the Native Americans, anger when he sets the De Lacey's house on fire, hope and excitement when Victor first agrees to creating the female, remorse after Victor dies and he realizes how horribly he has sinned, and sadistic pleasure when he sees Victor mourning the wife he just murdered. His complex character creates confusion for the readers; we hear about how he was beaten for being ugly, but then he murders several innocent people and gets sick pleasure out of it? It's really hard to tell if you even like him or not. But honestly, he's the most realistic character in the whole novel. Victor shows little emotion but fear and anguish, and he can't even get over the fact that the creature is unattractive; he's incapable of change. Elizabeth represents beauty, compassion, and innocence the whole novel; she doesn't show any other traits. Clerval is the supportive friend. Alphonse Frankenstein is the loving father that everyone wants.

It's really funny that the creature is supposed to be this terrible, demonic monster, but he has the most human character - the one-sided people in the book are more like artificial beings programmed with limited emotion and personality. Real people have both good and bad in them, and that's what makes this book so difficult. We don't want to like Victor because he is so flat, even though he doesn't do anything wrong. We love the creature because he is so genuine, but it's that genuineness that requires him to do bad things and experience painful emotions - which makes us simultaneously hate him. That, friends, is the great paradox of this novel. And of life in general.