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Chapter 10
“I expected this reception,” said the daemon. “All men hate the wretched; how, then, must I be hated, who am miserable beyond all living things!”
In Chapter 10, when Frankenstein accuses the monster of murdering his brother William, the monster cleverly deflects the accusation. Frankenstein’s hatred of him is to be “expected,” he says, not because of the murder, but because the monster is “wretched” and “miserable.” The monster’s first utterance sums up his story as he sees it, but it also demonstrates his skill with language. Throughout the novel the monster skillfully deflects blame for the murders he has committed by emphasizing his own suffering.
Read more about the impact of the monster's eloquence.
Chapter 13
For a long time I could not conceive how one man could go forth to murder his fellow, or even why there were laws and governments; but when I heard details of vice and bloodshed, my wonder ceased, and I turned away with disgust and loathing.
In Chapter 13, the monster claims that when he was first created he could not even understand murder, and that when he did come to understand “bloodshed,” it made him feel “disgust and loathing.” At the same time, the monster makes a more subtle point in his defense. Human beings “go forth to murder” so often that “laws and governments” are needed to stop them: there is therefore nothing inhuman or unnatural about the monster’s capacity for murder.
Read more about the monster as the novel's antagonist.
Chapter 15
Many times I considered Satan as the fitter emblem of my condition; for often, like him, when I viewed the bliss of my protectors, the bitter gall of envy rose within me.
The monster has read Milton’s
Chapter 16
There was none among the myriads of men who existed who would pity or assist me; and should I feel kindness towards my enemies? No: from that moment I declared everlasting war against the species, and, more than all, against him who had formed me, and sent me forth to this insupportable misery.
In Chapter 16, the monster argues that his murderousness is not his fault. Human beings made him declare “war” by treating him like an enemy. The monster feels completely alienated: “none among the myriads of men” will take pity on him. In this way he resembles Frankenstein, who alienates himself by pursuing forbidden knowledge. The monster will go on to deepen Frankenstein’s alienation by killing his friends and family.
Read more about the theme of Alienation.
Chapter 17
You must create a female for me, with whom I can live in the interchange of those sympathies necessary for my being.
In Chapter 17, the monster demands that Frankenstein create a female companion for him. He argues that close, loving relationships are “necessary” for “being.” By imagining that his female companion will be “for” him, he shows that he shares his creator’s possessive attitude toward women. Frankenstein tells us that he looks upon his future wife Elizabeth as “mine.” By longing for a female companion, the monster also aligns himself with Adam in Milton’s
Read about why Frankenstein destroy's the monster's companion.
Chapter 20
As I looked on him, his countenance expressed the utmost of malice and treachery.
Frankenstein describes the appearance of the monster in his window in Chapter 20. Every character who sees the monster (himself included) agrees that he looks terrifying. Frankenstein goes further. He suggests that the monster’s terrifying appearance is evidence of his evil character, his “malice and treachery.” One possible reading of this line is that Frankenstein is trying to shift blame away from himself: if the monster is an innately evil and unlovable being, then Frankenstein can’t be held responsible for treating him so badly.
Walton, in Continuation
I shall collect my funeral pile and consume to ashes this miserable frame, that its remains may afford no light to any curious and unhallowed wretch who would create such another as I have been.
On one level,
Read an essay about whether the monster is can be considered "good."
‘But soon,’ he cried with sad and solemn enthusiasm, ‘I shall die, and what I now feel be no longer felt. Soon these burning miseries will be extinct. I shall ascend my funeral pile triumphantly and exult in the agony of the torturing flames. The light of that conflagration will fade away; my ashes will be swept into the sea by the winds. My spirit will sleep in peace, or if it thinks, it will not surely think thus. Farewell.’
By the point that the monster speaks his last words at the end of the novel in “Walton, in Continuation,” he has already proven himself a better being than Victor in that he has shown a capacity for growth by accepting that he has made mistakes. With these words, the monster provides us with capstone example of his superiority to his creator by conveying that he will even die better than him. While Victor dies feeling crushed by the fact that the monster is still alive, the monster shows that he is reconciled to death—so much so that he plans to commit suicide to induce it.
The monster speculates about the afterlife with his very last words (“My spirit will sleep in peace, or if it thinks, it will not surely think thus. Farewell.”), saying that he assumes there isn’t one, but that if he’s wrong and there is (and his spirit is able to think), whatever his spirit thinks won’t be as bad as what his consciousness has experienced while he is among the living.
