I recently read Frankenstein for the first time, and when I came here to see what people were saying, I was surprised to find that almost no one was talking about the strange sense of ambiguity the book leaves you with regarding Victor.
Many people portray him as a soulless monster, as if his actions stemmed from an inherent evil, fueled by his arrogance and a hubris that consumes him. And, while that last part isn't far from the truth… I can't see him entirely that way.
Of course, I'm aware of Victor's inability to accept that his actions have consequences, but at the same time, I can't help but be struck by how the book portrays the protagonist's sorrow, his diffuse guilt, and his melancholy, as if his own tragedy prevents him from clearly seeing the damage he caused his creation.
And as I was writing this, I thought:
"I can't simply hate him… but I also can't justify him."
And then I understood: That's it. That's Frankenstein. Shelley wants the reader to be caught between the empathy Victor evokes as a human being and the responsibility he shirks as a creator.
It's complex. It's ambiguous. It's uncomfortable. And that's what makes the tragedy so powerful.
One quote I find interesting to add and analyze is this:
“Farewell, Walton! Seek happiness in tranquillity and avoid ambition, even if it be only the apparently innocent one of distinguishing yourself in science and discoveries. Yet why do I say this? I have myself been blasted in these hopes, yet another may succeed.”
In it, Victor advises Walton to seek happiness in tranquility, not in ambition, even when that ambition seems harmless or “good.”
But he immediately contradicts himself and reflects that the fact that his own hopes have been shattered doesn't mean that other people, with the same aspirations, couldn't succeed where he failed.
And this may be a purely personal observation, but couldn't this fragment be proof of a deep regret that never quite comes to fruition? Couldn't Victor be acknowledging his own fundamental mistake in abandoning the creature to its fate?
And perhaps, just perhaps, could it set a precedent for understanding how nameless, unguided, and unloved existence is the true cause of the "monster," even if only in the delirium of his deathbed?
I know, it's confusing, that's why I say it's purely personal. But what I mean is: Victor is aware of his failure—as a father, as a creator—but he reflects and expresses that others can succeed where he failed. Others capable of not running from their responsibilities. (Of being good parents, perhaps, I don't know.) Or maybe he was only talking about his failure to catch the creature, and I'm being too lenient with Victor.
But it's nice to believe that there might have been something more in those words, something that could have brought peace to his creation.
In conclusion: I believe that, ultimately, the creature is not merely the poor victim of its negligent creator; it is something more complex. It represents the most painful extreme of what society can produce when it decides that someone doesn't deserve to belong. It is the most brutal tool Shelley uses to show us how cruel we can be to that which we do not understand.
