After reading Frankenstein by Mary Shelley in English class, we were prompted to ponder on who the real monster in the novel is. My teacher then informed us that our final will be an essay about who is the real monster. Most people in my class chose Victor as the true monster, but I couldn’t say Victor was the villain because I didn’t believe he was. Did I believe that he made bad decisions? Yes. Did I think those choices made him the monster? No. The same idea could be said for the Creature. Yes, he killed pretty much every loved one Victor had, but I don’t believe he was the Monster either. He made those choices because of the unfortunate events in his life, and so did Victor. After much thinking, and re-reading, I realized who is the true Monster of the story. The True Monster was thrown in our face in the very beginning of the book through different cleverly written literary figures. This true Monster is not an actual thing, but rather a concept that includes many things. In the end, I concluded that the real Monster is the shaping influences throughout both characters’ lives that pushed them down their dark path.

Shaping Influences being the Monster is supported by Mary Shelley in many ways, like her language she uses throughout the novel. In the first chapter of Frankenstein, Mary Shelley introduces the story of Victor’s father and the father’s friend. Victor describes his father and he states, “As the circumstances of his marriage illustrate his character, I cannot refrain from relating them” (Shelley 24). By using this sentence as context, Shelley introduces the idea that outside influences, like circumstances, have a major impact on someone's character. She also tells a quick story of the dad’s friend and she uses this story as a foreshadowing to Victor’s own life. The story has direct parallels to Victor’s life, like how the friend fell down a series of unfortunate events and how he was confined to the bed in wretchedness. None of these details would be put into the first chapter, unless Mary Shelley had bigger idea to explore.

While reading the book and seeing the creature’s point of view, I felt empathy for him. He was not born with malicious intent, instead he was born with a child-like innocence. When explaining his actions to Robert Walton, the character introduced in the letters, he states, “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 humankind sinned against me? … Even now my blood boils at this recollection” (Shelley 220). The creature was not born with evil intentions, but society’s horrible treatment of him shaped him into what he became. Society rejected him and spurned him. The best example of this is when the DeLacey family, a family he had been watching for a very long time and that he loved very much, rejected him. I can’t blame the family for being shocked when a giant creepy creature was talking to their dad. Most humans would react that way too, but this rejection was the final straw for the creature. He finally declared war on all of humanity and then he burnt down the family’s cottage. He then proceeded to hunt down his creator, Victor, because he wanted revenge. He was rejected by society, his family that didn't even know about him, and even his Creator. All of this evidence points to his shaping influences, like his horrendous exterior and his rejection from society, being the true monster and not the Creature himself.

Victor Frankenstein is one of the most popular picks for who the Monster of the story is, evidence in the story proves that Victor is not the real Monster of the story. Victor did make unethical decisions, but these decisions were a product of external influences. While reading through, I didn’t feel that Victor was the Monster either, rather I felt that he was a human who made ill-advised decisions that were majorly influenced by events in his life. One of the major events that shapes Victor into who he is, is his mother’s death. Before his mom’s death, he had an innocent curiosity, but his mother’s death twisted into something far more devious. He explained his mindset at the time of his mom’s death as, “life and death appeared to me ideal bounds which I should first break through, and pour light into our dark world … I might … renew life where death had apparently devoted the body to corruption” (Shelley 54). His curiosity is now twisted into an obsession to conquer death because his mom died. This obsession leads to his unwise decision to bring the Creature to life. All of these events are written by Shelley, in order to support the idea that the environment shapes people more than they realize.

Overall, Frankenstein challenges the idea that either character is the monster by showing how suffering, loss, and rejection can shape human behavior and decisions. Victor has an innocent curiosity for knowledge that was shaped into full blown obsession by his mother’s death. The Creature desired human connection, but was scorned repeatedly by everyone around him. Both characters are corrupted by their circumstances of life, but neither are evil. Instead the real monsters of the story are the forces in the shadows outside of their control that influenced their actions.