(Minute 4:20 – 6:20)

“Accursed creator! Why did you form a monster so hideous that even YOU turned from me in disgust? God, in pity, made man beautiful and alluring, after his own image; but my form is a filthy type of yours, more horrid even from the very resemblance. Satan had his companions, fellow devils, to admire and encourage him, but I am solitary and abhorred.” (15.8)

Victor took God’s role into his own hands and he couldn’t escape the negative outcome that he created. Victor unnaturally creates a monster using dead human body parts, resulting in the creation of the Creature. This creation would bother and punish him for the rest of his life. Victor shows the negative effects of playing God through his mental illness. We can also see the negative effect of playing God role through the behavior of the creature because Victor abandoned him. Based on the novel Frankenstein, Victor takes God’s power into his own hands, “When I found so astonishing a power placed within my hands, I hesitated a long time concerning the manner in which I should emply it.” Victor’s guilt of creating a Creature lead to not only his ruin but his family’s as well. An important theme that is present throughout the novel Frankenstein is the controversy over who is responsible for the evil actions that the Creature participate in. Victor is liable for the creature ‘s evil actions due to his lack of morality and his failure of not interfering with nature own way of creating life.

In my opinion, Frankenstein is rather about Shelley autobiography and it also describes many of the feelings that Shelley was going through at the time. Through her life experiences and her novel Frankenstein, Shelley explores the role of a mother and postulates that through the creation of the Monster. Moreover, in the novel, Victor Frankenstein takes the role of mother to an unfavorable result. To Shelley, the creation of a person does not necessary indicate that there is an introduction of a new life into the world, but rather realizes it as giving birth to death. For example, Shelley’s own birth caused her mother, Mary Wollstonecraft, to die just eleven days after giving birth; moreover, Shelley was almost continuously pregnant from the time that she was 16 until 1822. Shelley had cause to relate giving birth to death and dying as the majority of the children that she gave birth to did not live past childhood; her first daughter died days after being born in February 1815; her son, William, born in January 1816, dies on June 7, 1819; daughter, Clara, born September 2, 1817, dies on September 24, 1818; son, Percy Florence, the Shelley’s only child to survive, was born on November 12, 1819; and finally, Shelley miscarried on June 16, 1822, three weeks before her husband, Percy Bysshe Shelley, drowned. We can see how Mary Shelley experiences with babies and bringing new life into the world is related to the novel Frankenstein because he was a monster created by science.

“Nothing is so painful to the human mind as a great and sudden change.” – Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, Frankenstein

In this quote, we can notice how the society that we live in has shape humans to be normal and to have a routine every day. We get so used to do our daily tasks over and over again every day which makes changes undesirable. By getting used to our daily routine when there is a great or sudden change in our life we feel confused and uncomfortable. The author is establishing that since sudden changes are painful to our human mind we are not been genuine or authentic because to be authentic requires a change in something.

“The innocent and helpless creature bestowed on them by heaven, whom to bring up to good, and whose future lot it was in their hands to direct to happiness or misery, according as they fulfilled their duties towards me.” – Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, Frankenstein

When Victor talks about his childhood, he suggests that parents play a big role in how their kids turn out, either “to happiness or misery.” In my opinion, parents need to teach their kids to be genuine/authentic even if it involves heartbreaking because this can prepare them for the future. They can also experience happiness and the great things that life has to offer them.