Describe it:

After being created by Victor Frankenstein, the monster is abandoned by him. The latter then makes the journey to become educated enough to be able to communicate his thoughts and have the intended audience understand them. After learning how to read and write, the monster finds three books in a bag in the woods and takes them to read. These readings change him and have allowed him to understand the circumstances that surround his existence. The books make him realize that he is different from humans and has been exiled by them for this reason. The books give him a lot to think about, but they also affect him negatively, causing him to believe that humans will only outcast him and regard him with disgust.

Trace it:

The monster’s body is made up of several stitched together body parts. These parts come from corpses, making the monster’s appearance truly gruesome and disgusting to look at. Even Victor Frankenstein, the very creator of the monster, is revolted by the sight of the latter, and runs away in fear. The monster, after searching for another sign of life, finds an old man in a hut who shrieks and also retreats at the sight of the monster. The monster continues to a village, where more people flee due to his frightening appearance. Even though he wants to talk to these people and understand why no one wants to approach him, he cannot do so due to lacking knowledge of the human language. So he makes a resolve to educate himself, learning how to read and write by watching the family next door. Eventually he finds the books in the woods and reads them, understanding his situation and himself through the text.

Map it:

This negative impact brought upon by books relates to a theory from Ralph Waldo Emerson’s “The American Scholar” that argues that books limit the mind. While books are beneficial to one’s education, just as how the monster learns to understand his difference from humans because of the books from the woods, they do place constraints on the mind. Instead of thinking beyond thoughts that have already been thought, books plant preconceived thoughts by others into an individual’s mind. Because the monster relates so much to John Milton’s Paradise Lost and the character of Satan, he fails to think much beyond the thoughts the epic poem has given him. Exiled and looked down upon just like Satan, he sees humans as incapable of seeing him as anything more than a monster. Therefore, he decides to “hate them who abhor [him]” and becomes firm in never seeing humans in a positive light (Shelley 103). The monster could have looked past his newfound hate for humans if he had not been so influenced by the books, and in this way, he is held back from his full potential. He has become so overwhelmed with the ideas the books have presented him that he cannot think for himself and understand that not all humans will be disgusted by him.