How Does Frankenstein Know The Sole Dividing Line Between Good And Evil

Frankenstein: ‘Good vs Evil’

Do we actually know the sole dividing line between good and evil? How do we define both forces? In today’s society or even past societies, it always seems like everyone has got it all figured out. Well, if we actually look at the concepts of accepted modern psychology studies, we will find that good and evil are obviously extremely arbitrary and subjective; as it turns out, people have set pre-determined points for themselves based on observations they get while developing said feelings towards what is good and what is bad. These strange dividing lines that everyone appears to inherently possess are called morals. These morals are the basis of the story between Victor Frankenstein and his Creature in Mary Shelley’s

Frankenstein. These morals are constantly used as a tool to manipulate perceptions of Victor and the Creature and the relationship they share to show just how inconceivable our realistically “nurturing” society can really be.
The creature suffers from these moral lines throughout the book quite often as when he is seen he is often prejudged on the basis of look. Shelley effectively communicates the intensity of this outcast by narrating the line “He turned on hearing a noise, and perceiving me, shrieked loudly, and quitting the hut, ran across the fields with a speed of which his debilitated form hardly appeared capable”(129). This man who ran from the Creature, like many others perceived size and skin color as the basis of his judgment and deemed the Creature unsafe to be around. Judgement for such a large societal anomaly like the Creature is not un-expected in these circumstances but where Shelley is trying to get the point across is essentially the fact that it does not really matter how a person appears to other people in terms of intelligence or feeling but rather how much of a threat that person is to them. Which is how the mind is “programmed”, to look for danger. This continues for the Creature throughout the book as he constantly encounters people who don’t approve of him within the first few seconds of just seeing him. Shelley shows this again by narrating the line “On seeing me, he darted towards me, and tearing the girl from my arms, hastened towards the deeper parts of the woods”(171). This quotation excludes the excerpt where the Creature is actually shot for saving the girl’s life. What Shelley is clearly trying to do here is give a “visual” representation to the age old “Don’t judge a book by its cover” by giving insight into both the Creature’s thoughts and deeds as they happen to allow the reader to see how deceptive pre-judgement can be and adds a way to almost victimize the Creature to all this pain and legitimize his later actions. The one person who may not exactly relate to the pain of judgement per se or at least not as often is Victor but how he chooses to deal with it is ironically similar considering the fact that to Victor, the Creature is nothing more than a wretch.
Victor Frankenstein is actually victim of a great deal of unwanted attention towards specific aspects of his life and part of the reason for this is the fault of Mary Shelley’s way of portraying Victor as a character.

Victor begins his life as a relatively privileged child with very little experience of hardship which sets him up to be somewhat of an unrelatable character as most of what could have been detailed as a hardship was left out of the overall summary of his childhood, so either it was irrelevant or forgotten. When the reader is putting perspective on Victor’s encounters with the Creature, they usually use details from how the narrator (if first person like Frankenstein) reacted to form their own opinion about the situation. Victor, being as emotional as he is, makes this tough as there are possibilities for over dramatization, adding in the speculation that the situations that Victor encounters are maybe not as bad as they were made to be. This in essence, “sets up” Victor to be the “bad guy” of the story with his actions being comparable to that of an abusive parent and their child. The main relatable point to draw for the reader is not necessarily about Victor himself but rather the relationship between him and the Creature. This causes the reader to view all of Victor’s actions/feelings towards the Creature in this way when the relationship is clearly under different circumstances and therefore appears to dehumanize Victor as a result. This prevents Victor from being seen as normal to the reader so we view his actions different to those of a normal person in the same circumstance. This convinces the reader that Victor is more of just a pawn who fits in the role of driving the story forward and almost functioning as a “part-time

antagonist”.
One of the most important lessons to pull away from this book is that good and evil are not binary as they are claimed to be. The Creature and Victor are both victims of an even greater issue going on and its existence is taking its toll. Frankenstein does a good job at exposing this issue as well, the book introduces two sides of the plot towards the end of the book and usually by the end of the book, you have chosen a side to identify why in terms of your morals. This is an example of the fact that we needlessly generate social constructs to in some way validate our existence. These social constructs come in many different forms and are usually created as justification for human behavior. Almost everything we have in our modern society today is a social construct including the ones built with a negative connotation in mind like racism or segregation for example. These social constructs are the reason that Victor and the Creature suffer as the justification that these constructs provide for the selfish actions taken against Victor, the Creature and any other suffers are the reason that the argument of “good and evil” comes about as a way to indicate human emotional bias in a situation where objectivity would provide much benefit.
Both Victor and the Creature suffer from the creation of social constructs and it's apparent in the way the monster is discriminated against on the basis of look and the way the reader discriminates against Victor for having emotional reactions in situations where they aren't deemed appropriate. Victor and the Creature aren't a side to pick or a battle to fight but rather that they are a story to hear and develop knowledge about the realities of human nature.

Work Cited

Shelley, Mary. Frankenstein. Frankenstein and with Thirteen Related Readings, edited by Carol Gladstone, Marco Book Company, 2002.