Is Victor Frankenstein The True Sinner

Frankenstein, written by Mary Shelley in 1818, is a science fiction novel in which a man named Victor Frankenstein resuscitates a creature (a deceased man). The creature, who is neglected by Victor, vows to spend the rest of his life tormenting Victor because he cannot interact with anyone, making him utterly alone in the world. Although the creature commits the majority of the horrible atrocities, Victor is the true sinner because he completely neglects the creature that he gave life, he will not create a mate for the creature (who has agreed to stop hurting people if the mate is created), and he decides to marry Elizabeth despite the warnings from the creature. Victor, despite his presumably good intentions, ends up torturing himself, the

creature, and lots of other characters in the story through these events.
Neglecting the creature that he creates is Victor’s first (and most important) sin. Victor’s professors warn him to not mess with the dead, but Victor’s lack of common sense and enormous ego drive him to do it anyway. The act of creating the creature is not necessarily bad and his curiosity is understandable, but Victor’s treatment of the creature is appalling. When Victor first sees the creature stand up, he exclaims, “Oh! No mortal could support the horror of that countenance. A mummy again endued with animation could not be so hideous as that wretch. I had gazed on him while unfinished; he was ugly then; but when those muscles and joints were rendered capable of motion, it became a thing such as even Dante could not have conceived”(59). Victor then runs from the creature. The creature, who has only been alive for a moment, already has to face his creator detesting and running away from him. This must have been a stressful experience for the creature and this neglection is the reason for much of the conflict in the book. Consequently, it is easy to empathize with the creature, and the atrocities that he commits can be seen as an extension of Victor’s sin. For example, the creature’s first victim happens to be Victor’s younger brother William. The creature does not intend to kill William until he learns that he is related to Victor. If the creature is entirely evil, he would attack anyone he sees. When the creature explains his feelings while he is killing William, he says, “I gazed on my victim, and my heart swelled with exultation and hellish triumph; clapping my hands, I exclaimed, ‘I too can create desolation; my enemy [Victor] is not invulnerable; this death will carry despair to him, and a thousand other miseries shall torment and destroy him”(144). It can easily be inferred that the creature commits his sin solely to get attention from Victor. If Victor had nurtured the creature, these sins would never have taken place. The creature commits the sins, but Victor is responsible for them.
Victor ends up mistakenly sinning again when he denies the creature’s armistice.

The creature tells Victor that if he creates a mate for him, he will stop killing and call a truce. At first, Victor agrees to the offer and sets out to England to create the mate. Just before he makes the second creature, Victor changes his mind. He denies, “Begone! I do break my promise; never will I create another like yourself, equal in deformity and wickedness”(172). Not creating the second creature is ignorant of Victor because he has no way of stopping the first one from hurting people. If Victor had analyzed his actions since the creature’s birth and not presumed the creature wicked from the beginning, he could have accepted the creatures offer and saved himself and his family from a lot of suffering. Subsequently, the creature commits a sin of his own by killing Henry Clerval. In the description of Henry Clerval’s death it says that, “He had apparently been strangled; for there was no sign of any violence, except the black mark of fingers on his neck”(179). It is clear that the creature does not want Henry to feel any pain when he is killed; furthermore, it is reasonable to conclude that the creature does the killing in order to reassure Victor that the creature’s threat to kill Elizabeth on their wedding night is not fake. By this time, Victor should take the creature’s threats extremely

seriously.
The final indirect sin that Victor makes is by marrying Elizabeth despite the creature’s warnings.

When victor decides not to make the creature a mate, the creature warns Victor, “I will be with you on your wedding night”(173). In defiance of this warning, Victor irresponsibly marries Elizabeth and then he is in disbelief when she is killed. Victor cries, “Great God! Why did I not then expire! Why am I here to relate the destruction of the best hope, and the purest creature of earth? She was there, lifeless and inanimate, thrown across the bed, her head hanging down, and her pale and distorted features half covered by her hair”(199). Victor is right to blame himself because even though he does not directly hurt Elizabeth, he marries her despite a warning from something that had killed 2 people. This irresponsibility makes him a sinner. Finally, when Elizabeth has been killed, the roles switch completely when Victor chases the creature up into the Arctic. Victor falls ill and dies. When the creature sees Victor dead, he cries over his body and tells Victor, “Oh, Frankenstein! Generous and self-devoted being! What does it avail that I now ask thee to pardon me? I, who irretrievably destroyed thee by destroying all though lovedst. Alas! He is cold, he cannot answer me”(221). The creature does not take Victor’s death lightly and explains how horrible it felt to kill Clerval and all of the others. Finally, the creature interrogates, “ Am I to be thought the only criminal, when

all humankind sinned against me?”(224). The creature does commit some sins, and surely could have tried to fix his problems in different ways, but it is hard for him to be good because he cares for Victor more than Victor cares for him. From the creatures perspective, it would surely feel like the world were sinning against him.