The Role Of The Monster In Mary Shelley's Frankenstein

In this story we see one of the main characters Victor get really obsessed with learning about the body and eventually blocks out all family and friends to create his ‘creature’. Once Victor creates the monster he realizes how hideous his creature is he decides that he wants nothing to do with it and leaves it. Mary Shelley, purposely calls the monster or ‘creature’ because that is his name throughout the story to remind the readers that even though the creature seems to have feelings and do other things humans do, he will never be human.

Names carry meaning and people’s characters are sometimes a reflection of those names. So in the book Frankenstein Victor's creation was always considered a ‘creature’ or ‘monster’ which he projected in

his actions. It seems like when he was called monster he did something a monster would in fact do. For example in the book when the monster is explaining what happened to him after he was created and left alone. He explains how he tried to get Victor’s little brother to cooperate but he didn’t he just begins to call the creature “ hideous monster” and “ugly wretch”. Once he found out who the boy belonged to he killed him. During the name seminar someone made a comment saying “how people view your name can carry you a long way”. This applies to the book because in the story the monster’s name was creature and he was also referred to as the monster and that's why Victor never told anyone of his creature because he was truly a monster. He was going around killing people Victor loved for revenge. The monster may not have had a usual human name but again it was to differentiate him from the humans.

Another comment made from the name seminar was “Names don’t necessarily make you special”, and in this book this is true and false. The creatures name didn’t really make him special because no one really knew of him. On the other hand it did make him special because his actions were a reflection of his name. If you call someone something they will start to act and do things that go with what you call them. For example in the seminar someone brought up the fact that people from other places like Africa or the Middle east and many other places name their child certain names based on their religion and or culture. They might name them something the means self love and because of the persons religion they may believe that power is in the tongue and their child might have great love for themselves. And though Frankenstein may have not realized it then, he was giving power to his creation acting like a monster by calling it ‘creature’ or ‘monster’. Everytime he would call the monster and say horrible things to it, he would go out and do monstrous things and that’s why the author didn’t give the creature a name in this story. It was to show that even though the monster was aware of his actions his name or what he was being called still had a role in the way he carried his actions out.