is the creature a product of nature or nurture?

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An individual must take full responsibility for their actions and must be taught before acting a certain way. In Mary Shelly’s, “Frankenstein”, the antagonist of the novel, the creature, was a product of nurture. Victor, the creator of the creature, is led by his pursuit of knowledge which turns out quite destructive. The creature is belittled by the people around him as well as his creator, he wasn’t nurtured, loved or cared for, and his actions are directly reflected on the lack of this from the beginning of his life . Although the creature may seem at fault, there are several factors which have to be considered that he was not able to control. The creature is disrespected by the citizens of the village that he visited on multiple occasions. Upon confronting citizens around the village he is instantly assumed a horror and insulted. As the creature confronts one of the families, he is unpleasantly greeted by the children and woman and states, “But I had hardly placed my foot with-in the door before the children shrieked, and one of the women fainted”(Miller 94). By stating this the creature implies that his personal appearance is one of the causes to his misery. It also shows how he is right to think that everyone is afraid of him due to how he looks. In addition, the creature tries to peacefully communicate with the De Lacey family but ends up being insulted as well. As the creature asks for help from the old blind man, he is stopped by the reaction of the rest of the family and explains, “ Agatha fainted; and Safie, unable to attend to her friend, rushed out of the cottage”(123). As the creature confronts more and more humans, he is constantly being given the same reaction which all plays on his morality. Thi... ... middle of paper ... ...gonist, the creature, has no person to bring love or the feeling of being cared for into his life. The creature was expressed as a miserable individual who attained a lot of negative emotions throughout the novel. Not only was he disrespected by the people living around him, he wasn’t cultivated by Victor on how to behave as well as not being cared or loved for, which was the one thing he truly desired. If it’s a question of whether the creature was a product of nature or nurture, the answer is nurture as he was his own enemy throughout the story. Had Victor took the time to nurture and educate the creature, there would have been a much greater chance that all those deaths would have simply not occurred. It is shown how ones actions can cause so much harm to a large group of people and in this case Mary Shelly’s, Frankenstein is the perfect example of it.

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