Misery to Bitterness in Frankenstein Essay

Misery to Bitterness

The Creatures last address reveals his bitterness towards the people who shunned him, and that bitterness resulted in the wretched deeds to make his creator miserable that make him full of regret and self-loathing.

The Creature was brought into a world in which no one was sympathetic to him, which brought him to abhor the human race. After he was created and abandoned by Frankenstein, the Creature was left completely alone, without a single companion and facing the rejection of the humans who instantly judged him as a monster. His loneliness and utter desertion made him so that he could not sum up the hours and months of misery which [he] endured (189). The loneliness he felt despite his desire for love and fellowship (189) with people that the hours and months of misery were ones so horrible that the concept of time didnt even apply as if the misery had no end. This misery was endured, or suffered, as he had to toil through physical and mental pain as the result of desertion. Even through these isolated times, the Creature had falsely hoped to meet with beings, who, pardoning [his] outward form, would love [him] for the excellent qualities which [he] was capable of bringing forth (189). Although this was false hope, believing in something improbable, he had hope nonetheless. The creature shows that he had once been optimistic that people would pardon his outward form and love him for his excellent qualities even with the high doubt of the outcome, but his small amount of hope in the human race diminishes as each person he encounters judges him in an instant and views him as a threat to society, not even giving him a chance to bring forth his excellent qualities. The Creature goes on to the love of virtue that he once had, but now, that virtue has become to be a shadow, and that happiness and affection are turned into bitter and loathing despair(189). The virtue that he had possessed is now a shadow, obscured from the view of the creature, as he loses his morality from each crime he commits. The hope of goodness and morality he once had brought the creature happiness and affection, emotions of moral excellence, but as his virtue is shadowed the rejection he faces and revenge he seeks, the happiness is covered with the dark emotions of bitterness of neglect and loathing despair of those that brought him to this miserable state, mainly Victor.

With the bitterness of neglect, his anguish brought his need to make his creator feel the misery that he did, causing the creature to do things that make him remorseful and detestable to himself. The creature, with vengeance in mind, tries to put Victor in the same state of loneliness he had been in by taking away everyone he loves, but he himself finds his crimes loathsome, in what should I seek for sympathy? I am content to suffer alone, while my sufferings shall endure: when I die, I am well satisfied that abhorrence and opprobrium should load my memory (189). He no longer seeks sympathy that he once believed he deserved or looks to be with people that accept him as he does not accept himself as he now believes that vice has degraded [him] beneath the meanest animal (189). His vice, or immoral behavior, has degraded his once excellent qualities to be comparable to an animal as if he were an untamed creature or beast. An animal is characterized as a cruel and depraved person, as the creature has now become. Although he isnt necessarily regretful of the murders he has committed, he understands the horridness of the crimes and agrees with the hate and disgrace that he deserves. The creature then discusses how these crimes did not fulfill the void it was supposed to, for whilst I destroyed his hopes, I did not satisfy my own desiresI still desired love and fellowship, and I was still spurned (189). As the creature destroyed [Victors] hopes, he hoped for the revenge to satisfy the emptiness of solitude, but just to give Victor loneliness couldnt fulfill his ultimate desire for acceptance and companionship. The love and fellowship that the creature longs for does not disappear with the vengeful crimes he commits, he still feels the rejection that he cannot overcome with revenge. Even though he achieves he goal to put Victor through the misery the creature experienced, the revenge could be considered ineffective as the creature still has the same desire of companionship and acceptance, which no matter what he does, he will not receive. The creature shows himself as guilt-ridden, your abhorrence cannot equal that with which I regard myself (189). All of the murders of the innocent people, only to still find himself unhappy and unfulfilled, make him remorseful. He hates himself even more than someone from the outside who can only perceive of him as a monster.