Any specific error or fault that a person commits always has a cause. This is a clear indication that someone else is always to blame, regardless of what is sensible, logical, or significant. Some people will make up a fictitious moniker for one of their own alter egos in an effort to contain it or place the blame elsewhere. This refers to the idea that we can create monsters that we can then characterize through our own behavior or that of our alter ego. Andrew J. Hoffman, in his Monsters anthology notes that, in creating monsters, we hope to control them, which will give us the assurance that we can be, and are, in charge of our lives (Hoffman 15). In talking about managing these monsters, Hoffman relates it to the control of our lives because it means that we will have a greater understanding of our circumstances and, therefore, have a better way of managing any possible consequences that may be unwarranted. In James Cohen’s words from ‘Monster Culture (Seven Theses)’ under ‘Thesis VII’, he refers to these internal issues as our monsters, which “are our children,” that always return and “bring not just a fuller knowledge of our place in history and the history of knowing our place, but they bear self-knowledge, human knowledge” (Cohen 20). The issues within our lives are our burdens and anything that happens to them is left as a problem for us to solve. In most cases, we are affected by those issues for which we have answers. Timothy Beal (2001), in Chronicles of Higher Education, says that our monsters “invite us to discover our monster in ourselves and ourselves in our monsters.” This means that we can easily be identified by our behavior and that whether our alternative personalities do or the objects/creatures we create to take the personality, they will always be a reflection of who we are from the inside. Mary Shelley (2011) (Shelley), in the book Frankenstein, talks about the monster created by Victor Frankenstein, which eventually haunts him at the knowledge of the loss of control over it. One great lesson to be learnt in all these stories is that every individual has hidden persons they refer to as monsters, which they would like to hide. We lose control of our monsters when we fail to understand that they are a part of us and in dealing with them head-on, we are finding ways to contain a personality within ourselves, which we would like to change.
The incessant desire to create a living being in human form is Frankenstein’s monster. Victor Frankenstein’s life falls out of control to the extent that he begins to lose everyone in his life to the monster. He could not control the monster that he had created and he faced dire consequences in various ways. The larger part of the novel covers the story of victor and this mysterious creature he had struggled to make. The monster begins as an incessant thought to use the knowledge he had obtained at the University of Ingolstadt to create a new immortal being (Shelley 3.12). He is unable to control his desire to go against conventional ethics in making an unorthodox creation without anticipating any consequences. As Hoffman says in his Monsters anthology, Frankenstein had hoped to create a being that he could control, essentially playing the role of a god who is all-powerful over his creature. His success would signify the taming of his desire to create something different with his knowledge, which was a monstrous thought in itself. It would indicate control in his choices as well as the will and way to get whatever he wants, thus being in control of himself. However, he is utterly disappointed when he finally finishes his creation and discovers it was an ugly-looking monster (Shelley 5.2). He had wanted a different outcome but was unable to control his creation process, which causes him to go into depression, thus losing to his monster. The monster becomes powerful and begins killing Frankenstein’s family and wife, effectively making his life worthless. The ego to achieve the impossible, which he let manage him, became his downfall.
Cohen’s thought that monsters are children which always return and come along with fuller knowledge of “our place in history and the history of knowing our place” (Cohen 20) while bearing self-knowledge based on human experiences is depicted in Mary Shelley’s story about Frankenstein. In creating the monster, Victor thought that it will have a natural growth curve like a normal child. However, its learning capacity overshoots his expectations and the monster even traces every detail about his life back in his hometown. It finds all of the Frankenstein’s family members and kills or threatens them. Frankenstein disowned and denounced the creature and right after creating it and seeing how ugly it was. Once he flees so that he can be away from the monster, he puts his family in danger, which costs the life of William, his younger brother (Shelley 16.30). The child he had created knew that hurting his family would be the coldest revenge it could exact. It would hurt him and leave him without the love he had denied it.
Frankenstein’s monster, despite being a result of an awry experiment to create an alternative race of human beings that is immortal, gains human characteristics such as compassion among others. Timothy Beal, in his essay “Our Monsters, Ourselves”, states that the monsters we create “invite us to discover our monsters in ourselves and ourselves in our monsters” (Beal). Some of the character traits acquired by the monster, which identified Victor include the incessant quest for knowledge, which it obtains through books. The monster represented Victor’s alter ego, which was his id kind of personality. This is depicted by the psyche that experiences reality in the external world through senses and organizes thought processes from the observations. The oscillation between the id and the super ego, thinking that the world is limitless creates a reflection of Victor in the monster, and vice versa.
Victor Frankenstein is a perfect example of how people struggle with monsters of their own creation. Every monster begins with a thought as small as a sesame seed but then if fed, the monster becomes uncontrollable and wrecks lives. From the above illustrations, the observations made by Hoffman, Cohen, and Beal are factual, which point to the fact that human beings have the incessant need to create monsters that they want to quash for the feeling of victory and control. However, these monsters end up destroying their creators’ lives. Frankenstein’s monster is a product of Frankenstein’s ego, which made him feel that he could do anything that seemed impossible. In one way, he hoped to change the life on earth by introducing alternative human beings. However, this thought is fed by his experiments and successful creation, until it is fully grown in strength and will to the extent that it overpowers him.
Works Cited
Beal, Timothy. "Our Monsters, Ourselves." Chronicles of Higher Education 9 November 2001: B18. Print.
Cohen, Jeffrey Jerome. Monster Theory: Reading Culture. University of Minnesota Press, 1996. Print.
Hoffman, Andrew J. Monsters: A Bedford Spotlight Reader. Bedford/St. Martin's, 2015. Print.
Shelley, Mary. Frankenstein. Random House Children's Books, 2011. Print.
