Mary Shelley"s Frankenstein poses the dilemma of finding morality in the text. The novel forces the reader to question the acts of the tale"s characters, to ask whether or not their thoughts are "moral," whether or not their actions are "right." Answers to these questions do not come easily in the text, if they even come at all. The difficulty of reading Frankenstein morally stems from the paradox that although the story is obviously immoral, it is far more interesting to read the tale from a non-moralizing point of view. Victor Frankenstein himself states this problem to Captain Walton by a sudden interruption amidst a moralizing of his own deeds: "But I forget that I am moralizing in the most interesting part of my tale, and your looks remind me to proceed" (Shelley, 54). Mary Shelley thus creates a situation for the reader where he or she cannot outwardly proclaim who is "right" and who is "wrong." Who can say that Victor is entirely at fault for wanting to create life in order to save other lives? And who can say that the Creature is entirely evil for retaliating at a society which utterly spurns him? An attempt to answer these questions will be made, but no one can so assuredly point the finger of blame at a specific character, and this quandary is why Frankenstein is such a difficult piece to read morally. .

             One cannot fully condemn Victor for the creation of his Being because he did originally set out in his experiments with the best of intentions. To Captain Walton, he says, ".I thought that if I could bestow animation upon lifeless matter, I might in process of time (although I now found it impossible) renew life where death had apparently devoted the body to corruption" (53). Victor never expected, he never wanted, to create such a hideous thing. The culmination of all his studies, the years of chemistry and anatomy at Ingolstadt, had been directed towards the final purpose of saving lives, not subjugating them arbitrarily to the harms of a rampaging monster.