Moral Paradox in Frankenstein

A detailed Summary of Moral Paradox in Frankenstein

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

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.

Society is also a factor in the moral assessment of Victor because embedded in society itself is the paradox of progress and barbarism, a paradox juxtaposed with that of a moral reading of the text. Montag, pointing to this paradox, writes, "...There is everywhere a sense of monstrous forces unwittingly conjured up in order to serve the project of progress and the Enlightenment but which have ultimately served to call that very project in question" (300). In the text, Victor sees the paradox himself and he issues the following proclamation to Captain Walton:

As Victor indicates, the progress of civilization does not come without a price, such as the America that could not have been founded so quickly without the destruction of a Mexico or a Peru. Frankenstein exemplifies this societal paradox as Victor pays the price for his attempt to create life, an attempt to further the progression of human existence. From this point of view, a moral assessment of Victor cannot be made because it is society and not Victor himself who is responsible for what occurs during the course of the tale; Victor is only following what civilization has attempted to do before.

In much the same way as Victor, the Creature is not in itself at fault morally but a product of the situation in which it has been put. From the moment of the Creature's birth, Victor, the Creature's own father, thinks of it as a "daemon" and, in a sense, aborts his own child when he abandons all responsibility for it. Left in a deplorable state, this Being must wander the world alone, a world where "all men hate the wretched; how then must [the Creature] be hated, who [is] miserable beyond all living things!" (96). The Creature continues by relating its emotional poverty, how cheated it feels because he had to "grow up" without a parent. It says, "I ought to be thy Adam, but I am rather the fallen angel, whom thou drivest from joy for no misdeed. Everywhere I see bliss, from which I alone am irrevocably excluded," (96). In this manner, Frankenstein represents the classic case of an abused and neglected child who grows up into an abuser himself. It is unprepared for any role that it may play in society, especially the role of outcast.

The contradictions inherent in both major characters, coupled with the paradoxes of education versus innocence and society versus savageness make a moral reading of Frankenstein extremely difficult. Victor Frankenstein is a complex moral quandary because his own ambition becomes a blindfold keeping him from beholding the moral controversies of his scientific studies. At the same time, however, Victor is a victim of society that forces him to find a way to evolve, to find a new hallmark for human achievement. In the Creature's case, it resorts to revenge and de-evolves to its mo

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Category: Politics