“ ‘Abhorred monster! Fiend that thou art! The tortures of hell are too mild a vengeance for thy crimes. Wretched devil! You reproach me with your creation; come on, then, that I may extinguish the spark which I so negligently bestowed.’
[…]
He easily eluded me and said, ‘Be calm! I entreat you to hear me before you give vent to your hatred on my devoted head. Have I not suffered enough, that you seek to increase my misery?’ ”
-p 95
I found this passage to exemplify a rather odd case of situational irony. In this confrontation between Victor and his monstrous creation, one would assume that the monster would not actually be able even to communicate with Victor, let alone express human emotions. Yet surprisingly, the monster has learned to speak quite eloquently and seems to express a great sense of understanding of Victor’s rage, as well deep sorrow and misery. Victor, on the other hand, would be expected to be the more human of the two. Instead, however, Victor seems to be possessed by a wild rage against his creation. He makes no attempts to understand his monster, instead savagely threatening to commit the same crime which his creation had committed against his brother. Yet in being consumed by this blind rage, Victor seems to lose some of his humanity and compassion. This loss, combined with the monster’s newfound humanity, creates a reversal of expectation toward this scene. In a clever twist, the human acts like a monster, and the monster displays his humanity. By writing thus, Shelley poses an interesting question as to what exactly identifies man as being human: simple biological status, or true compassion and emotion?
who's the real monster in this story?!
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