While many readers tend to view Frankenstein as a simple, classic horror story, an understanding of Mary Shelley’s connection to John Milton’s Paradise Lost shows a more complicated story. This connection reveals how the creation of the monster can in some ways be related to God’s creation of Adam. We see this complication particularly where the monster himself begins to read and identifies with the characters of Satan and Adam. Although this more complicated version of the Frankenstein story, in terms of who is essentially evil, may not be familiar to many readers or viewers of Frankenstein, in my view it is crucial to the understanding of Shelley’s novel.
After Victor Frankenstein’s creation has escaped from his apartment, the creature takes refuge in the woods where he observes human life through a hole in the wall of a family’s cabin. Through the close observation of their everyday lives, he is able to learn much about human interaction and he learns how to communicate through verbal and written words. One night, as he resides in the woods, he comes across a satchel of books. One of these books is John Milton’s Paradise Lost, which he is fortunately able to read, having learned the language of the cabin dwellers. As a new creature on earth, he has no sense of the world’s history or the history of human kind. Therefore he reads Paradise Lost as a “true history,” (Shelley, pg. 116) believing that such events did in fact occur at some point in human history.
Reading through the book, he was able to identify with the main character Adam’s situation in certain aspects. He says that like Adam,
“I was apparently united by no link to any other being in existence; but his state was far different from mine in every other respect. He had come forth from the hands of God a perfect creature, and prosperous, guarded by the especial care of his Creator” (Shelley, pg. 116)
After he is reunited with Victor later in the novel, he explains that he dealt with the loneliness of being the only one of his kind. However, he also realizes upon observing Adam in the book, that Adam’s creator took pride in this creation and did not shun him as Victor had cast him aside. It is for this reason that the creature feels he can also empathize with Satan. He further explains that,
“Many times I considered Satan as the fitter emblem of my condition; for often, like him, when I viewed the bliss of my protectors, the bitter gall of envy rose within me” (Shelley, pg. 117).
Although the creature is similar to Adam in the way in which he was created, he is also similar to Satan in his feelings of envy. It also becomes clear that Victor and Adam’s creators are not similar at all. In Frankenstein, Victor is very self-centered, only creating such a creature to be able to say that he could defy the natural processes of life and death. God, on the other hand, creates Adam out of love and does not abandon him once he is created as Victor abandons the creature. Victor’s intentions when creating the creature and his actions following the completion of the creature ultimately caused the creature’s unhappiness and hatred for humans. In affect it is Victor who takes on the role of evil villain in Mary Shelley’s novel as opposed to most film depictions of the story, where the creature is viewed as the villain.
It becomes clear in the novel that Mary Shelley’s inclusion of the allusion to Paradise Lost is essential to understanding the novel fully. It allows the reader to recognize the roles of each of the characters and to enhance their understanding of the novel, possibly changing their preconceptions of who is essentially good and who is evil in this popularize story.
