Frankenstein’s Creature
The unnamed being created by Victor Frankenstein
An eight-foot artificial being abandoned at the moment of animation, who teaches himself language and history, seeks companionship, and turns to revenge after repeated rejection.
Quick answer
Frankenstein’s Creature is the unnamed artificial person Victor Frankenstein brings to life in Mary Shelley’s novel. He is intelligent, articulate, physically powerful, and capable of affection, but abandonment and violent rejection drive him toward murder and revenge against his creator.
Quick facts
| Work | Mary Shelley, Frankenstein; Or, The Modern Prometheus |
|---|---|
| Edition followed | Revised 1831 text |
| Source realm | Ingolstadt, Geneva, the Alps, Britain, and the Arctic |
| Creature type | Artificially created human being |
| Name | None given in the novel |
| Height | About eight feet, with proportionately large anatomy [1] |
| Abilities | Great strength and speed, endurance of severe cold, fluent speech, reading, and reasoning |
| Final appearance | Leaves Walton’s ship on an ice raft, intending to burn himself |
What the source book says
Victor builds an approximately eight-foot human form because working at ordinary scale would be too slow. On a November night in Ingolstadt, he infuses it with life, sees its yellow eye open, and immediately flees. The abandoned Creature learns sensation, shelter, fire, speech, reading, and human history while secretly observing the De Lacey family.[1]
Repeated attacks and rejection convince him that no human community will accept him. He demands that Victor create a companion, promising that the pair will leave humanity forever. Victor destroys the unfinished second being; the Creature retaliates against those closest to him, then draws Victor into the Arctic. After Victor dies aboard Walton’s ship, the Creature mourns him and departs on an ice raft, declaring an intention to destroy his own body by fire.[1]
Description and abilities
Victor chooses proportionate limbs and features he expects to be beautiful, but their combination horrifies him. The Creature has yellow skin that barely covers the muscles and arteries beneath, flowing black hair, white teeth, watery eyes in pale sockets, a shrivelled complexion, and straight black lips. His enormous frame supplies exceptional strength and speed, while experience reveals an equally unusual capacity for language and reflection.[1]
- Is assembled at gigantic scale and animated in Ingolstadt
- Survives exposure, hunger, mountains, and Arctic cold
- Learns to speak by listening to the De Laceys
- Reads works including Paradise Lost and Plutarch’s Lives
- Moves across steep ice and wilderness faster than human pursuers
Source realm: from Ingolstadt to the Arctic
The Creature’s route follows the novel’s expanding geography: Victor’s upstairs workshop at Ingolstadt, the De Laceys’ cottage, Geneva and the Alpine glaciers, the Orkney island where the proposed companion is destroyed, and finally the frozen sea. Each new landscape offers distance from society without ending the bond between creator and creation.
Major themes
Creation without care
Victor treats animation as the end of his task. The Creature experiences it as the beginning of a life for which his maker provides no name, instruction, protection, or relationship.
Education without belonging
Language and books let the Creature understand virtue, family, and history, but also teach him exactly what he lacks. Greater knowledge deepens both his empathy and his isolation.
Revenge as a shared bond
Creature and creator become each other’s only enduring relationship. By the Arctic pursuit, hatred keeps them connected after every possibility of companionship has been destroyed.
Book and reference
- 1Frankenstein; Or, The Modern Prometheus
Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley. Revised, corrected, and newly introduced by the author. Henry Colburn and Richard Bentley, London, 1831.
Project Gutenberg edition ↗