Monsters are imaginary creatures that humans created. People’s fears, worries, or anxieties have been used to create the fictional monsters. Monsters have features that society deem to be scary or bad. The novel Frankenstein by Mary Shelley and the novella The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka follow the story of a ‘monster’. Pushed away from society, and labeled as an outcast, the monster is often hurt by the people around it. However, the monsters in these stories were not always monsters. They were once simple creatures, loving and kind, who were pushed away by society, turned into outcasts and deemed unfit to live among the rest of society.
Once deemed unfit for society, both Frankenstein’s monster and Gregor turned towards monstrosity. Both instances show how monsters are created, not born. It is not the nature of a creature to be a monster, it is the treatment they must endure that turns them into one. Throughout the novel Frankenstein the reader learns how Victor’s creation is left alone, hurt, and pushed away from society. The mistreatment he receives is from the way he looks. From the moment he opened his eyes, he was treated as a horrible monster. However, he was just the opposite.
Just like a newborn baby, whom humans care for and are very defensive over, Victor’s creation was innocent, confused, and scared. The monster even explained how how was childlike, “No distinct ideas occupied my mind; all was confused. I felt light, and hunger, and thirst… ” (Shelley 85) He didn’t understand what he was feeling and was confused about everything. He couldn’t understand humans or communicate to them. Like a child, the creation needed love, kindness, help, and guidance, he was gregarious. However, he was not lucky enough to receive those kind things and instead he received hatred and abandonment.
Victor’s abandonment of his creation left this childlike creature open to the harsh world. The creature had to deal with hunger, harsh temperatures, and a lack of understanding of the feelings he felt. Had he been nurtured and cared for, or showed any kind of endearing treatment, the creature would not have learned to hate people for being outcast. Yes, he would have been an outcast, but it would have been easier since he would’ve had someone to turn to. Without a shoulder to cry on the monster turned towards his feeling of anger and loneliness, and soon to revenge.
If just one person had been there to nurture him, then Victor’s creation wouldn’t have become the monster that everyone said he was. Like the monster in Frankenstein Gregor, from The Metamorphosis also could have turned out differently. In the beginning, Gregor learns of his transformation, and regardless he tries to help his family and continue through his day as if nothing changed. His family, however, feels otherwise. When they see him, they immediately assume the worst and flee. They lock him in his room and leave him there. At first, his sister is kind enough to clean his room and feed him.
However, as the story goes on his family, including his sister, start to care for him less and less and allows his room to become tattered and dusty. He lives in filth and hunger. Everything he tries to do to help is seen the wrong way and he is forced back inside his room. At one point, his mother, upon seeing Gregor for the first time, faints. When his father comes home, he immediately blames Gregor. His father immediately turned to violence. “Gregor stopped dead with fear… for his father was determined to bombard him.
He had filled his pockets with fruit… nd was now pitching one apple after another… the very next one that came flying after it forced its way into Gregor’s back”(Kafka 37). Injured by his father’s fit of rage, Gregor remained injured and alone throughout the rest of the novella. Gregor’s father intentionally assumed the worst and hurt Gregor. This treatment led to Gregor hiding in his room with an apple painfully embedded in his back and starvation taking over his body, until he took his last breath. Had Gregor been nurtured and treated kindly, and loved, maybe he could have survived, and even end up helping the family in some way.
Without any care, Gregor was left on his own to become more and more like a cockroach. Monsters, like people, are created, because nothing is born evil. It is the way a creature is raised and taught that affects whether or not they become monstrous. People who are loved, cared for, and taught to be civil will grow up to be civil, kind, and good. However, people who are abandoned, abused, taught to hate and be mean will grow up to do evil things. Of course, there is always the exception, a person can be born as a psychopath, where according to CNN’s article “The Birth of a Psychopath”, they are unable to feel empathy or guilt.
In this case, those people tend to grow up to be violent. However, besides the chemical imbalance that takes place in psychopaths, people are naturally kind and loving. Monsters, in any form, are created, taught to be that way. Nothing is born evil, because when something is born it is innocent and pure. It is the situation that that child is put into that affects how they become. Both Frankenstein’s monster and Gregor were once kind and innocent. Frankenstein’s monster tried to become friends with humans and tried to love them.
Gregor tried to go back to work and continue to help his family, regardless of his new deformity. However both are treated with hostility and treated as monsters. After a while, Frankenstein’s monster becomes the monster that he is accused of being. Gregor, although never doing anything to hurt his family, is continually treated as a monster and eventually he starts to believe them. Gregor, without his sister to care for him at first, may have become more evil, but those small acts of kindness committed by his sister, prevented him from becoming the monster everyone thought he was.
Frankenstein’s monster was not lucky enough to face such kindness. He was never met with kindness, not even by his creator, and because of that he learned how to hate and how to get revenge by harm. Frankenstein’s monster and Gregor were told they were monsters, and were not shown otherwise. After being submitted to monstrous acts, Frankenstein’s monster began to commit them, while Gregor began to believe them. A creature who is treated like a monster, and saw as a monster will learn that that is how they must be, and that is how a monster is created.
