Despair In Frankenstein

In chapter sixteen Frankenstein’s monster, overcome by despair, shifts its personality from that of a creature seeking love to one who seeks revenge and redemption. It’s obvious that the creature has suffered a substantial amount of discrimination, but hence forward we get introduced to a monster, with a new personality, and a thirst for destruction. This monster seeks revenge on all human beings, regardless of whether or not they were the cause of its sorrow. The rejection of its “protectors”, whom resembles the closest thing it would ever have to a family has led to the creation of this new monster. Ironically enough, he has imagined victor Frankenstein as the embodiment of its new found rage. Which causes the monster to go back to Geneva
At the beginning of the page the monster says “I left the spot where I had committed the murder, and seeking a more secluded hiding-place, I …” If we compare this quote to things the creature has done in the past we would know that even though it has had self loth ever since it’s awakening, we never see it trying to avoid human contact. When it hid in the cottages for examples it was to hide, so that no one would see its physical form, yet still be able to learn and study human nature. Not because it was ashamed of what it had done or what it had become. At the shed it gets into an argument with itself, on whether or not it should wake Justine from her sleep. At first it tries to, but then remembers what might, and probably will happen, if it does so. This leads us to believe that its monstrous characteristics come from its fear of being rejected, and, its anger from how prejudicial humans act toward it. We see the fear of the creature when it says “‘the sleeper stirred; a thrill of terror ran through me.”. Not long after, this same fear changes to the anger of the monster. It gives us an idea of what it feels when it says “it stirred the fine within me” to exaggerate what it felt when it started to contemplate what would happen if she woke up. Then it decides that she should suffer for what she would have thought, and how she would have
But by now it realizes that revenge does not satisfy it, yet understands that it will do whatever it must, to get the creature of it dreams, even if it means harming others along the way. After framing Justine it never tries to engage with a human but sets itself a goal of finding Victor Frankenstein, to request the creation of something that would accept it, and is as hideous as it. We see the effects of this in the monsters choice of words, and of course its actions. “For some days I haunted the spot where these scenes had taken place...” It could have used plenty of other words as opposed to “haunt”. Which is interesting because of the words homonymous properties, which could mean to “frequently visit” or “(of a ghost) manifest itself at (a place) regularly”. Assuming the monster is referring to the second definition of the word, it relates itself and its physical appearance to that of a ghost, which is something people fear and/or despise. We must remember how much it hates being feared and misunderstood, to truly understand the amount of pain that it must have felt to say this. Another more straight forward indication of its deep sorrow can be when it spoke of taking its own life, something only a depressed being would think