Dear Frankenstein's Monster

To, 

Frankenstein’s monster, 

Shunned and abandoned for the crime of existing

C/o Dr Victor Frankenstein, 

C/o Mary Shelley



Dear Frankenstein’s monster,

I feel very sorry for you. Imagine being hated and reviled, for no fault of yours, by the very person who created you. Could anything be worse?

It was Dr Victor Frankenstein who discovered the secret of life, and experimented with it. The knowledge was heady and made him giddy with the expectation of power it promised. The thought of breathing life into another being consumed him. 

Having created you, however, there was no high of satisfaction for him. He recoiled from his own creation. You were too grotesque for him: an eight feet tall creature, with gargantuan proportions.

Yet you were no different from a newborn child.

Were you to blame if he presumed to be God? 

Fascinated with the “secret of life,” and taking his obsession for the writings of ancient and outdated alchemists to a dangerous high, Victor proceeded to create life. In his own words: "It was the secrets of heaven and earth that I desired to learn." He probably fancied himself a courageous adventurer striking forth into unexplored territory. His building blocks were old body parts and strange chemicals, the entire hodgepodge animated by a mysterious spark. 

I don’t believe you guilty of all those deaths. Had he imbued you with a sense of ethics, a conscience? No. And yet, he blamed you for all the destruction you caused, when it was he who suffered from moral shortsightedness. It was he who mocked the conscience that burned within his own breast.

Rejected by your creator, you sought for companionship among other humans. How would you know that we narrow minded folk judge by appearances? That we see not the kindness, gentleness and the inner beauty of the heart? Or the intelligence of the mind or the sensitivity of the soul?

Frustrated despite your good intentions, you raged at them, destroying them. When Victor destroyed the female monster he had meant to create as a companion for you, you went totally berserk. You said, “Shall each man find a wife for his bosom, and each beast have his mate, and I be alone?"

And yet, even in your inhumanness, you showed yourself more human than those around you. You helped a group of poor peasants and then saved a drowning girl from sure death. But your kindness was misinterpreted. Those that should have expressed their gratitude proceeded to beat you and despise you. How you must have felt at seeing them react so viciously!


And when Victor realized the horrible turn that his arrogant scientific endeavours had taken, he sought to avenge himself upon you. He felt no guilt, no sense of responsibility for what he had done.

And how did you react? Even after Victor died, you did not thump your chest to proclaim your supremacy, but cried tears of sadness, in the midst of your relief, because the only person with whom you had a relationship had gone.

Maybe you had both switched places.



The human had lost his humanity, the monster his monstrousness.