Mary Shelley's Frankenstein - part 10

Sympathy for the demon

Part 10 - Sympathy for the demon

Robert now continues our story, in letters to his sister.

“We are still surrounded by mountains of ice, still in imminent danger of being crushed in their conflict. The cold is excessive, and many of my unfortunate comrades have already found a grave amidst this scene of desolation … I mentioned in my last letter the fears I entertained of a mutiny ...”

A small group of sailors, chosen as leaders by the other sailors, came to Robert in his cabin with a request – that if the ice should dissipate and a clear route of escape should open up, it would be rash to proceed, and they wished Robert to promise them that they would not continue their voyage but instead turn southwards and return.

Upon hearing this request by the sailors, Victor, lying in bed, addressed them:

“Are you, then, so easily turned from your design? Did you not call this a glorious expedition? And wherefore was it glorious? Not because the way was smooth and placid as a southern sea, but because it was full of dangers and terror, because at every new incident your fortitude was to be called forth and your courage exhibited, because danger and death surrounded it, and these you were to brave and overcome.  …

Oh! Be men, or be more than men. Be steady to your purposes and firm as a rock. This ice is not made of such stuff as your hearts may be; it is mutable and cannot withstand you if you say that it shall not. Do not return to your families with the stigma of disgrace marked on your brows. Return as heroes who have fought and conquered and who know not what it is to turn their backs on the foe.”

Robert consented with the sailors, that if they were not destroyed, that he would return to England.

But Victor did not want to return with them but wished to continue with his pursuit of the demon. He tried to get out of bed, but simply couldn’t and he fell back on the bed and fainted. When he finally revived, he said to Robert:

“Think not, Walton, that in the last moments of my existence, I feel that burning hatred and ardent desire of revenge I once expressed; but I feel myself justified in desiring the death of my adversary …

In a fit of enthusiastic madness, I created a rational creature and was bound towards him to assure, as far as was in my power, his happiness and well-being. This was my duty, but there was another still paramount to that. My duties towards the beings of my own species had greater claims to my attention …

The task of his destruction was mine, but I have failed. When actuated by selfish and vicious motives, I asked you to undertake my unfinished work … Yet I cannot ask you to renounce your country and friends to fulfil this task.”

Victor released Robert from his previous request, that after Victor’s death Robert would pursue the demon. Victor soon died.

Later that night, Robert heard a strange sound, and returned to his cabin, and there saw the creature looking over the dead body of his creator.

“That is also my victim! In his murder my crimes are consummated; the miserable series of my being is wound to its close! Oh, Frankenstein! Generous and self-devoted being! What does it avail that I now ask thee to pardon me? I, who irretrievably destroyed thee by destroying all thou lovedst. Alas! He is cold, he cannot answer me.”

Robert replied to the demon:

“Your repentance is now superfluous. If you had listened to the voice of conscience and heeded the stings of remorse before you had urged your diabolical vengeance to this extremity, Frankenstein would yet have lived.”

The Demon continued:

“I pitied Frankenstein … But when I discovered that he, the author at once of my existence and of its unspeakable torments, dared to hope for happiness, that while he accumulated wretchedness and despair upon me he sought his own enjoyment in feelings and passions from the indulgence of which I was for ever barred, then impotent envy and bitter indignation filled me with an insatiable thirst for vengeance. But I was the slave, not the master, of an impulse which I detested yet could not disobey ... Evil thenceforth became my good … And now it is ended; there is my last victim!”

Robert again replied:

“Hypocritical fiend! If he whom you mourn still lived, still would he be the object, again would he become the prey, of your accursed vengeance. It is not pity that you feel; you lament only because the victim of your malignity is withdrawn from your power.”

The Demon despaired:

“Yet I seek not a fellow feeling in my misery. No sympathy may I ever find. When I first sought it, it was the love of virtue, the feelings of happiness and affection with which my whole being overflowed, that I wished to be participated. But now that virtue has become to me a shadow, and that happiness and affection are turned into bitter and loathing despair, in what should I seek for sympathy? … But it is even so; the fallen angel becomes a malignant devil. Yet even that enemy of God and man had friends and associates in his desolation; I am alone …

Fear not that I shall be the instrument of future mischief. My work is nearly complete …

I shall quit your vessel on the ice raft which brought me thither and shall seek the most northern extremity of the globe; I shall collect my funeral pile and consume to ashes this miserable frame, that its remains may afford no light to any curious and unhallowed wretch who would create such another as I have been. I shall die.”

The demon leapt from the cabin window and was soon lost in the darkness.

And here ends Mary’s psychological and philosophical masterpiece  - ‘Frankenstein’.

And we can look back at both Victor and the demon, and their motivations and destinies. Sometimes we saw Victor as selfish, and sometimes we saw him as courageous. Sometimes we pitied the demon, and sometimes we wished he was dead. But also what was most intriguing, was Mary’s view of the difference in the ‘Sorrows of Werther’ and ‘Paradise Lost.’

The demon once said that:

“Yet even that enemy of God and man had friends and associates in his desolation; I am alone.”

and that:

“Satan had his companions, fellow devils, to admire and encourage him, but I am solitary and abhorred.”

Mary learned this from her father’s view of Paradise Lost.

Contrary to the CIA’s Mickey-pedia version of Godwin, that reads ‘drawing from John Milton’s Paradise Lost, which depicted Satan as a rebel against his creator, he denounced the Christian God as a theocrat and a tyrant that had no right to rule’, I think that’s all wrong, it’s quite the opposite.

I found one reference of Godwin to Milton’s Paradise Lost in his book ‘Political Justice’ [1 – 323]: ‘… as Milton’s hero felt real compassion and sympathy for his partners in misfortune …’

When I read that, I thought the opposite of what Mickey-pedia asserted. The fact that Satan had felt even a little compassion and sympathy, would throw into the trash-bin of history, all that nonsense we’ve been taught about Manicheanism, that the world was made up of two equal and opposing forces, that were vying for control of the world. For EVEN Satan showing compassion, means there was a tiny bit of goodness in him. And that means there is only one force, and that the world could be seen as based upon many different layers or gradations of that true compassion – the Good, from the very lowest level [i.e. Satan] to the very highest level [i.e. ideals of Beauty, Goodness and Truth].

But while the demon demanded sympathy for himself, he never had sympathy for himself, or for Victor – only pity. And so, his vengeance of Victor, was based on envy, and not sympathy for him.

However, Victor’s vengeance was of a different kind. Victor once said that:

“… to pursue the dæmon who caused this misery, until he or I shall perish in mortal conflict. For this purpose I will preserve my life.”

Victor at one point thought of ending his life, in order to stop the demon’s killings, since the murders were done for revenge. But Victor didn’t do that. He endured the sorrows of the loss of his brother, the loss of his best friend, the loss of his wife, the loss of his father, and yet he still had some a bit sympathy for the demon. Although he pursued the demon to destroy him, it was for the sympathy of mankind. And so, Victor was resigned to his own death.

And what of the demon, maybe he wanted Victor to kill himself, but he couldn’t get Victor to do it. When Victor did die, the demon had no more reason to live, and then he was resigned to his death.

At the time that Goethe wrote ‘The Sorrows of Werther’, he also wrote a different poem ‘Prometheus’, that was not romantic. Mary titled her first story ‘Frankenstein, a Modern Prometheus’. If Victor Frankenstein may be a kind of modern Prometheus, then might the demon be seen as a modern Zeus - a fallen angel. Our sympathies would lie with Victor, then.

And perhaps, we’ll sympathize with Mary Shelley, when we think of what she chose to do with her life, after the death of the love of her life – Percy Shelley.

[next week - part 11- on Mutiny]