#lis.txt

the idea that the process by which victor created him was so deeply unnatural and wrong that the human mind/“being”/whatever you want to call it fundamentally cannot comprehend—and thus seeks to reject—his presence is super compelling to me. it could account for the visceral reactions of fear and disgust that we see in the book, in the sense that the creature is so preternaturally ugly that people react the way lovecraftian characters do when they see a shape or a colour that’s not supposed to exist

dgmw i think the “i would simply be nice to the creature and not run away screaming” reactions that people tend to have makes sense when you read the the creature’s treatment as (among other things) a metaphor for prejudice against othered peoples and marginalised groups, which is very valid—nobody wants to think that they’d react so awfully to a person who only seems to long for connection with others.

but i often find myself wanting a bit more than that straightforward response. like, sure, but what if you couldn’t be nice to him, on a fundamental psychological level? what if he was so hideous that every fibre of your being was telling you that the man in front of you, who should be worthy of basic respect by virtue of his intrinsic personhood, was not a person at all, but something else entirely—a threat? what if you were no better than the people who stoned and spurned the creature because your own ancient human response to fear kicked in, against your best wishes?

personally i find that to be a really interesting concept for a horror antagonist, as opposed to simply thinking of him as a sort of strange and spooky but otherwise relatively conventional looking person who people are mean to because of an arbitrary aesthetic evaluation. to me, both his hideousness and his very existence transcend the scope of typical human understanding (with potential exceptions—victor and walton being able to look past everything and actually speak to him definitely Means Something but i’m not getting into all that here) and the inevitability of the fear and hatred that it invites is what’s horrifying, in the end

all of that is not to say that the characters are necessarily correct to feel those things and act on them, even if it’s instinctual, and i don’t think that it makes the creature any less sympathetic (if you’re inclined to consider him that way) or more justified in his own actions, either. but just consider the implications of victor basically summoning a nightmarish eldritch abomination who has to claw and scrape at any sort of link to humanity or personhood he can get and kinda fails miserably at every turn rather than just a kinda-fucked-up-but-maybe-hot-if-you’re-into-that human guy. isn’t that fun! and horribly tragic! yay!