Serial Killers In Mary Shelley's Frankenstein

In the novel, Frankenstein by Mary Shelley, the creature turns into somewhat of a serial killer. The definition of a serial killer is a person who commits a series of murders, often with no apparent motive and typically following a characteristic, predictable behavior pattern. In a similar way, the monster follows a killing pattern of only killing people who are close to Victor. The creature kills everyone close to Victor out of spite and a traumatic past regarding Victor. But, that is not always the case. Serial killers target certain groups of people due to three reasons: the people they kill will give them the most attention by the media, they will attain a sense of power during the murder, or they have a bias towards a specified group of

The murderer wants to be noticed by the media to attain a sense of attention or “fame”. Many serial killers fantasize about seeing themselves or their actions come up on the news. It has been recorded that “murderers whose victims have not been discovered have been known to return to the scene of the murder and move the body to insure its discovery” (Elliot 478). When these killers are done with their murder, they sometimes wait days or weeks for the media to start covering it. If the killer does not see their kill on television, they consider “[the] crime as incomplete” ( 478). This is where the victim’s status or fame comes into play. The murderer knows that they have a higher chance of being covered in the media if the victim is of high value. The killer’s mindset is that if the person they kill is famous and the body is found, a more in depth investigation will occur and the media will cover that murder a lot more than the murder of a person who is not very well

This bias could be “due to race, ethnicity, religion, or nationality” (Hickey 23). Most of these killers are of color and they feel a need to seek revenge for their mistreatment. These killers get extremely agitated because of the racial discrimination they receive and they lash out against the entire race that had mistreated them. Or, these people have less financial stability because of their race and they kill certain people to rob them. Another bias is one of gender. Many male serial killers preferably kill women because “their primary goal is to sexually torture and rape the victim” (12). Many serial killers murder helpless women just with the intent of raping them because most likely, the killers are very sexually