Creature In Mary Shelley's Frankenstein

Beastly, vengeful, and violent - these are the adjectives that often describe evil characters. In Mary Shelly’s novel Frankenstein, Victor’s Creature displays all of these characteristics and yet the reader still sympathizes with Creature and his situation. Through Creature’s violent actions, he manifests his immorality, but some readers are able to justify and forgive his actions because of their emotional involvement in his character. Shelly is successful in humanizing the Creature to readers in a way that makes them sympathetic, despite the fact he commits brutal acts against Victor’s family and innocent people.
Shelley’s use of contrast in diction, imagery, monologue, and allusion showed Victor’s unfair judgement of Creature when he was

Victor was very quick to turn Creature away because of his appearance. This is is highlighted in the quote which states,
His limbs were in proportion, and I had selected his features as beautiful. Beautiful! Great God! His yellow skin scarcely covered the work of muscles and arteries beneath; his hair was of a lustrous black, and flowing; his teeth of a pearly whiteness; but these luxuriances only formed a more horrid contrast with his watery eyes, that seemed almost of the same colour as the dun-white sockets in which they were set, his shrivelled complexion and straight black lips (58).
In the quote, Shelly utilizes a contrast in diction. This quote shows his step by step assessment of his creation and the reader can clearly see Victor’s disappointment as he continues to look over his work. Specifically, Victor begins by describing his creation as “beautiful” and truly seems to be satisfied with some of the features Creature possesses. However, when Victor starts to look at his eyes it is a “horrid” contrast with the rest of his beautiful features. After fully assessing Creature it was clearly not

Creature comes across the Delacey family; a group of gentle, kind cottagers who live in the woods together. From afar, Creature finds ways to protect this family and help them with their daily labors. His humanity is presented when he decides to refrain from taking food from the cottagers after realizing they need it very desperately themselves, “I had been accustomed, during the night, to steal a part of their store for my own consumption; but when I found that in doing this I inflicted pain on the cottagers, I abstained, and satisfied myself with berries, nuts and roots, which I gathered from a neighboring wood.” (114) Over time, as he watches the Delacey family, he learns from their actions and the way they communicate with one another and also develops a connection to the family and wants to find ways to help them. This is recognized when he gathers wood at night so that the children do not have to spend time during the day doing this chore. By gathering wood, he is helping to ensure the family stays warm, but also allows them time to do other important things like repairs to the cottage and tending the garden. This is a very humane, caring act, hardly an act of a monster. In his observations of the family, Creature also displays emotion which greatly influences the reader's’ perception of him as human-like character, “The