Frankenstein question

Just seen this thread and decided to be a bit tongue in cheek. Did the monster exist? ... Yeah, he's generally perceived to be the worse aspects of Mary Shelley' s philandering husband, Percy Shelley :).

I'm currently taking a Gothic Lit class in high school and I have a theory that neither Frankenstein nor the creature exist, and it is Walton making up a story to cover his tracks after he murdered all the victims throughout the story.

I think that the question of who does and doesn't exist and what did and didn't happen is characteristic of ghost stories (which, according to the preface, is the genre the novel was intended to be classified as). I would argue that the glimpse Walton sees at the end of the novel is supposed to lend credibility to Frankenstein's account (I always viewed it as proof to the veracity of Frankenstein's tale). As far as the question of did Frankenstein exist or was he made up by Walton - I think the question can be re-framed as 'Why did Shelley choose to have her story be a frame story?' I think that the answer to that once again goes back to the idea of a ghost story - the sources of such tales are usually apocryphal. So in other words, I think that the story is presented as one that is true - Victor did exist as did the creature. However, as rational human beings when presented with such a story we classify it (correctly so) as 'fiction', and thus we come up with ways to get events to fit into our understanding of the world. In short, I think that within the world of the book, all the characters existed, and outside of the book we classify all the characters as fictional.

Interesting question. But I'll go you one better.

Did Victor Frankenstein even exist?

All we have are the letters that Walton is writing to his sister. Perhaps he imagined the whole thing. After all being stuck in the ice in a ship is stressful.

Assuming that Walton is credible... He mentions that they see the first sledge with a large man seated in it at the distance of half a mile. Then the next day they find Victor. Perhaps it was Victor they saw the first day.

Given the way that Victor was ranting toward the end of the book, it crossed my mind too that he'd imagined the whole thing. But as they say where I come from.. If it's NOT true it should have been. Or Never let the truth stand in the way of a great story.

Either way, it's a great book.

I personally disagree with this idea. I think that it was not Mary Shelley's intention for her characters to be anything but real- in terms of the story, of course. Needless to say, I still fully respect your opinion, and understand where it came from. It has, admittedly, given me a lot to consider now, when I think about the story.

Read this book a couple of years ago, and After reading the novel I kind of came to the conclusion that the monster doesn't exist, or at least physically. I know this point has been thought of before, but I went away and considered all the times the monster is mentioned in the novel and came up with some points for the argument. These points aren't yet complete, or well argued, but I'll fix them later.


The monster in Frankenstein is a mental reflection of victors own desires to be a normal person. As victor delves into dark scientific work, he notes that his mental state deteriorated and throughout his story wished that his mind could be clear of bad memories and thoughts. So too the monster seeks to be a regular person who is accepted in society, but is too ugly and different to be. The monster therefore can be seen as victor's own split personality where he as the monster seeks to be a normal person and envies victor; whereas victor seeks to escape the monster, that is his monstrous tendencies and thoughts. This is shown by victors constant fleeing of the monster.

The monster is only seen by two people in victors account, the first time by felix while in his house and the second by an Irishman who saw him sailing away from a murder. Who wouldn't attack a stranger in their house with their blind elderly father, especially in a foreign country and while you are on the run from the law. If the monster was truly on the boat, the Irishman would've definitely made note of the monsters size, also that the boat was the same boat as victors is uncanny. The monster is also mentioned saving a little girl from drowning in a river, and being shot by her father. However the monster does not specify that it is because he is hideous that the man shoots him. In the monsters account the man shot him after he found the monster (a stranger) attempting to resuscitate his unconscious daughter.

The only other time the monster is seen in the novel is by Captain Walton in the beginning of the novel and the end. However the first time he sees him from afar on a sled, a couple of days before finding victor after losing his sled. these two men riding sleds could in fact just be victor. the final time the monster is seen is standing over victor's body. this is the hardest point to disprove as victor and the monster are seen in the same room together. However, this is during a strong blizzard when the crew is threatening the captain with mutiny and the ship has been frozen in the arctic. Men are dying on board each day and food supplies are running low. It is possible that the man standing over victor is a crewman driven to insanity, or in fact victor standing over a crewman who has died. As this is the last letter to Walton's sister there's no way that this can be disproved further in the novel through another letter to clarify.

Victors sickness following the monster's disappearance, until he has returned to his home following the murder of his brother by the monster, shows a lack of clarity in Victors story. In the time between Victor leaving Ingolstadt and returning to Geneva after the murder of his brother, his brother has been murdered and evidence had been planted on the maid. Victor's whereabouts during this time is not mentioned in his story, as he states that he and henry are trekking through nature. However during this two year period the monster has managed to escape, learn basic french words and the ability to read. The monster has also managed to encounter the drowning girl and her father and travel to Geneva to murder Victors brother.

Victor notes when he created the monster he did so in a maddened state, and goes into great detail of his mental state and desire to create the monster. However the description of the actual creation of the monster is brief and short. Victor mentions that the monster came to life and was hideous, and he then left his apartment only to return later to collect his possessions. This shows that victors mental state was a more prolonged and important development than the creation of life to victor.

One feature that made the monster detestable was his size and stature. The monster was composed of human bodies from crypts stolen by victor, and to those who saw him he was disgusting. However, the monster in victors story is somehow able to travel across most of europe without detection and is only detected when victor is present. This is seen when in ireland the monster was seen in the same boat victor is seen in sailing into the same port. He is also only detected when sneaking into the blind man's house, nearby where he later meets with victor and they converse.

The monsters ability to speak fluently is also evidence to prove the monster is in fact victor. When the monster tells his story to victor, he mentions that over a three month period he learned to speak few words of french from the family of the blind man by spying on them. However when he talks to victor he is fluent in his language, and as these people are the only people he mentions as learning language from outside of books. As victor is telling supposedly word for word what the monster said between a three year gap, it is possible that he is simply making it up, as it would be impossible to remember such a long story word for word and he is in a heavy state of delirium the entire time he is telling his story.

The monster is never seen killing himself or dying, he simply jumps off the side of the ship after saying he will set himself on fire in the arctic. This can be seen as victor symbolically dead, and believes himself to be the monster and only the monster.

Oh I love this question, it is quite reasonable too (if you don't think of Walton seeing the monster kind of invalidates it). It raises a lot of questions - how far people can go to justify the evil in themselves?
It takes away some other traditional interpretations (and the relative questions) of Frankenstein as a modern Prometheus and the monster as his punishment - an innocent being cursed by fate. By making the monster just a figment of Victor's imagination, you'd take away his responsibility in challenging nature and being punished by it. Maybe his punishment is getting crazy and killing his relatives and friends, though.

It's an interesting question. The answer, I suppose, is we do not know. One of the things that makes Frankenstein a classic is its structure and use of multiple narrators, each telling a story within a story, till we get to the Creature's story, in the middle, then it moves out again...it's a technique then become quite common in gothic literature; just think about The Turn of the Screw.

I'm sort of writing along those lines for a current project, and Walton sort of had accepted the mantle from Frankenstein by the time he sees the creature/monster. He admits to being lured in by the entrancing words of Victor, a trait that Victor also assigns to the monster, and at the same time, he has already been "commissioned" by Victor to kill the monster if her ever sees it. The few times Victor actually sees the monster, he has dizzy spell/illness befall him, almost as if he's in a swoon and loosing control of his faculties. If this is part of what induces the delusion of the monster, then it makes perfect sense that Walton would only really see the monster after waking up, still groggy, investigating a random noise. He sees Victor's dead body, and possibly projects the monster over the dead body, coming to share in Victor's delusion. It all makes perfect sense to me, and I can explain everything away through this idea of Victor imagining the monster, except for the murder of Victor's younger brother. But, I think this is the nature of the beast, so to speak. Since there is obviously so much of the monster in Victor and Victor in the monster, they are basically doppelgangers, and in literary tradition, the line between real and fantasy gets blurred within these beings: are they real or imaginary? It's generally up to the reader to decide. But, either way, the monster is definitely Victor's way of deflecting the guilt of all these murders. Either he's the murder himself, hiding his guilt through the mental creation of this monster, or he's deflecting the guilt he feels over creating the monster that committed them, basically being an accomplice in the murders. Either way, he proves he can murder by allowing Justine to be executed without stepping forward to admit his roll in the death of his younger brother, and allowing her to die in order to keep his secret; he is complicit in her murder.

Victor isn’t unconscious when the Monster is doing what it does. He’s elsewhere. The Monster tells him what it does. Also, Walton sees the Monster before Frankenstein appears and talks to it after Frankenstein dies.

En la imaginación de la escritora y en la imaginación de cada uno de los que la leyeron o estámos leyendo

Ferenc wrote: "So, I finished reading the book yesterday and this weird question stuck in my head and now here I am questioning the existence of the monster. I mean, what if the monster was Frankenstein himself? ..."

I thought Victor Frankenstein, the student, killed animals in the beginning of the book because he was a budding serial killer and, like most serial killers, he began with small animals and ended by killing people.

Why is Victor always unconscious when "the monster" is going about doing its business?

Mary Shelley did a significant amount of research into the work of men such as Konrad Dippel who attempted regeneration of the dead. She also lived at a time of great scientific advancement. In context of the story, the Monster is unequivocally real. He is an example of the dangers of Man's technological advancement. To have made him a nonexistent character would have been the epitome of an anticlimax in the novel. In addition, Shelley was a straightforward author who would have made it clear had Frankenstein or Walton been disingenuous about the Monster's existence.

This is really a great question and gives the story so much more depth. Like others already said I think Mary Shelley's intentions were for the monster to be real, so we can't take this for more than a theory, but personally, I like the story much better your way.

I believed in the monster. Then right before the end, when Victor and Walton were alone talking on the boat, it sort of seemed to me that Victor was just an insane psychopath. He was charming, and Walton´s description of him reminded me of the way people sometimes become enthralled with delusional murderers and their crazy stories. I started to seriously doubt the reality of the monster. Of course I didn´t think it made any sense that it could speak so perfectly and eloquently, and I did wonder how it managed to travel and do all the things it did. But as a reader I really cared about Victor and was fascinated by the monster. So I wanted to believe it was all real. Regarding the murders, if they really happened outside of Victor´s mental illness ramblings, I am leaning towards Victor being the perpetrator, because of his insanity. This book is one of the best I´ve ever read, nothing has come close for many years. The possibilities of what really happened are endless, and I love it.

What about the DeLacey story, that could not have been Victor because Victor is not hideous like the monster is described.

Pardon my brevity but you're right. There are lots of passages that would lead to the monster never existing. I read this book in college and the professor played us for the first week of the project, knowing that none of us were actually reading it. Then one day, he stopped at a passage (nearly 75% through the book) and explained to us what was happening. He then assigned the first two chapters and asked us to identify every possible instance of the monster being fake and the class bought in and everyone had fun with their highlighters and post it notes bringing passages to class. Fantastic job doing so on your own!

I think you're all being too deep, after all, it was written as a competition between friends couped up in a Swiss villa during a storm.

Polidori wrote The Vampyre during the same competition.

I think this is a really cool question- very interesting to think about. Such a new way to look at a fantastic book. I will have to reread it with this point of view in mind

I think this is a fascinating question! Thank you for asking it, you just piqued my intrigue. I don't know what Shelley intended, but it is interesting to look at it from a more Jekyll/Hyde perspective.

I can see where you're coming from, but I don't see how it's possible that the monster was made up. It was defined as being real pretty clearly.

I just finished teaching this book in my Gothic literature class and posed this question to my students, my reasoning for this being that--whatever the creature was--he was repulsive to Victor as though he could be made of all of Victor's worst ideas and associations (and, therefore, might only exist in Victor's mind). And, certainly, the creature is meant to be a foil for Victor in about a gazillion ways, depending on the interpretation of the reader.

The details of the book, though, (particularly Walton's eye-witness account of the creature at the end of the book) seem to point to the creature's existence. In my mind, Stephen's reading is more likely: Walton is fabricating the whole thing, though, ultimately, I'll stick to the old fashioned, "They all exist!"

Well, plot-wise, the monster definitely existed. There's no real reason to believe there was hallucination involved. But metaphors and symbolism?

The monster was Victor's obsession, his downfall. The monster symbolized a lot and it was a part of Victor. So I think you're on to something.

That question is part of a well-done novel from a few years ago, The Casebook of Victor Frankenstein by Peter Ackroyd.

The important question to ask is does this story serve a purpose if this is the case. Let's say Victor is delusional and/or insane and is making up all of this. Can there be any moral taken from it?

I thought about this, too. I thought, what if Frankenstein was just having a nervous breakdown or was just imagining the creation's murders, in the same way that Patrick Bateman allegedly imagined all his brutalizing in American Psycho. Having never seen any Frankenstein movie or show, I expected the ending to reveal that the creature's deeds were only imagined or committed by Victor himself, but no. It would have been a cool twist.

This is an EXCELLENT question, because I had the same thought too. I like the idea that Frankenstein himself is committing these murders and blaming it on a product of his psychosis. It would be easy to believe he went mad trying to create a person, and that he became so delusional that he thought he had succeeded - whereas we know even today that such a thing is not possible, never mind trying it in the 1700s.

I really think Walton seeing the monster invalidates this theory, and I don't believe the story is a total invention by Walton, because that doesn't serve much purpose. It all being in Victor's head would take the story in a great direction, but the monster being real is a powerful story in its own right.

Frankenstein (the novel) is fiction written by Mary Shelley, so neither Dr. Frankenstein nor the monster exist. They are figments of Ms. Shelley's imagination.

What a pointless question.