Creation Without Love: The Problem of Frankenstein
This essay examines Mary Shelley's Frankenstein through the lens of John Milton's Paradise Lost, arguing that Frankenstein's failure to create with love is the root cause of the novel's tragedy. Drawing on parallel characterizations between the monster and Milton's Satan, the paper traces how rejection and abandonment drive the creature to rage and destruction. Frankenstein's self-glorifying obsession disqualifies him as a loving creator, much as Milton's God is depicted as unjust rather than loving. The essay follows these themes from the novel's prefatory epigraph through to the monster's despairing self-immolation, concluding that Shelley presents creation without love as a fundamental injustice with irreversible consequences.
- Introduction: God, Creator, and the Problem of Love: Thesis: loveless creation drives monster and creator to ruin
- The Milton Epigraph and the Framework of Loveless Creation: Paradise Lost epigraph frames novel's central injustice
- Frankenstein's Self-Glorifying Obsession: Frankenstein's vanity disqualifies him as a loving creator
- The Monster's Rejection and His Parallel to Satan: Felix's attack mirrors Satan's expulsion from Heaven
- Despair, Death, and the Monster's Final Indictment: Monster embraces death and names creation without love unjust
- Conclusion: Made in the Image of the Creator: Shelley's moral: life cannot flourish without love
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What makes this paper effective
- It establishes a clear, arguable thesis in the opening paragraph and returns to it consistently throughout, giving the essay strong structural coherence.
- It uses direct textual evidence from both Shelley and Milton to support each claim, grounding literary interpretation in close reading rather than assertion alone.
- The sustained parallel between Frankenstein/God and the monster/Satan is developed progressively, with each section adding a new layer rather than simply restating the same point.
Key academic technique demonstrated
The paper employs comparative textual analysis — reading one literary work through the lens of another. By treating Milton's Paradise Lost as an interpretive framework for Shelley's novel, the writer is able to illuminate both texts simultaneously. This technique requires careful selection of parallel passages and explicit articulation of what the comparison reveals, both of which the paper executes clearly.
Structure breakdown
The essay opens with a thesis-bearing introduction that previews the central argument and its resolution. It then moves through three main analytical sections: the Milton epigraph as narrative framing device, Frankenstein's self-oriented motivation, and the monster's expulsion and identification with Satan. A shorter penultimate section addresses the monster's death as the culmination of loveless creation, followed by a conclusion that widens the moral lens. The Works Cited entries conform to MLA format.
Introduction: God, Creator, and the Problem of Love
In Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, Dr. Frankenstein assumes the role of God by attempting to create new life. He is not, however, prepared for the consequences, and the outward hideousness of his creation compels him to reject the monster. Inwardly, Frankenstein's monster possesses a soul and longs for love and learning. The fact that he must seek both surreptitiously — and is yet still rejected — compels him to lash out, both at society and at his creator. Along the way, the monster identifies with Milton's Satan, another creature who lashed out at his creator after feeling spurned.
This essay shows how Frankenstein's monster feels rejected by "god" — both the actual God of creation and Frankenstein in the role of creator-god for the Creature — and how this rejection leads to tragic consequences: namely, both Frankenstein's and the monster's eventual isolation and death in the frozen Arctic. In short, when love is removed from the act of creation, the creature turns on the creator with a desire to destroy that which never should have been, because it was made without love.
The Milton Epigraph and the Framework of Loveless Creation
Even before the novel begins, Shelley uses a quote from Milton's Paradise Lost — the epic poem the monster will later discover and read — which sets the stage for the action that follows. The quote focuses on the Self and on the indignation of the creature lashing out at God for having the temerity to create him without his permission: "Did I request thee, Maker, from my clay / To mould Me man? Did I solicit thee / From darkness to promote me" (Milton 10.743–5). The quote comes from Adam but might just as well have come from Satan, who wants to know why God would create things only to spurn them.
The underlying issue of the poem is that Satan feels unloved by God and thus spreads misery among the rest of God's creation. In Paradise Lost, the Godhead is depicted not as a loving God but as an unjust one — an important point to keep in mind, because just as the monster and his actions parallel those of Satan in the poem, Frankenstein's actions parallel the actions of Milton's unjust and unloving God. The monster senses his own connection to Milton's fallen: "I remembered Adam's supplication to his Creator. But where was mine? He had abandoned me, and in the bitterness of my heart I cursed him" (Shelley 131). His vow to destroy his creator Frankenstein is an extension of his wrath at finding himself created by someone who has no love for his creation — in him is all the hatred of Satan. Shelley frames the novel within this conceit: a good God or Creator must create out of love, or else all of creation will rebel just as Satan does in Paradise Lost.
Frankenstein's Self-Glorifying Obsession
That Frankenstein creates without love is apparent early in the novel. He is consumed by an unhealthy passion — an obsession, really — that isolates him from the rest of human society. He is driven by a seemingly mad compulsion to demonstrate that he can create life just as God can. Indeed, he longs for a "glory" that rightly belongs to God alone. Frankenstein writes to Margaret of his all-consuming passion: "Do I not deserve to accomplish some great purpose? My life might have been passed in ease and luxury; but I preferred glory to every enticement that wealth placed in my path" (Shelley 17). Frankenstein is admitting that he wants fame and honors bestowed upon him for his achievements in science.
His actions are oriented not toward others but toward himself: he seeks to glorify himself. Such a disposition is not one suited for creating, as it lacks the requisite goodness and love that a creator should possess for his creation. Frankenstein is enamored only of himself, and so when his creation turns out to be ugly yet still in need of love and learning, Frankenstein rejects him — proving that his passion was shallow and ill-founded from the very beginning.
Conclusion: Made in the Image of the Creator
Though the reader cannot fail to recognize that the monster's free will is still exercised throughout the novel — just as Satan's is throughout Milton's poem — the reader also cannot fail to see that the monster's sense of self and sense of his creator-god is warped by his creator's own lack of love for him. If we are made in the image and likeness of our God, the monster is made in the image and likeness of Frankenstein, whose own soul is full of Self instead of the charity and love that actually and truly creates and nurtures life.
The lesson to be learned from Shelley's Frankenstein is that life is not made to be lived without love — and this is the mistake Frankenstein makes: instead of making new life with his wife, he attempts to do it in the laboratory, disregarding God's role in the act of procreation. The result is ugliness and tragedy on a truly horrific scale.
Works Cited
Milton, John. Paradise Lost. Poetry Foundation. Web.
Shelley, Mary. Frankenstein. UK: Oxford University Press, 2008. Print.
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