The Monster's Eyes | Bpreroff's Blog

Victor finally giving life to his monster after two years of work and the resulting  panic he feels once the action is completed is something I found to be profound, especially considering that it is the monster’s eyes that truly horrify Victor.  In describing the monster Victor admits “[h]is yellow skin scarcely  covered the work of muscles and arteries beneath; his hair was of a lustrous only black and flowing; his teeth pearly whiteness; but these luxuriance only formed a more horrid contrast with his watery eyes, that seemed almost of the same color as the dun white sockets in which were set, his shriveled complexion and straight back lips.” (60) He describes the other features of the creature before the eyes, as though the eyes which eventually terrify him most, are not the first things about the monster that he notices. Instead he first sees the skin, hair and even skipping his way over the monsters eyes on the way to noticing the teeth. Only after that, does he notice the eyes.

There are numerous interesting things surrounding Victor’s assertion of the monster’s eyes. First, throughout time poets and people alike seem to have referred to the eyes as the window to the soul. The fear of eyes lead me to believe that the monster does not truly have a soul because he was created, not born and that is what Victor fears. The color of his eyes, or lack there of seemed to be further proof of that to me. The color of the monster’s eyes seemed to look match his “dun white sockets” meaning that his eyes have no color, they are just white, and white eyes is something that seems to be so unnatural, so soulless.

He finds the monster so grotesque that he believes “even Dante could not have conceived.” (61) In making this assertion Mary Shelley seems to be making the point through Victor that the monster is more terrible looking then even Satan. This is because in Dante’s Inferno Satan is the worst of all the characters in hell with his three heads and bat wings below each chin. He is in Inferno a giant beast, chewing on three different men. Dante’s Satan is truly a gross beast, but Shelley is gracefully and simply making the point that this beast is even worse.

The only thing that seems to be lacking in the grotesqueness of the monster that Dante did include is balance. Every evil in Dante had an equal or greater beauty throughout heaven. But here there is no beauty, just the ugly, terrifying image of the monster paired with Victor’s unparalleled terror. It is truly a hopeless scene at this point in the story. It made me wonder what Victor will do about the monster? He seems so hopeless and alone, will he find hope? Will he ever find happiness?

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This entry was posted on February 19, 2010 at 6:02 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.