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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ruin Explorer" data-source="post: 9610187" data-attributes="member: 18">I'm sorry, but those people are right, I would suggest, and your take is, as you say they think, is indeed the more superficial one, given the actual facts of the book.You largely absolve von Frankenstein of blame for own repeated, hideous actions for no apparent reason. Von Frankenstein - an adult human of good intelligence and education, with a moral compass he completely ignores - repeatedly does truly terrible things whilst variously excusing himself of blame and responsibility (to point where becomes quite irritating to many readers). He commits various crimes to create the creature, and the moment he succeeds, he abandons it out of fear of what he has done. There's no excuse for that or many of his later actions. He doesn't have PTSD and I find it very strange you suggest he does - that's not how PTSD works. He just "freaks out" - he's not being battered by trauma from his past (which is what PTSD is). He has no excuse but his own cowardice, and your suggestion the monster should have a D&D "fear aura" is seriously undermined by the rest of the book. There's no implication whatsoever that the monster is magically fear-inducing, just that von Frankenstein can't deal with his own bad decisions.Most importantly, the monster isn't an adult, and that's the key you're leaving out here. That and your excusing of von Frankenstein are why you are finding yourself at odds with the vast majority of people reading the book.The monster is essentially itself a small child. It has adult levels of reasoning/cunning, but very clearly does not have adult control of its emotions, nor adult knowledge of and practice of morality/ethics/etc. And why? Because von Frankenstein abandoned it, left it to fend for itself. Also possibly Milton confused it lol (damn that Milton!).Would he have been though?The Victor von Frankenstein we see is an incredibly arrogant and self-pitying man. Self-pity is basically his dominant emotion. He tries to act like it isn't, but his actions and behaviour show otherwise. If he ever was seriously considering making another monster, it was really to feed his own ego - because whatever his protestations, that's all von Frankenstein really seems to care about in end - himself, his ego, his feelings. The best excuse we can give him is perhaps he's just mentally unstable? He certainly has more breakdowns and freak-outs and amnesia than you'd expect from someone not dealing with very serious mental health issues. In which case you could perhaps consider it a double-tragedy, I guess. I think most people think he's just a twerp who keeps letting himself off, though.(For some reason I thought the phrase "Steampunk Nathan Barley" here which is perhaps unkind to von Frankenstein but still, there's something there imho!)TLDR - The monster is itself a child who has had no moral guidance and who has no innate moral compass, who only exists thanks to von Frankenstein's ego, and is a child in terrible pain (which the monster explains with great clarity, no less). Failing to recognise this has indeed lead you to what is in your own words  the "shallow" and less "clever" understanding of the book (not words I would have chosen - I would have said "straightforward" or "simplistic" or "unreflected" - you chose more judgemental language).</blockquote>

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