Sympathy

In this story, I find myself sympathizing with the monster more than Victor. In the begin, Victor was excited to create a being from scratch. Once the monster actually came to life, Victors opinion changed very quickly. He was scared and didn't know what he actually had done. He abandoned the monster and let him go without a second thought. The monster was left alone to fend for himself and teach him how to live. In some of the middle chapters, it talks about the monster learning about surviving and fire. He sticks his hands in the fire because he thought it would be warm not burn him and he learns the hard way that he cannot do that. I also sympathize with the monster because Victor wants us to see him as an evil being that does nothing but kill and hurt people. He makes us believe that the monster has no feelings and doesn't understand us. That is not true. The monster has feelings, just like all living beings. He feels bad because no one wants to be friends with him because he is ugly. All he wants is to have someone like himself so he can be happy and have someone to love him too. "“I demand a creature of another sex, but as hideous as myself; the gratification is small, but it is all that I can receive, and it shall content me. It is true, we shall be monsters, cut off from all the world; but on that account we shall be more attached to one another. Our lives will not be happy, but they will be harmless and free from the misery I now feel. Oh! My creator, make me happy; let me feel gratitude towards you for one benefit! Let me see that I excite the sympathy of some existing thing; do not deny me my request!” (Shelley. Chapter 17). Also, I feel bad for the monster because by the end of the book, he still never got someone to actually love him. Yes, he did kill Victors family, but he also spent all the years of his life feeling bad for what he did and being lonely because no one wanted to be around him. “But soon," he cried with sad and solemn enthusiasm, "I shall die, and what I now feel be no longer felt. Soon these burning miseries will be extinct. I shall ascend my funeral pile triumphantly and exult in the agony of the torturing flames. The light of that conflagration will fade away; my ashes will be swept into the sea by the winds. My spirit will sleep in peace, or if it thinks, it will not surely think thus. Farewell.” (Shelley. Chapter 24) I feel bad for the monster the most because his life wouldn't have been so hard if Victor actually cared for him and taught him all the things he ended to know when he was first created. If Victor had actually tried to help the monster and he turned out how he did, I would sympathize with Victor, but he didn't. That is why I sympathize with the monster more than Victor.