History Characters / Frankenstein

%%* DaddyIssues: Boy howdy...
* DarkIsNotEvil: Essentially a {{Deconstruction}}; the creature was not inherently evil, and could have ended up good (and almost certainly would have, if not for extremely unfortunate timing), but the mistreatment by mankind lead him to become exactly what they thought of him.

%%* EmergentHuman

* FleshGolem: The creature is usually depicted as made of dead body parts in adaptations. In the novel on the other hand it is left ambiguous how Victor created it.

%%* NightmareFace: Apparently his face is this to everyone, including himself.

%%* SenseFreak
%%* SympatheticMurderer

* TragicMonster: He was abandoned by his creator and left alone to survive in the wilderness mere seconds after being born, and, despite his genuine attempts to help others at first, got repeteadly rejected and feared due to something he never had any control of. While he eventually [[ThenLetMeBeEvil turns into the monster humanity thought he was]] fully conscious and aware of the wickedness and cruelty of his acts, the story leaves clear that the creature's turn to villany was ultimately tragic and avoidable.

* UncannyValley: Invoked, in what was [[UnbuiltTrope a rarity at the time]]. Every aspect of the Creature's body, Frankenstein explains, was chosen for its utmost perfection, in the hopes that his man would be a strong, towering, perfect Adonis; too late he realized that, when ''combined'', they created something so loathsome that he couldn't bear to look at it -- blackened lips, weeping eyes, and yellow, painfully desiccated skin stretched and contorted over a gigantic frame. And this was before he started to live and breathe, which Frankenstein describes as being ''much'' worse:

* AdaptationalUgliness: A complex example; the Creature in the book wasn't the hideous lumbering brute that the Universal films depicted, but he wasn't traditionally ''pretty'' either. He was made to be handsome and, to an extent, he was--however, his eyes were a strange color and his flesh made him viscerally horrifying to behold (which is to be expected from a creature made out of rotting body parts) - his skin was very pale, covered in stitching, and almost translucent according to Victor’s narration, as he could see the movement of muscles and arteries beneath his skin. The original illustrations in the book made him quite the PrettyBoy, though.
%%* TheAloner: Because everyone's so damn terrified of him.

** Perhaps a bit of hypocrisy there, as there ''was'' one man who felt benevolent toward him - the blind man. It was the man's family chasing him out that started him on his murderous rampage.
*** Although it can be argued that, had the old man cared to, he could have put in a good word for the creature and set the rest of his family straight. In all likelihood, the old blind man simply allowed his family to convince him that what they saw trumped what he heard.

* NoNameGiven: Since he was rejected by his creator, the Creature never received any name, though Mary Shelley did apparently call him "Adam" in letters to friends. Nowadays readers may simply know of him as "The Creature" or "The Daemon."

* DeadpanSnarker: The Creature. Upon hearing Victor say "Just go! I cannot bear to look at you any longer!", he covers Victor's eyes with his hand and says "Now you don't have to look at me."

* ChildhoodFriendRomance: With Elizabeth.

* WellDoneSonGuy: Victor with his father, depending on how you interpret him.

* TheAloner: Because everyone's so damn terrified of him.
* AntiVillain: To the point that many sympathize with him much more than they do with his creator.

* EvilVegetarian: Averted. At first he's benevolent while only eating things like roots, berries, and nuts. There are a few exceptions; early on in his life, he consumes some cooked meat he found at a campfire after accidentally scaring its owner away, and later when he turns evil, he kills a rabbit so Victor can eat it. It's unknown whether the Creature himself eats animals while he's evil, though.
** It's also possible that he's a straight-up herbivore and ''unable'' to eat meat, although it isn't made clear.

* FriendlessBackground: Though not by choice.

* GentleGiant: At least before his FaceHeelTurn.

* NightmareFace: Apparently his face is this to everyone, including himself.

* ParentalAbandonment: By his creator Victor immediately after he's brought to life.

* {{Ubermensch}}: What Frankenstein intended for the Creature to be. It didn't quite work out that way.

* WoobieDestroyerOfWorlds: Not of the entire world, but of Victor's. Though by the end Adam's hostile towards humanity in general.

* [[MadwomanInTheAttic Monster In The Cottage Shed]]: To observe a peasant family, he hides in their cottage shed so as to not notify them of his monstrous presence and cause them to chase him away.

* DrFrankenstein: Victor Frankenstein is originally characterized as a medical student with ambitions of artificially CreatingLife. Victor comes to resent his creation and after abandoning the latter, blames his creature for his subsequent troubles when in fact he could have warned people of his own creature's existence and avoided a lot of bloodshed.

* TragicMonster: He was abandoned by his creator and left alone to survive in the wilderness merebafter being born, and, despite his genuine attempts to help others at first, got repeteadly rejected due to something he never had any control of. While he eventually [[ThenLetMeBeEvil turns into the monster humanity expected him to be]] fully conscious and aware of the wickedness and cruelty of his acts, the story leaves clear that the creature's turn to villany is ultimately tragic.

The creation of Frankenstein, an ArtificialHuman given life by ambiguous means, but who was rejected by his creator due to his hideousness. After wandering alone through the wilderness, discovering his identity and being repeteadly shunned by society, the creature eventually grows to blame Victor for his misery and settles for revenge.

* TragicMonster: He was abandoned by his creator and left alone to survive in the wilderness mere seconds after being born, and despite his genuine attempts to help others at first, got repeteadly rejected by something he never had any control of. Even if he eventually [[ThenLetMeBeEvil turns into the monster humanity expected him to be]] fully conscious of the wickedness and cruelty of his acts, the story leaves clear that the creature's turn to villany is ultimately tragic.

* VillainProtagonist: An easy conclusion to come to considering everything that happens in the book is his fault and any possible attempt to fix things, he refuses.

The creation of Frankenstein, an ArtificalHuman given life by ambiguous means, but who was rejected by his creator due to his hideousness. After wandering alone through the wilderness, discovering his identity and being repeteadly shunned by society, the creature grows to blame Victor for his misery and settles for revenge.

* NoNameGiven: Mary Shelley did apparently call him "Adam" in letters to friends. Nowadays readers may simply know of him as "The Creature" or "The Daemon."

%%* TragicMonster: Boy, is Adam ''ever''. It's heartbreaking reading the book again when he's a BlankSlate and you ''know'' that it won't last because of how the world treats him.

* IgnoredEpiphany: An interesting case, in that Frankenstein ends up ignores the epiphany of his own story, which he was telling precisely to warn someone else not to make his own mistakes. Having recognised himself in Captain Walton's desire for glory, he tells the story of his obsessive ambition in order to reveal how he was cured of it and to discourage Walton from his own. At the end, however, when the ship they're on is trapped by ice, the crew refuse to go on any further... only for Frankenstein, now consumed with the desire to destroy his creation, to furiously try to urge them to go in in search of glory. Far from being cured of his obsessive and ambitious nature, he's clearly just transferred it onto his hunt for the creature instead. Fortunately for all, Walton ''didn't'' ignore the epiphany of Frankenstein's tale and overrules him, having realised that no obsession or ambition is worth bringing harm or death to others.

* FleshGolem: The creature is usually depicted as made of dead body parts in adaptations. In the novel on the other hand it is left ambiguos how Victor created it.

* NoGoodGoodDeedGoesUnpunshed: tragically the creature does various labours at night for the family, however when he finally tries to introduce himself to the father the others return, attack and chase him away, he also saves a little girl from drowning in a river but is shot by the her father for his troubles.

-->"Oh! no mortal could support the horror of that countenance. A mummy again endued with animation could not be so hideous as that wretch. I had gazed on him while unfinished; he was ugly then; but when those muscles and joints were rendered capable of motion, it became a thing such as even Dante could not have conceived."

* ItsAllAboutMe: Victor only ever gauges things with regards to how anyone else will view him and his work. In fact, his flawed interpretation of the Creature's threat of "I'll be with you on your wedding night" as a personal threat against his own life is what gets Elizabeth killed.

* MadScientist: He's a bit too [[{{Determinator}} obsessed]] with discovering [[TheseAreThingsManWasNotMeantToKnow the mysteries of creation]].