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LITERARY ANALYSIS
Frankenstein: A Study in Creation, Ethics, and Humanity
LIABILITY
Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein is often read as a modern myth of scientific hubris, but it also works as a sustained meditation on failed responsibility (Shelley, Ch. 5, 10). The novel uses its structure, characterization, and recurring images to dramatize the consequences when a creator refuses to accept ongoing obligations to their creation. This leads not merely to personal tragedy, but to a profound collapse of moral and social order.
Failed Responsibility
The novel explores a sustained meditation on failed responsibility, showcasing how a creator's refusal to acknowledge and fulfill obligations to their creation leads to dire consequences. This refusal is a central driving force of the narrative.
Abandonment & Exclusion
Through recurring images of abandonment and exclusion, Shelley dramatizes the Creature's perpetual state of being shut out. This constant rejection from society and community forces him into profound isolation, a direct result of his creator's actions.
Collapse of Order
Ultimately, the refusal of obligations and the ensuing abandonment precipitate more than just individual suffering. The narrative illustrates a wider collapse of both moral principles and the established social fabric, demonstrating systemic breakdown.
TESTIMONY AND NARRATIVE
Nested Narratives & Partial Truths
Shelley’s use of nested narratives—Walton’s letters framing Victor’s story, which in turn frames the creature’s account (cite Letters 1-4, Ch. 1, Ch. 11)—invites the reader to think like a judge or advocate. Each narrator offers a partial, interested version of events: Walton admires Victor as a heroic seeker of knowledge; Victor casts himself as a tormented victim of his own genius; and the creature re‑narrates the same events from the position of one who has been rejected and misrecognized.
Challenging Narratives
This structure destabilizes any simple allocation of blame by refusing to give us a single authoritative voice. It subtly trains the reader in a kind of cross‑examination: Victor’s self‑pitying narrative is tested and undermined once we hear the creature’s eloquent account of its own suffering.
The Reader as Judge
Shelley thus turns the novel into a forum in which responsibility is argued over, not assumed, forcing the reader into the role of an adjudicator.
RESPONSIBILITY
The pivotal scene in which Victor brings the creature to life is strikingly brief compared to the long build‑up describing his obsession. Shelley focuses far more on what happens after the moment of animation: Victor’s horror and flight (Shelley, Ch. 5). He describes the creature’s first stirrings in terms of a “catastrophe” and immediately “rushed out of the room.” This immediate recoil highlights the abandonment over the act of creation (Shelley, Ch. 5).
This is less a scientific failure than a moral one. The problem is not that Victor mis‑calculated; it is that he did not consider in advance what it would mean to be responsible for a sentient being. By emphasizing Victor’s abandonment rather than a mechanical malfunction, Shelley frames the harm that follows as the outcome of a human failure of care (Ch. 10, 17).
There is no serious attempt to teach, guide, restrain, or even name the creature. The novel thus suggests that the true “crime” is not creation itself but creation without any plan for governance, education, or integration, forcing the reader to consider the moral implications of Victor's actions (Ch. 10, 17).
MORALITY
The Creature's Bildungsroman
Shelley complicates simple notions of monstrosity by giving the creature a detailed Bildungsroman of his own. Hidden near the De Lacey cottage, he learns language and observes family dynamics (Shelley, Ch. 11-15). Through reading works like Paradise Lost, Plutarch’s Lives, and Goethe’s The Sorrows of Young Werther, he develops a moral vocabulary of justice, gratitude, and compassion (Ch. 15). He is moved by stories of human suffering and dreams of entering the human community.
Moral Reasoning Before Violence
This education matters for the literary analysis because it shows the creature is capable of moral reasoning long before he turns to violence. He understands himself as wronged, not simply enraged (cite scholarly source).
Social Exclusion & Broken Promises
His later actions—threats, killings, and the demand for a companion—are framed as responses to systematic rejection. Shelley thereby shifts the reader’s attention from inherent evil to the consequences of social exclusion and broken promises.
MONSTROSITY AND SOCIETY
Appearance and Initial Rejection
The creature’s physical appearance ensures that he is treated as monstrous before he does anything monstrous. Every encounter begins with fear and ends in violence or flight. Shelley repeatedly stages scenes in which the creature approaches others with hope and is met with aggression (Shelley, Ch. 11, 12, 15, 16).
The Social Verdict
The label “monster” thus functions less as a description of his essence and more as a social verdict.
This shows how society, through its immediate judgment based on appearance, imposes the identity of "monster," rather than it being an intrinsic quality.
Society's Role and Blurred Boundaries
In this way, the novel suggests that society participates in the making of the monster. The creature’s crimes are not exonerated, but they are contextualized as the product of a world that refuses him any legitimate place (Ch. 15, Ch. 16). The boundary between victim and villain is blurred, and the reader is forced to confront how collective prejudice and fear can help generate the very dangers they claim to resist.
FAILURE IN LAW
Justine's Condemnation
The trial and execution of Justine Moritz (Shelley, Ch. 7-8) serve as a powerful indictment of human institutions. An innocent woman is condemned for the death of William, while Victor, knowing the true cause, remains silent (Ch. 8). The legal system readily accepts superficial evidence, swayed more by emotion, reputation, and coerced confession (Ch. 8) than by an objective search for truth.
Misdirected Responsibility
This subplot starkly reinforces the theme of misdirected responsibility. The law's profound failure to identify the true causal chain—originating from Victor’s experiment and culminating in the creature’s act—directly mirrors Victor’s own persistent refusal to acknowledge his role and its devastating consequences.
Flawed Legal Regime
Shelley thus depicts not merely a flawed individual but a deeply flawed regime: a legal and social order that is more willing to sacrifice the vulnerable and innocent than to confront the uncomfortable truth that the real source of danger often lies within respected, powerful hands, perpetuating injustice.
PERSONHOOD
Embedded Narratives
Frankenstein is built as a series of embedded narratives: Walton’s letters to his sister, Victor Frankenstein’s confession to Walton, and, within that, the creature’s own autobiographical account. This layered structure resembles a makeshift courtroom. Different “witnesses” offer testimony; each version of events is filtered through another narrator.
The Creature's Shadow Trial
The creature’s narrative, in particular, reads like a shadow trial. He presents evidence of his experiences, explains his actions, and offers arguments about blame and responsibility (Shelley, Ch. 10, 16, 17). Although he never appears before a literal court, Shelley grants him something close to a legal hearing in narrative form. For a sustained section of the book, he is not merely an object of fear; he is a speaker, a claimant, and an interpreter of his own wrongs.
Reader as Tribunal
This narrative design highlights a key tension: in the world of the novel there is no institution capable of hearing the creature’s case, yet the text itself performs that hearing for the reader. The absence of legal process within the story is partially “repaired” by the structure of the storytelling, which invites us to judge Victor and the creature as if we were an audience of jurors.
CREATURE'S VOICE
Eloquence and Learning
One of Shelley’s most striking choices is to make the creature eloquent. He teaches himself language (Ch. 11-13), reads canonical texts (Paradise Lost, Plutarch, Goethe) (Shelley, Ch. 15), and constructs careful arguments about his own status. His plea to Victor—“I ought to be thy Adam, but I am rather the fallen angel” (Ch. 10, 17, 24)—is more than a literary allusion. It is a claim framed in relational and moral terms: Victor, as creator, owes him something; their relationship is not morally neutral.
Markers of Personhood
The creature insists that he:
  • Feels pain, shame, loneliness, and rejection
  • Understands social bonds and desires companionship
  • Has hopes, projects, and the capacity for despair
These are all markers of what we ordinarily recognize as personhood. Shelley gives him the interiority, self‑reflection, and emotional depth typically reserved for human protagonists. The horror of the novel is not that a mindless monster stalks Europe; it is that an evidently sentient, self‑aware being is treated as if he were incapable of having claims on others.
Mismatch and Social Labels
By letting the creature speak so powerfully, Shelley destabilizes any simple division between “human” and “monster.” The categories available within the story—villager, gentleman, criminal, outcast—do not fit him. That mismatch between his inner reality and the social labels imposed on him is central to the novel’s tragedy.
ABANDONMENT
The ethical core of Frankenstein lies in Victor’s refusal to acknowledge the responsibilities that flow from his act of creation. He seeks the glory of “bestowing animation” (Shelley, Ch. 4), but when confronted with the embodied result of his experiment, he recoils in disgust and flees (Ch. 5). This abandonment continues with his refusal to create a female companion for the creature (Ch. 17-20) and his ongoing neglect throughout their interactions (Ch. 10, 16, 24).
OTHERNESS IN THE POLITICS OF APPEARANCE
The creature’s physical appearance (Ch. 5, 11) marks him as other long before he can speak. Nearly every human who sees him reacts with immediate horror (Shelley, Ch. 11, 15, 16). Shelley is careful to show that this reaction is not a reasoned judgment but an automatic response to visible difference (Shelley, Ch. 11, 15, 16). The creature becomes “monstrous” in others’ eyes simply by being seen (Ch. 5, 11).
This emphasis on embodiment complicates his claim to personhood. Internally, he is reflective and capable of sympathy; externally, his form invites fear. The disconnect between his inner and outer realities underscores one of the novel’s central questions: On what basis do we decide who belongs inside our moral and social community? If appearance can pre‑empt any serious engagement with a being’s mind and experience, then even clear signs of intelligence and suffering may never be enough to secure recognition.
Shelley thus uses the creature’s body to expose a broader problem: social and legal systems often rely on surface categories—species, appearance, origin—to decide who receives protection and who does not. Frankenstein does not resolve this tension, but it makes the injustice of such exclusions visible.
DUTIES
Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein is usually catalogued as early science fiction or gothic horror, but it also functions as a sustained critique of law, justice, and responsibility (cite legal scholarship on Frankenstein). Read through a jurisprudential lens, the novel exposes how legal institutions and social norms fail when confronted with a radically new being (cite legal scholarship on Frankenstein). Rather than offering a simple morality tale about “bad science,” Shelley presents a complex anatomy of institutional weakness and moral evasion (cite legal scholarship on Frankenstein).
The Gap Between Law and Justice
At the heart of the novel is a structural gap between law and justice (cite legal scholarship on Frankenstein). Courts, clergy, and community all claim to serve justice, yet their actions repeatedly produce outcomes that are formally defensible and substantively wrong (cite legal scholarship on Frankenstein). The most striking example is the trial of Justine Moritz (Ch. 7-8). She is condemned for William Frankenstein’s murder on the basis of circumstantial evidence and a coerced confession (Ch. 7-8). Victor, who knows the truth of the creature’s existence and likely culpability, remains silent (Ch. 7-8). The legal process appears procedurally intact—there is evidence, a confession, a verdict—but the reader knows that the verdict is false. Shelley thus dramatizes how legal systems can ratify injustice when they are shaped by fear, prejudice, and incomplete narratives (cite legal scholarship on Frankenstein).
Conceptual Exclusion from Law
The creature himself is central to this critique. He is not only physically excluded from society but conceptually excluded from the law (cite legal scholarship on Frankenstein). There is no legal category that can accommodate his existence: he is not property, not an animal, not a recognized person (cite legal scholarship on Frankenstein). His acts of violence are legible to the reader as responses to profound rejection and suffering, but there is no forum in which he can present that story as a defense or claim for redress (cite legal scholarship on Frankenstein). When he observes human beings, he learns language, social norms, and moral concepts, yet the world refuses to see him as a moral agent. The law, like the villagers, sees only a monster (cite legal scholarship on Frankenstein).
Otherness and Misplaced Blame
Otherness
This exclusion is reinforced by the theme of otherness. Everywhere the creature turns, he is met with fear and hostility. The De Lacey cottage episode is especially telling (Ch. 12-16): he approaches the blind father first, hoping that his lack of sight will allow for a connection unmediated by appearance. For a brief moment, mutual recognition seems possible. But when the rest of the family returns and sees him, they respond with violence and terror (Ch. 15-16), erasing the fragile ethical space that had begun to open. Shelley shows how quickly the possibility of recognition collapses into a reflex of self‑defense. The creature’s otherness is not merely physical; it is a narrative and legal otherness, an incapacity of the community to imagine him as a bearer of claims (cite legal scholarship on Frankenstein).
Misplaced Blame
Shelley ties this othering directly to misplaced blame. While the creature undeniably commits wrongful acts, the novel constantly redirects the reader’s attention to Victor’s choices and the broader community’s reactions. Victor initiates the experiment, selects the materials, animates the creature, and then abandons him without guidance or care (Ch. 5, 10). His later refusal to create a companion is framed as a moral decision, but it also seals the creature’s isolation (Ch. 20). In legal terms, Victor is the originating cause, yet he is never held to account by any formal institution (cite tort law or legal theory sources). The people who suffer—Justine, William, Clerval, Elizabeth—are those with the least power and the least knowledge. Responsibility, in other words, falls on those least able to bear it (cite tort law or legal theory sources).
Narrative Structure and the Impossible Subject
Layered Testimony
The novel’s narrative structure reinforces this jurisprudential reading (cite legal scholarship on Frankenstein). The story is framed through Captain Walton’s letters to his sister, encasing Victor’s and the creature’s narratives within a larger account (Ch. 1-4, 24). This layered testimony mimics legal storytelling: we receive different witnesses, partial perspectives, and shifting claims about responsibility and guilt. The creature’s long self‑narrative on the glacier reads almost like an unspoken plea in a courtroom that will never convene (Ch. 11-17). We, as readers, become the only “tribunal” capable of hearing his full story. In this sense, the novel suggests that existing institutions are not merely failing to apply the law correctly; they are structurally incapable of hearing the right case (cite legal scholarship on Frankenstein).
An Impossible Subject
Taken together, these elements show that Frankenstein is not imagining a simple world in which humans and the creature might peacefully coexist if only they were kinder. Rather, it reveals that the current moral and legal order has no adequate place for him (cite legal scholarship on Frankenstein). The creature is an impossible subject: the law cannot assimilate him without transforming itself (cite legal scholarship on Frankenstein). Shelley’s jurisprudential insight, then, is that creation on this scale does not merely add a new being to an old world; it tests whether the world’s frameworks of personhood, responsibility, and justice can be re‑drawn to accommodate what has been made. In the novel, they are not—and catastrophe follows (cite legal scholarship on Frankenstein).
LAW CASES
1. The “Characters” in the Story
a. The Human Creator and Decision‑Maker
In authorship and inventorship decisions (Thaler v. Perlmutter, Thaler v. Comptroller‑General, SCJN Amparo Directo 6/2025), the central figure is the human author/inventor. Opinions defend this status, treating human creativity, personality, and moral responsibility as IP system anchors.
Similarly, in governance cases (State v. Loomis, Mexican decisions on judicial AI, French surveillance cases), the human judge or public authority remains central. AI can inform, but cannot replace their judgment; the human decision‑maker must ultimately explain and justify the outcome.
b. AI Systems as Secondary but Powerful Actors
AI appears in several distinct narrative roles:
  • As a would‑be author/inventor: Systems like DABUS stand “just outside” legal categories, repeatedly refused recognition.
  • As a massive copier/learner: Cases like NYT v. Microsoft/OpenAI describe models and datasets through verbs like “scrape,” “ingest,” “train,” “memorise,” “regurgitate.” Legal language leans toward copying over originality.
  • As a black box oracle: COMPAS in Loomis and French “boîtes noires” evoke sealed systems outputting scores or flags without intelligible reasoning.
  • As an administrative assistant: Mexican decisions recast AI as a back‑office tool for calculating bond amounts or processing data, not reasoning about rights.
c. Rights‑Holders, Citizens, and Children
Other recurring figures include:
  • Rights‑holders: Entities like The New York Times, Thomson Reuters, GEMA, Getty, and Kneschke protect creative or informational assets against tech industry data mining.
  • Citizens and defendants: In surveillance and sentencing contexts, they are subject to algorithms' hidden power.
  • Children and voters: In Mexican electoral decisions on AI‑generated children in political ads, “the child” becomes a symbolic figure whose best interests constrain synthetic image use.
2. Metaphors and Imagery
Courts use metaphor to make technically complex systems legible.
a. “Black Boxes”
“Black box” and “boîtes noires” are used for risk‑assessment tools and network surveillance algorithms, suggesting both opacity (obscure decision production) and danger (a closed, powerful system within the legal process). This imagery underlines concerns about transparency, contestability, and accountability.
b. “Regurgitation,” “Memorisation,” and “Abridgment”
Different verbal choices mark different moral valences:
  • “Regurgitation”: For near‑verbatim outputs, suggesting mechanical, unprocessed material.
  • “Memorisation”: In GEMA, describes precise encoding of lyrics, evoking rote learning, not creative transformation.
  • “Abridgment”: In NYT, used for summarization, sounding like a recognized editorial practice.
These metaphors nudge readers toward seeing some outputs as illegitimate copying and others as legitimate secondary uses.
c. “Experiments” and “Extensions”
French constitutional decisions speak of “experimental” AI video‑surveillance during the Olympics, and later attempts to “extend” this into ordinary public life. This creates a narrative of emergency measures sliding into normalization, which constitutional courts are wary of.
d. Children and Synthetic Images
In the Mexican electoral decision, AI‑generated images of children are treated as if real for "best interests of the child," showing law reacting to symbolic harm in democratic discourse.
3. National “Voices” and Styles
Each legal system has a recognizable narrative voice:
  • United States: Argumentative, test‑driven, fact‑heavy, detailed debates on multi‑factor tests.
  • United Kingdom: Formal, highly textual, focuses on statutory “closed code” and precise doctrinal categories.
  • Germany/EU: Technical, directive‑driven, revolving around DSM Directive and UrhG provisions, stretching concepts to fit ML.
  • France: Concise, constitutional, heavily procedural, uses tools like "cavaliers législatifs" and proportionality to control AI surveillance.
  • Mexico: Explicitly normative, openly invoking ethical use, human‑rights perspectives, and children’s best interests.
CONCLUSION
Frankenstein presents a coherent literary vision, delving deeper than a mere warning against scientific ambition. It explores the profound consequences when a creator abandons their ongoing responsibility (Shelley, Ch. 5, 10, 16, 20, 24).
1
Framed Narratives
A multi-layered storytelling technique that shapes the reader's perspective on events and characters.
2
Creation & Abandonment
The pivotal moment of the creature's birth and Victor's immediate rejection, setting the stage for subsequent tragedy.
3
Moral Development
The creature's journey from innocent being to vengeful "monster," influenced by societal rejection and lack of guidance.
4
Social Othering
The creature's isolation and ostracization by society, highlighting themes of prejudice and dehumanization.
5
The Failed Trial
Justine Moritz's unjust conviction, showcasing the limitations of human justice in the face of prejudice and circumstantial evidence.
6
Victor’s Evasive Rhetoric
Victor's constant rationalizations and refusal to accept blame, underscoring his moral cowardice and irresponsibility.
These foundational elements collectively underscore a central theme:
Creation Without Custodianship
The novel insists that creation without an ongoing, active custodianship is inherently a form of violence, leading to dire consequences for both the creator and the created.
Moral Compromise & Displaced Blame
Attempts to shift blame onto the "monster" ultimately compromise the moral standing of both individuals and institutions, revealing a deeper societal malaise.
The Literary Vision of Responsibility
Frankenstein serves as a powerful examination of moral and ethical accountability, emphasizing the interconnected web of consequences that arise from our creations and our refusal to acknowledge them.