Fighting the Monster Within

 

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On Halloween, many people enjoy watching horror movies or listening to frightening stories. For book lovers, gothic literature may appear on their ongoing reading list during October. As someone who enjoys classic works and minored in English in college, I have read many books in the genre of gothic literature. Authors like Edgar Allan Poe and Mary Shelley often appear in literary anthologies, as do other writers such as H. P. Lovecraft and Stephen King. When reading the works of these authors, I am often amazed at how they deal with matters of humanity, even though the story may center on a strange creature or monster.     

Oftentimes, we focus so much on the frightening monsters in these books, such as the creature in Frankenstein, that we miss what these works say about life and the world we inhabit. Gothic literature consists of more than horror stories about monsters terrorizing innocent people. It is a genre that has much to say about the state of humanity. Works like Frankenstein by Mary Shelley and The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson blur the line between monster and man. 

Frankenstein and the Evil Within

Victor Frankenstein is a character well-known for his creation of a monster. Seeking to animate a lifeless body, Frankenstein pieces together a massive and grotesque being. He animates the creature with electricity but is repulsed by his creation (Shelley 51). Instead of guiding and helping the monster, who desires friends and a companion he can love, Frankenstein rejects the creature, condemning it to an evil fate. Although he had tried to play the role of God in creating a living being, he fails in his creator role. For the rest of the story, Frankenstein must deal with the consequences of his failure as he becomes obsessed with destroying his creation.

While Frankenstein repeatedly calls his creation a “demon” and “fiend,” he is equally to blame for the monster’s wickedness. He recognizes this with hindsight, wishing he had never created the being: “When I thought of him, I gnashed my teeth, my eyes became inflamed, and I ardently wished to extinguish that life which I had so thoughtlessly bestowed” (Shelley 81). The creature’s inclination toward wickedness is not surprising when we understand that “Victor’s personality is imparted to his creation in much the same way as God creates man in His own image” (Soyka 168). The monster declines into depravity because Frankenstein, his creator, is marred with sin. 

In many ways, Frankenstein resembles his creature. They both view themselves as essentially virtuous but stained by the sinful actions they have committed (Shelley 80, 114). Both the monster and Frankenstein have a troubled relationship with their father, the one who gave them life (Shelley 81, 88-89). Victor repeatedly tries to escape the immoral acts he has committed while the creature futilely seeks to grasp humanity, each helpless to change their fate. Neither Victor nor the creature can change who they really are: a monster.

As Frankenstein shows, humans are much closer to being monsters than we may realize. Elizabeth says it well when she reflects on the deaths of William and Justine, “men appear to me as monsters thirsting for each other’s blood” (Shelley 82). The creature may have caused the deaths of Victor’s friends and family, but Frankenstein recognized that he “was the true murderer” (Shelley 82). Depravity is not just a concept outside humankind, as if we were passive onlookers to wicked deeds, but it is within all of us.

Good vs. Evil?

Like Shelley’s Frankenstein, Robert Louis Stevenson also blurs the line between monster and man in his novella, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. To appear respectable, Dr. Jekyll struggles to keep his corrupt desires hidden throughout his life, maintaining a “commonly grave countenance before the public” (Stevenson 60). He regularly gives to charity and deceives society into believing he is a decent gentleman. However, for years, he has lived a double life (Stevenson 61). This pretense naturally leads to his creation of a serum that allows him to transform his “good” self into his “evil” self.

Although Stevenson pushes the concept of the duality of man, Dr. Jekyll is not a separate being from Mr. Hyde. When Dr. Jekyll first transforms into Edward Hyde, he knew that this identity was also a part of himself, as “[i]t seemed natural and human. In my eyes it bore a livelier image of the spirit, it seemed more express and single, than the imperfect and divided countenance” (Stevenson 64). The stout and vile Edward Hyde who murdered people and trampled children in the street is the same person as Henry Jekyll, a gentleman esteemed by his community.

We cannot dismiss Mr. Hyde as the monster with Dr. Jekyll as the innocent victim of a failed experiment. The “good” doctor knew all along what he was doing when he turned himself into Mr. Hyde. He wanted to hide his sinful desires from others since the “incoherency of [his] life was daily growing more unwelcome” (Stevenson 65). Thus, Dr. Jekyll was always Mr. Hyde, even before he drank the potion. Just as the monster in Frankenstein reflects the evil in man, so also does Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde dramatically portray the warring nature of sin inside each person.

The Monster Within Each of Us

Shelley and Stevenson allow us a glimpse of the monster inside each of us. Man is just as much to blame for the painful suffering caused by the monster in Frankenstein since Victor crafted the creature and encouraged its descent into degeneracy. Likewise, Dr. Jekyll had already entertained corrupt desires in his heart before transforming into his villainous counterpart Mr. Hyde. We often look outside of ourselves, pointing fingers at the iniquities in the world: murder, greed, political tension, and war. By focusing on evil around us, we forget that we are all equally guilty of wrongdoing because of sin. The blurring of monster and man is not just a literary concept found in gothic literature but reflects the biblical truth of human depravity.

As Jesus told His disciples when discussing defilement, “What comes out of a person is what defiles them. For it is from within, out of a person’s heart, that evil thoughts come—sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, greed, malice, deceit, lewdness, envy, slander, arrogance and folly. All these evils come from inside and defile a person” (Mark 7:20-23, NIV). If we wonder why there is so much wickedness in the world, we need only remember our sinful hearts. Humans are the ones who brought death and suffering into the world, which affected all creation (Romans 5:12; 8:20-23). Scripture reminds us that no one does right and all fall short of God’s glory (Romans 3:10-12, 23). Inside each of us, there is the deadly monster of sin grasping for control.  

Slaying the Monster of Sin

Unlike Victor Frankenstein and Henry Jekyll, whose lives end tragically, we have hope of slaying the monster of sin. Christ provides the answer for evil in the world since He died for the sins of us all so that we could have new lives (2 Corinthians 5:17; 1 Peter 1:23). Sin will continue to wage war against the new life inside the believer, but our sin nature will one day meet its destruction (1 Corinthians 15:54-57).

On our own, we cannot change our nature. However, because of Jesus’ transforming work in our lives, we can bring beauty and hope into this broken world as we fight against the monster within and help others do the same.

Works Cited

Shelley, Mary. Frankenstein. Barnes & Noble Classics, 2003.

Soyka, David. “Frankenstein and the Miltonic Creation of Evil.” Extrapolation, vol. 33, no. 2, 1992, pp. 166-176.

Stevenson, Robert Louis. Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and Other Stories. Running, 1994. 

The Bible. New International Version. Zondervan, 2011. Bible Hub, 2022.