Accursed creator! Why did you form a monster so hideous that even you turned from me in disgust?
Interpretation
The quote expresses the feelings of rejection and abandonment experienced by a creation perceived as a monster.
In this poignant quote from Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley's 'Frankenstein', the creature confronts its creator, lamenting the horror of its existence and the resultant alienation. It encapsulates themes of identity, acceptance, and the moral responsibilities of creators towards their creations, highlighting the consequences of forsaking oneβs responsibilities and the anguish of isolation felt by those deemed monstrous or different.
In practice
In a discussion about the consequences of ignoring ethical responsibilities in science, this quote could highlight the impact of creation without accountability.
Invention, it must be humbly admitted, does not consist in creating out of a void, but out of chaos; the materials must in the first place be afforded; it can give form to dark, shapeless substances, but cannot bring into being the substance itself.
The instructor can scarcely give sensibility where it is essentially wanting, nor talent to the unpercipient block. But he can cultivate and direct the affections of the pupil, who puts forth, as a parasite, tendrils by which to cling, not knowing to what - to a supporter or a destroyer.
What terrified me will terrify others; and I need only describe the spectre which had haunted my midnight pillow.
I shall commit my thoughts to paper, it is true; but that is a poor medium for the communication of feeling. I desire the company of a man who could sympathize with me, whose eyes would reply to mine.
Heavy misfortunes have befallen us, but let us only cling closer to what remains, and transfer our love for those whom we have lost to those who yet live. Our circle will be small, but bound close by the ties of affection and mutual misfortune. And when time shall have softened your despair, new and dear objects of care will be born to replace those of whom we have been so cruelly deprived.
Hateful day when I received life!' I exclaimed in agony. 'Accursed creator! Why did you form a monster so hideous that even you turned from me in disgust? God, in pity, made man beautiful and alluring, after his own image; but my form is a filthy type of yours, more horrid even from the very resemlance. Satan had his companions, fellow-devils, to admire and encourage him; but I am solitary and abhorred.' - Frankenstein
Contrariwise, if it was so, it might be; and if it were so, it would be; but as it isn't, it ain't. That's logic.
The crowd, still shouting, gives way before us. We plough our way through. Women hold their aprons over their faces and go stumbling away. A roar of fury goes up. A wounded man is being carried off.
I am incapable of conceiving infinity, and yet I do not accept finity. I want this adventure that is the context of my life to go on without end.
It is absolutely impossible to transcend the laws of nature. What can change in historically different circumstances is only the form in which these laws expose themselves.
Why, I hold fate Clasped in my fist, and could command the course Of time's eternal motion, hadst thou been One thought more steady than an ebbing sea.
What is more absurd and more impious than to attribute the name of Lucifer to the devil, that is, to personified evil. The intellectual Lucifer is the spirit of intelligence and love; it is the paraclete, it is the Holy Spirit, while the physical Lucifer is the great agent of universal magnetism.
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