To Nurture a Creature

 As one begins to establish a sense of reality in their adolescent mind, an outlook on ones personal development arises from ones actions. The love and care a parent provides for their child is applied to the characteristics of its development. Without the guide of a protector the reference for moral and ethical ideas and actions are likely to be disoriented. Mary Shelley’s work Frankenstein illuminates such ideologies within the work of the creatures development. As the maker of the creation, Victor is torn from his youthful innocence orientating a character of obsessive inhumanity. He abandons the creature in its waking out of abhorred regard. Left to encounter the harsh and unaccepting judgement of society alone, the creature is without a figure to guide his moral compass. The world shuns his disfigured form just as his creator did, perceiving the surface level characteristics of the creatures being. Although the creature discovers a means to learn from he is left without the interpersonal connections that is the true nurture of one’s development. Under the field of developmental psych, studying the growth and change of people over time, the environmental variables including social relationships are quite largely the constituent of ones becoming. The creature was left to question his existence as “of my creation and creator I was absolutely ignorant,” (Shelley p.119) therefore the link to understanding his true emotional morality was clouded, motivating the creatures cruel judgement and decisions. The creature seeks revenge as he is driven by hatred and blinded by rage. Distraught by no companion and the destruction of what could have been a partner for life all of the creatures devastation overruns any morality he had learned. Devoid of love the creatures ethical characteristic became “…borne away by the stream…(bending his) mind towards injury and death.” (Shelley p. 139) Unlike the development of youth nurtured by their parents the creature had little to no one to connect emotional value too. So easily he was able to tear at his moral compass as no caring relationship fastened his humane qualities. A creature who received no love or nurture embellishes borne aspects of nature’s truest evils.