Key Quote
“"I ought to be thy Adam, but I am rather the fallen angel"”
The Creature · Chapter 10
Focus: “fallen angel”
The Creature draws a devastating parallel between his own creation and Milton's Paradise Lost — he should be beloved but has been cast out, making him not the first man but Satan.
Technique 1 — MILTONIC ALLUSION / BIBLICAL TYPOLOGY
The allusion (reference to another text) to Milton's *Paradise Lost* is precise and devastating: Adam was God's beloved creation; Satan was God's rejected one. The Creature identifies with both — he SHOULD be Adam (cherished by his creator) but IS Satan (abandoned and cast out). This biblical typology (interpreting through Biblical parallels) transforms the Creature's personal grievance into a cosmic narrative of creation, rejection, and fall.
The modal verb 'ought' creates moral obligation — it is not merely that the Creature WANTS to be Adam but that he has a RIGHT to be. The word transforms his complaint from self-pity into ethical accusation: Victor Frankenstein has violated the moral duty of a creator to love his creation. Shelley frames parental abandonment not as unfortunate but as sinful.
Key Words
RAD — REGRESS
The Creature regresses from potential Adam to actual Satan — from innocence to violence. But Shelley makes this regression Victor's fault, not the Creature's: the fall is CAUSED by the creator's abandonment. Without love, support, and guidance, even the most promising creation degenerates. The Creature's regression is a direct consequence of parental failure.
Key Words
Technique 2 — ANTITHESIS — ADAM vs FALLEN ANGEL
The antithesis of Adam (created in God's image, loved) and fallen angel (expelled, hated) creates a stark binary that maps onto the Creature's experience. But Shelley complicates this binary: the Creature is NEITHER purely innocent (Adam) nor purely evil (Satan) — he occupies an impossible position between them. His violence is reactionary, not innate, making him a more morally complex figure than either Biblical model.
The first-person address — 'thy Adam' — makes Victor the God figure in this analogy. This is a subversive (undermining established order) comparison: it positions a flawed, cowardly scientist as the Creator of the Universe, exposing the hubris of any human who presumes to play God. Victor is a terrible God — and the Creature's suffering is the proof.
Key Words
Context (AO3)
PARADISE LOST
Milton's *Paradise Lost* (1667) tells the story of Satan's rebellion against God and Adam's fall. The Creature reads this poem and identifies with its characters, finding in literature the emotional mirrors that human society denies him. Shelley positions reading as both liberating and dangerous — it gives the Creature self-awareness but also intensifies his sense of exclusion.
THE ROMANTIC PROMETHEUS
The novel's subtitle — 'The Modern Prometheus' — references the Titan who stole fire from the gods and was punished eternally. Victor, like Prometheus, steals the 'fire' of creation from God and suffers for it. The Promethean narrative frames scientific ambition as both heroic and transgressive.
Key Words
WOW — ABJECTION — THE REJECTED CREATION (Kristeva)
Julia Kristeva's concept of abjection — the visceral rejection of that which blurs boundaries between self and other, human and non-human — illuminates Victor's response to his Creature. Victor does not merely dislike the Creature; he is physically revolted by it, experiencing the uncanny horror of something that is both human and not-human. Kristeva argues that abjection occurs when categorical boundaries (alive/dead, self/other, natural/unnatural) collapse. The Creature — assembled from dead body parts but alive, human in form but not in origin — embodies this categorical collapse. Victor's rejection is not rational but pre-rational: a gut-level response to something that threatens the very categories through which we understand the world. Shelley anticipates Kristeva by dramatising how the boundary between 'human' and 'monster' is policed not through reason but through disgust.
Key Words