The Child Creature in Frankenstein Imagine a deformed human child, eight feet tall. You may complain that this is contradictory, but do it anyway. Imagine some sort of humanoid being with the mind of a human child in an eight foot body, green with a nail in the head if you will. This is what Frankenstein's creature is. Frankenstein's creature is mentally a child and throughout his narrative we see his evolution through traditional childhood development. But the creature is the only member of its species, and so its narrative can be interpreted as the story of an entire species: the creature's early experiences can be seen as an amalgam of creation myths. If we choose to see the creature as an individual, and thus consider its growth from child to adult, the obvious choice is to look at the creature's relationship to knowledge. The creature seems to crave knowledge, as is evident from its explorations at the beginning of the narrative. This craving for knowledge is what makes her human; this is especially characteristic of children, who know very little and have a great void to fill. Like any human, the creature gains knowledge through the senses, so it figures out how to use the senses before doing anything else. At the beginning of his tale, we see the creature's utter naivety about the world, as he looks up at the moon: "I arose and saw a radiant form rising among the trees" (Shelley 99). Significant here is the creature's lack of initial understanding of the world, just like any human child. Continuing with the thread of human development, we see the acquisition of language by the creature. The creature desires this type of knowledge most:...... middle of paper ...... These parallels between the creature and a developing child help explain many of the book's mysteries. As we see, the creature goes on a terrible killing spree. There are two reasons for this. First, the creature desires revenge for its isolation. But it seems that the creature is also unaware of its own strength: it is easy for the creature to accidentally commit murder. What two-year-old wouldn't dream of this power? The identification of the creature with mythological figures has some fantastic aspects: children fantasize incessantly. This makes sense. The creature, being new to the world of the living, is chronologically a child: no matter how physically strange he may be, we can only expect him to behave according to his age. Works Cited Graves, Robert. The Greek myths. vol. 1. Baltimore: Penguin, 1955. Shelley, Mary. Frankenstein. 1818. New York: Seal, 1994.