The First Thing He Saw Was Someone Leaving

Begin on the November night.

It is one in the morning.

Rain presses itself against the windowpanes. The candle is nearly finished. Around the room are the instruments of a work that has taken a young man almost two years to complete.

On the floor lies a body.

Victor Frankenstein has chosen its parts carefully.

He has imagined this moment for so long that the imagining has become larger than everything else in his life.

Tonight, he will give life to something that has never lived before.

Then it happens.

A dull yellow eye opens.

The chest begins to breathe.

The limbs move.

For one terrible second, the impossible is no longer impossible.

The thing beneath him is alive.

And Victor Frankenstein looks at his creation,

and leaves the room.

· · ·

Imagine arriving somewhere and immediately understanding that you are unwanted.

Not because anyone tells you.

There are older languages than words.

A face withdrawing.

A body stepping backward.

A door closing.

The Creature does not know what any of these things mean yet.

He will.

The world is about to teach him.

· · ·

He wakes alone.

And because he is new to everything, everything arrives without a name.

Light.

Cold.

Hunger.

Pain.

He learns the world before he learns the words for it.

Fire is beautiful.

Fire burns.

Water can be held in the hand, but not kept there.

The moon follows him.

People have faces.

People look at him and become afraid.

Slowly, painfully, he begins to understand something about human beings:

they decide what a thing is very quickly.

And then they become uncomfortable when the thing begins to believe them.

· · ·

Eventually, he finds a small cottage.

He does not enter.

He watches.

Inside is a family.

They are poor, but they have something he has never seen before.

They belong to one another.

They speak.

They forgive.

They wait for one another to return.

The Creature watches them through a crack in the wall.

And begins to learn.

Words first.

Then names.

Then stories.

Then something more difficult.

Love.

Imagine learning the word family from people who have one.

Imagine learning the word friend without ever having been called one.

Imagine discovering that a person can enter a room and make another person glad.

He had not known such a thing was possible.

Now he wanted it.

Perhaps this was his second misfortune.

The first was being born alone.

The second was discovering that he did not want to remain that way.

· · ·

At night, while the family sleeps, he helps them.

He gathers firewood.

He leaves it where they will find it in the morning.

They wake and wonder who has been kind to them.

He remains outside.

There is something almost unbearable about this.

The first person the Creature ever becomes is a secret.

Before anyone has given him kindness, he has learned how to give it.

Before anyone has called him human, he has begun behaving like one.

Sometimes goodness begins in a place where no one can see it.

Perhaps that is why it is so easily mistaken for nothing.

· · ·

One day, he gathers enough courage to enter.

The old man inside is blind.

For a few minutes, the Creature is allowed to be only a voice.

And the old man listens.

He does not recoil.

He cannot see.

For the first time in his life, the Creature discovers the difference between being seen and being known.

It is brief.

The others return.

They see him.

And everything changes.

Hands.

Fear.

Violence.

He runs.

Later, the cottage burns.

Another home disappears into fire.

Though it had never really been his.

· · ·

He tries again.

A girl is drowning.

He pulls her from the water.

For one brief moment, there is no history between him and another human being.

No face.

No name.

No fear.

Only one life reaching for another.

He saves her.

Then someone arrives.

Sees him.

And shoots him.

It must have been around then that the world became difficult to understand.

What is a good action worth if the person doing it is already condemned?

How many times can someone be punished for the face they did not choose before they begin to believe that nothing else about them will ever matter?

· · ·

It is difficult to say exactly when grief becomes anger.

Perhaps there is no single moment.

Perhaps it gathers.

A look here.

A door closed there.

A hand raised.

A body stepping backward.

Enough small refusals, and eventually even a gentle thing begins to wonder what gentleness is for.

That may be one of the quieter dangers of cruelty.

It does not always destroy what is good.

Sometimes it teaches goodness that it is alone.

· · ·

So he goes looking for Victor.

Not first for revenge.

That comes later.

First, he asks a question.

Why?

Why make me?

Why give me a mind capable of understanding loneliness?

Why teach me the shape of love only by placing it beyond my reach?

Why give me hands and nowhere they are welcome?

Why give me a voice if every face turns away before I can speak?

He finds his maker and asks him for one thing.

One companion.

One face that will not leave.

He does not ask to be loved by the world.

By now, he knows better.

He asks only not to be alone in it.

· · ·

Victor refuses.

And something closes.

Not with lightning.

Not with a scream.

More quietly than that.

The last door.

The last hope.

The Creature had entered the world asking for almost nothing.

A hand.

A home.

A name.

Someone.

Now even that is denied him.

There are doors which, once closed, do not merely keep a person outside.

They change what is waiting on the other side.

· · ·

What follows is remembered as horror.

And it is horror.

People die.

The Creature becomes terrible.

But Shelley does something more dangerous than simply giving us a monster.

She lets him speak.

She lets him remember.

The firewood.

The family.

The blind man.

The girl in the river.

The gunshot.

She makes us stand close enough to the monster to hear that he remembers being kind.

And suddenly the question changes.

Not:

What kind of creature is this?

But:

What happened to him?

· · ·

Perhaps a monster is not always the opposite of a human being.

Perhaps sometimes it is what remains of one after every attempt to be received has failed.

Victor made the body.

But the world had years to work on the rest.

A frightened face.

A closed door.

A kindness punished.

A loneliness prolonged beyond what anyone should be asked to carry.

One refusal after another.

Until eventually the Creature became what everyone had already decided he was.

There is a strange power in being named something often enough.

Even a name you were never given can become a room you are forced to live inside.

· · ·

And he was never given one.

In the novel, the Creature has no name.

Victor Frankenstein has a name.

Elizabeth has a name.

The dead have names.

The living have names.

But the being at the center of the story,

the one who learns language,

reads Milton,

weeps,

loves,

suffers,

kills,

and finally walks into the Arctic darkness,

is never named.

Perhaps a name is not merely a word.

Perhaps it is the smallest form of responsibility.

A way of saying:

I know you are here.

I will not pretend you appeared by yourself.

Victor gave him life.

But some gifts become accusations when the giver refuses to remain.

· · ·

And then the world made its own mistake.

For two hundred years, people have called the Creature Frankenstein.

They gave him his maker's name.

Perhaps it was an accident.

Or perhaps stories sometimes understand themselves before their readers do.

When a creation becomes monstrous, where does the name belong?

With the creature?

Or with the person who made him,

and looked away?

· · ·

At the end of the novel, Victor dies.

The Creature comes to him.

And weeps.

This may be the saddest thing in the whole book.

The man who gave him life never learned how to love him.

The Creature learned how to hate him.

And still, when Victor died, the Creature was the one who remained.

Perhaps hatred is sometimes love that has survived too long without anywhere to go.

Perhaps grief is proof that, despite everything, some part of us never stopped reaching for the thing that wounded us.

He stands over Victor's body.

The father.

The maker.

The first person who ever left him.

And now Victor cannot leave again.

· · ·

Then the Creature goes north.

Farther into the ice.

Out of the story.

Out of the world.

We do not see him die.

We only watch him disappear.

Perhaps that is right.

Some people are not given endings.

They are simply last seen walking away.

· · ·

It is easy to remember the laboratory.

The lightning.

The body.

The famous face assembled from death.

But perhaps the real horror happened after the eye opened.

A living thing looked at the person who had made it.

And that person could not bear to stay.

Everything after that may have been an answer to the first question no one ever heard him ask.

· · ·

The story was written by Mary Shelley when she was still very young.

And perhaps that is why it understands something older than horror.

To create is not the same as to love.

To give something life is not the same as giving it a place in the world.

A maker can succeed at the miracle and fail at everything that comes after.

Perhaps every living thing eventually turns toward whatever made it and asks the same question:

What happens now?

And perhaps the deepest responsibility begins only after the creation opens its eyes.

· · ·

The shirt asks only:

Who made this monster?

And below it:

Frankenstein, 1818

Perhaps that is the answer.

Or perhaps it is the accusation.

Because on that November night, before the Creature had learned hatred,

before he had learned revenge,

before he had been called a monster,

he opened his eyes.

He saw one human face.

And then he watched it disappear.

The rest of his life,

he kept learning

what that meant.

This is the story behind the Frankenstein T-Shirt — available now in the SepiaLore archive.