Upon finishing Frankenstein, I have a lot of thoughts on the ending. To start off, I feel like the way Victor met his end made sense, between the intense travels and his extremely poor health, it made sense that he became too weak to survive. I think that the creature’s decision to end his own life now that he does not have any more revenge to seek on Victor demonstrates how he was not just inherently evil and malicious, it was the events of his life that made him this way. This is a common question in literature: are people born evil, or do outside factors create this evil? One example of this that I can think of is Wicked, where they often discuss if wickedness is something people are born with, or if it is “thrust upon them.” I think that this ending displays the nuance of the creature, though violent, he wasn’t just doing evil just for the sake of it. There is also a sense of irony in that Victor died thinking that his creature was going to continue to terrorize everyone, but the creature then takes his own life and stops this reign, which Victor will never know.
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