“Alas my father […] how little do you know me” (189).

These words are whined by Victor Frankenstein after his father tries to teach him about the futility of pride. Frankenstein refuses to hear it because he believes his father misunderstands his suffering. But perhaps he’s really just that transparent, and the reason he is suffering is because of his overabundance of pride.

He knows that the monster has emotions and the ability to reason, and is essentially a human being in that regard. But he keeps trying to justify keeping him from having someone to love. That’s because the monster’s only flaw is that he is ugly. He is superior to regular humans in every way, and if he also could find love then he could truly become the next evolution of man.

Victor has too much pride in himself to let his creation overtake him. In fact, the very reason he created the monster in the first place was to give himself greatness. Once the reality of the living creature manifested, however, he couldn’t face the horror. The first thing the monster wanted from him was love, reaching out his hand to touch Frankenstein. When Frankenstein ran away from him, he was denying the monster love because he had none to give because he was too self-absorbed.

The irony of course is that Frankenstein tells his father that he doesn’t understand his troubles and he goes on to neglect the troubles of his creation. In his arrogance he is blind to his creation’s needs. If he had also had the foresight to not make the monster so ugly, he might not have had such a violent reaction to its animation.

Frankenstein’s refusal to understand his own flaws eventually comes back around and leads to his own death. Just as Frankenstein stood at his father’s deathbed, the monster stands over his creator’s corpse and laments his death, showing that he doesn’t lack compassion for him. We see that if Frankenstein had not been so blindly proud of himself, the story would not have had such a tragic end.