"Frankenstein"- theme

In "Frankenstein", one major theme which comes up during the monsters retelling of his story is that of nature vs. nurture, nature being that which people are inherently born with and nurture being what they are formed into by surrounding people or the environment. Unlike most misconceptions of the monster being a big green scary thing that is evil and takes out people's brains, the monster is not my nature "evil" or "big green and scary." When he is watching the family and learning of their unfortunate circumstances, the monster admits that "[he] had been accustomed, during the night, to steal part of their store for [his] own consumption, but when [he] found that doing this [he] inflicted pain of the cottagers, [he] abstained and satisfied [himself] with berries, nuts , and roots..." (page 106). Along with feeling regret for causing them pain, he also goes out of his way to make life easier on the family by gathering wood for them and clearing a path in the snow so the husband/son will not have to. This all shows that it was not in the monster's nature to be evil or bad, but he was actually kindhearted and caring. It is through nurture, that the monster learns how people act and also how to speak. Unfortunately, it is also because of nurture that he begins to despise people and want to cause him harm as he told Frankenstein when he encountered him on the mountain. People mistreated him so badly, that the nurture or environment around him cause him to want to do evil things.