Frankenstein Children

Culture facilitates association and thus perpetuates the flaws of society. Locke suggests that, through this cultural association, children's attitudes and prejudices are informed by what other people insist is truth. Hence, if certain derrogatory values assigned to the figures/objects in society are not transmitted through generations, then Locke supposes that children will grow to be morally good.

How does the monster represent this philosophy? In what was is the monster like a blank-slate child? Was the development of Dr. Frankenstein's monster guided entirely by society or did he harbor some internal moral compass? Whenever this question of "nature versus nurture" arises, I think back to Kenneth Clark's (in)famous experiment conducted with children and baby dolls in the 1940s. In essence, Dr. Clark presented African American children with both black and white dolls. Most of the children were not only able to identify the race of the dolls, but additionally, a majority of the children associated the white dolls with positive characteristics and the black dolls with more negative characteristics. Dr. Clark supposed this reaction demonstrated the way in which [white] America has planted a seed of self-hatred in the psyches of African American youth. The experiment was created again in recent years. The results showed no considerable improvement. This scenario makes me think that the process of shaping one's own identity is one that cannot go uninfluenced by society. It's obvious that the biological composition of African Americans does not include innate self-hatred; rather, society has an inevitable hold on the way in which every single child perceives him or herself. In the same way, the aversion and terror with which Frankenstein's monster was met most likely led him to become the brutish character he was.