Frankenstein’s Creature Obeys Nature/God and Goes Vegan. By Dr. Chapman Chen
- Chapman Chen
- 2 hours ago
- 3 min read
Frankenstein’s Creature, as penned by Mary Shelley (1818), is vegan. His veganism is fundamentally connected to Nature—and Nature, in the mind of the Romantics, notably Mary Shelley and her husband Percy Shelley, is a kind of divine force comparable to God. Now, even the Creature, whom most regard as an uncivilised freak or savage monster, obeys Nature/God and chooses a path of non-violence. How can we, who call ourselves civilized, go against God/Nature and continue to abuse and consume the innocent creatures of creation?
In Frankenstein, the so-called Creature is not the bloodthirsty monster of popular imagination. On the contrary, in his earliest and most innocent state, he lives in reverent harmony with the natural world. “My food is not that of man,” he declares. “I do not destroy the lamb and the kid to glut my appetite; acorns and berries afford me sufficient nourishment.” This is more than a survival strategy—it is a moral, almost sacred stance. The Creature consciously refuses to kill, choosing instead to live by what is freely given by Nature or God. In doing so, he enacts a kind of Edenic innocence, mirroring the prelapsarian condition of humanity before the Fall.
For the Romantics—Mary Shelley and her husband Percy Shelley among them—Nature was not mere backdrop; it was a kind of divine force comparable to God: sublime, spiritual, and morally instructive, a source of truth more reliable than church or civilisation. Percy Shelley saw animal-flesh-eating as a root of violence and moral degradation, calling for a return to natural compassion in his A Vindication of Natural Diet.
Mary Shelley, though less explicit, encodes these values in her portrayal of the Creature.
The tragedy of the novel lies not in the Creature’s origin but in his corruption. Initially, he is a gentle, vegan being shaped by Nature. But as he is rejected, beaten, and cast out, his harmony with the world dissolves. Though Mary never states that he begins eating flesh, she significantly ceases to mention his diet. In its place emerges grief, rage, and bloodshed. This symbolic loss of vegan innocence parallels the biblical Fall.
The Creature himself draws this comparison in a pivotal lament:
“I ought to be thy Adam, but I am rather the fallen angel, whom thou drivest from joy for no misdeed.”
He sees himself not as a monster, but as one cast out of Eden by his creator, not for sin, but for being unloved. Like Adam and Satan, he has lost paradise—yet unlike fallen humans who clothe themselves in animal skins and begin to kill, the Creature at first resists that descent.
He goes on to describe the injustice of being made good and gentle by Nature, only to be forced into evil:
“Everywhere I see bliss, from which I alone am irrevocably excluded. I was benevolent and good—misery made me a fiend.”
His loss of moral harmony is not chosen but imposed by a meatist society—one that deems killing animals normal and kills him morally for being different.
Thus, Mary Shelley presents a striking paradox: even the one branded a monster obeys the law of Nature and refuses to harm the innocent. His veganism, his grief, and his fall mirror the spiritual history of humankind—from Edenic peace to meat-fuelled alienation. What, then, does it say about us—so-called civilised beings—when we casually devour the lamb and the kid that the Creature would not kill? #VeganChrist #VeganGod #VeganChurch #VeganTheology