Make me happy and I will be virtuous
Aristotle said that Plato was his friend, but that the truth was a greater friend. I don't see it at all clear, because friends respond, the truth is not. In this fragile life of ours, having a friend is having someone who stays by your side when you make mistakes and who, knowing each and every one of your defects, stays with you. If a friend calls me, I answer. If, for example, Carme Fenoll invites me to talk about the importance of reading in Almenar, I go; and if she wants me to debate the myth of Frankenstein at the UPC with Elia Barceló, author ofThe Frankenstein effect, "I leave everything".
Frankenstein, Mary Shelley's great novel, is, among many other things, a work about friendship that has a clear precedent in The daydreams of the lonely walker by Rousseau.To any reader of Frankenstein You will be familiar with this Rousseaunian lament: "Here I am, alone on Earth, with no brother, neighbor, friend or society but myself […]. I was made to live and I die without having lived."
The novel begins by recording the lonely feelings of a sailor, Walton. When he finds Dr. Frankenstein, nearly frozen, on a drifting ice floe, he believes he has found someone with whom he could have formed a cordial relationship. When he tells him of his wish for a friend, Dr. Frankenstein replies, "I had one." But it is too late for illusions. Dr. Frankenstein soon dies.
The doctor is the only one who has had everything that both Walton and the monstrous creature he has given life to demand: friendship and love. However, he is the most unfortunate of all, because he had everything and has lost everything. He gave life to death, unleashing tragedy, when he was happy. That is why the words that his creature addresses to the Montanvert glacier resonate so strongly: "Make me happy and I will be virtuous."
He daimon –as Mary Shelley calls the creature– considers, in Rousseaunian fashion, that he was born "loving and good" and that it was society that perverted him. For this reason he exonerates himself of his crimes. The only one to blame is his creator who insisted on rejecting him, pushing him towards unhappiness. If he gives him happiness now, he will still have time to be virtuous and friendly, next to someone who understands him. If he is happy, his lost nature will re-emerge from the ashes of his resentment. If he feels loved, he will love. "My evils are the children of a forced solitude and my virtues will necessarily flourish when I live in communion with an equal." He asks for a compassionate friendship that will compensate him for the mistreatment that has led him to crime.
Reading this, we modern readers immediately take the side of the daimon. Our creator – be it God or society – has not given us the world we think we deserve either. Instead of lovingly welcoming us, he has thrown us into a harsh and steep world. The daimon is innocent of his resentment precisely because he is a monster. He is a victim. And if he is a victim, he is right. The guilty party is the one who has given him life and denied him the joy of living. The daimon is the proud owner of his virtues and the victim of his vices.
By the time Mary Shelley published her novel, Diderot had already made indignation a republican duty. See the entries indignation and resentment from the Encyclopedia. In both cases, there is often some attempt to manipulate and dominate the other by means of some strategy of emotional blackmail.
Frankenstein is the herald of theto think by hearingwho believes that if someone else's problem is transformed into one's own discomfort, it is already on the way to being resolved; that the ability to feel compassion validates the ability to think; that it is possible to affirm oneself morally without submitting to discipline; that the only ones to blame for our lack of knowledge are the teachers who do not know how to motivate us, or who do not understand that if we do not enjoy emotional well-being we cannot study mathematics... And that, deep down... poor Daniel Sancho, so young...
Freud knew that the only thing that is prudent to expect from therapy is the transformation of a miserable neurotic into a banal wretch. When Schultz visited him, he asked him upon greeting him: "Do you sincerely believe in your ability to cure a patient?" "Not at all!" Schultz replied. Freud added: "In that case, we shall understand each other."
The sin of Dr. Frankenstein's daimon is that he never resigned himself to being a banal wretch... and he did not have access to the anti-anxiety drugs that today save us from being miserable neurotics.