“Abhorred monster! » » cries Victor, In Frankenstein by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, with passion, as he is confronted with the most hateful thing of his entire life (chapter 10). Thurston analytically declares "a monster with vaguely anthropoid outlines, but with an octopus-like head" while looking at a Cthulhu sculpture. The word monster is used in both quotes above, but one is used as an insult about wickedness and the other is used as a descriptive word about physical appearance. The same word is used twice with different definitions, raising the question of what makes something monstrous. Shelley's Frankenstein and Lovecraft stories feature monsters and help the reader better understand what a monster really is. In some ways, the definition of monster given by these authors is the same, and in other ways, the definition diverges. Although Shelley and Lovecraft's monsters are characterized by their physical appearance, the outward appearance of their monsters does not determine the monstrosity of their characters. The real monster in stories is the character who does ugly actions, even if his exterior is ugly. While Frankenstein's creation is described by Victor as "hideous" (Chapter 5) and the creation is referred to as a monster several times, he himself is not the true monster of Shelley's novel. Victor, responsible for the wickedness of his creation, is the real monster of the story. By creating a hideous individual and avoiding him, he forces the creation to survive alone with a forced handicap; Victor becomes evil. This evil is equivalent to breaking someone's legs in the middle of the forest, with no way to get home, and then leaving them alone. Victor creates...... middle of paper......; the giant monster in "The Dunwich Horror" was invisible, despite modern science claiming that invisibility is impossible, and the fish in "The Shadow Over Innsmouth" were bred by combining a human and a fish, despite the ridiculous of this idea. Lovecraft's monsters are not only impossible, they are vague and inexplicable. This contrasts with Shelley's Frankenstein in which science, rather than refuting the possibility of creatures, is the reason for the creature. Although the reader never learns how the creature is created, we are led to believe that Victor's scientific mind is the cause of its creation; he worked for years studying the sciences necessary to revive life. Both Lovecraft and Shelley are influenced by the time period they are set in, but Lovecraft's definition of the monster is shaped by the modern era while Shelley's is shaped by Romanticism..