IntroductionIt's easy to think of Frankenstein's creature as the terror of all terrors. Look at horror fiction and you can easily assess the long-term impact of Shelley's magnum opus. Halloween costumes of all sizes and colors, three film adaptations, countless spin-offs… However, stripping away the distillation of mainstream culture, it must be said that Shelley's idea was more substantial than creating the stuff of nightmares. In the book, the monster is anything but the mumbling, shuffling oaf as depicted in the 1931 film. He is an eloquent soul, with a full capacity for higher thought, so strangely human that Shelly makes frequent comparisons between him and Adam, the embodiment of humanity, God's first creation in Milton's epic Paradise Lost. This essay seeks to compare these two characters from the philosophical perspective of free will. In the first part, I will analyze the free will of the duo by analyzing their characters; In the second part, I will venture into the religious messages and literary themes behind the tales. The thesis I wish to address in this essay is that because Frankenstein's creature embodies more free will than Adam, he is less sympathetic. Free Will and Moral Responsibility The subject of free will has challenged the most famous of philosophers; everyone has their own argument, not to mention the theologians. As a layman (and because this is not a philosophy essay), I will not dwell on the details, but it is certain that ethical philosophy is based on this hypothesis: human beings are autonomous (moral agents), and they are therefore held responsible. for their own actions (moral responsibility). Based on this hypothesis, I argue that because Franke...... middle of paper ......lton, J. Paradise Lost. Retrieved from www.planetebook.com/ebooks/Paradise-Lost.pdf‎Secondary sourcesAristotle, Ross WD (tr.) (2009)Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics, New York: Oxford University PressPlaton, Jowett B. (tr. with modifications) (1991) Republic, New York: Vintage BooksGodwin, W. (2011) Reflections on man, his nature, his productions and his discoveries interspersed with some details concerning the author, Kindle editionO'Connor, T. ( Spring 2013) "Free Will", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2013 edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), retrieved from http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2013/entries/freewill/Eshleman, A. (summer 2014), “Moral Responsibility”, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (summer 2014 edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2014/entries/moral- responsibility/