Wicked, Frankenstein and the State of Gaza: What Makes a Monster

Eerie music plays as a fanged Dracula rises from his coffin. A clawed wolf man howls at a luminescent moon. Reptilian, scaled Godzilla demolishes New York City with a deafening roar.

Monsters haunt our imaginations; they send chills down our spines that instill fear, dread, and hatred.

With the release, and rapid popularity of the 2024 film “Wicked” (based on the Broadway show of the same name), the paradigmatic monster, the Wicked Witch of the West, was put in the spotlight. Her green-skinned deformities, nightmarish cackle, and twisted features which instilled fear into any who watched the classic 1939 film, were transformed from monster to misunderstood. The 2024 film told the story of Elphaba Thropp, a woman who, due to her external differences, was unjustly ostracized and oppressed. Due to the cruel isolation and rejection from society, the woman who was full of love, life, and compassion became the cruel, heartless, hideous monster.

As Dana Fox, the co-writer of the film, told the BBC: Wicked continues to be relevant because “certain people are still othered in our society, or made to be the bad guys so other people can gain power.”

“Wicked” explains that the Wicked Witch of the West was not the monster, she could not be blamed for what she became, society bears responsibility, society created a monster, and only it is to blame.

Similar claims are made regarding the Israel-Palestine conflict. Claims are made that the villainy of Hamas is not in a vacuum, that Hamas are monsters just as the Wicked Witch of the West is a monster: their villainy is due to the oppression of Israel. Hamas is oppressed and othered by Israel, and their terror is a reaction to the oppression. Exactly like Elphaba, Israel has created a monster and they are responsible for what follows.

However, Mary Shelley’s quintessential monster novel “Frankenstein” tells a different story of monsters and responsibility.

Frankenstein’s monster is oppressed, shunned, and ostracized solely because of his external differences, and due to the cruel isolation and rejection from society, the being who was created full of love, life, and compassion becomes a cruel, heartless, hideous monster.

Frankenstein’s monster, as a reaction to his oppression, enters a life of terrorism and destruction, vowing to destroy his creator. Yet, when he is at last successful in destroying Victor Frankenstein, the monster laments what he has become. He recognizes that his actions have degraded him beneath the lowest animal, and that he can never justify what he has done. He recognizes that while it is true that society played a role in pushing him down a path of terror, villainy, and destruction, he is still to blame for his actions; Frankenstein’s monster recognizes that only he is responsible for his transformation to monster.

“But it is true that I am a wretch. I have murdered the lovely and the helpless, I have strangled the innocent as they slept and grasped to death his throat who never injured me or any other living thing… You hate me, but your abhorrence cannot equal that with which I regard myself.”

Although he was ostracized, shunned, and oppressed, and although society helped incubate his villainy, there is still none to blame but himself. Society is not the villain, Frankenstein’s monster, the Wicked Witch of the West, Hamas, bear responsibility for choosing a path of villainy, their actions cannot be pinned on society.

It is irrelevant whether Hamas was not created in a vacuum, and it is irrelevant whether Israel is partially at fault for the formation of the terror organization, since that cannot justify the terror and destruction that they choose to commit. People who “strangled the innocent as they slept and grasped to death his throat who never injured [any] living thing” cannot claim innocence. Society can be responsible for the creation of a monster, but that does not at all justify a path of evil, terror and destruction. Frankenstein’s monster, the quintessential monster, was a villain and a monster and could not justify his terror and destruction due to his oppression, and that is no different from Hamas.

 Noam Schechter is a Straus Scholar at Yeshiva University.