Mary Shelley's Warning

Mary Shelley's perceptions of science and the dangerous power it potentially holds are intuitive. Modern day science deals daily with the exact issues of which Shelley was apparently keenly aware. She introduces ethics to the study of science, even gives science a conscious. As the monster acts on Frankenstein's conscious, some would say that Mary Shelley writes literature to act as science's conscious. It was as if she acknowledged that the future of science, if uncontrolled, could be disastrous. The book serves to warn readers, both past and current, of our own powers. It was almost as if Mary Shelley in 1818 could see nearly 200 years into the future, recognizing that our scientific discoveries of nuclear weapons and cloning could eventually be our demise.
Mary Shelley is placing a warning in her book, that when people experiment with things they shouldn't, and don't control their experiments, it could be disastorous. People experimented with the nuclear bomb, and it ended up killing hundreds of thousands, because no one knew how to control it. When Victor Frankenstein experiments and makes the monster, it led to the death of the ones he loves and himself.

Last words of Victor vs. last words of the "Monster"

The last words of Victor were:
"That he should live to be an instrument of mischief disturbs me; in other respects , this hour when I momentarily expect my release, is the only happy one which I have enjoyed for several years. The forms of the beloved dead flit before me, and I hasten to their arms. Farewell, Walton! Seek happiness in tranquillity, and avoid ambition, even if it be only the apparantly innocent one of distinguishing yourself in science and discoveries. Yet why do I say this? I have myself blasted in these hopes, yet another may succeed." (pg. 162)
Victor is dying, and is finally happy, but he is not fully happy, because the "Monster" is still living. He should be feeling remorse for what creating the "Monster", and yet he doesn't, he wants someone else to try and succeed with the creation of a successful "Monster", one that doesn't act or look the way that victor's "Monster" does.
The last words of the "Monster" were:
"I shall die, and what I now feel be no longer felt. Soon these burning miseries will be extinct. I shall ascend my funeral pile triumphantly, and exult in the agony of the torturing flames. The light of that conflagration will fade away; my ashes will be swept into the sea by the winds. My spirit will sleep in peace; or if it thinks, it will not surely think thus. Farewell." (pg.166)
The "Monster" isn't worried about leaving anything behind, and when he leaves the ship, he isn't looking for pity, like Victor. He is waiting for death, almost embracing it.

What is a monster?

A monster, to me is someone that acts like Victor Frankenstein. He attempted to play God, and create a creature. After the creation of his "Monster" he abandons him, when he should have taken him and nurtured him as if it was his child. Then Victor never takes responsibility for his actions and is never completely guilty through the book. Victor has no emotion, and in fact when his mother died, he looked at it something that put off his travels to Ingolstadt
"My mother was dead, but we had still duties which we ought to perform; we must continue our course with the rest, and learn to think ourselves fortunate, whilst one remains whom the spoiler has not seized." (pg. 25)
He was upset about his mother dying, because it interfered with him moving on. Victor felt that he had tasks to complete, and his mother's death was keeping him from completing those tasks.

Daemon vs. Demon

A daemon is something that is more god like, it is a something good, where a demon is something evil, something devil like. I believe that Mary Shelley used Daemon sometimes to prove that the "Monster" isn't all evil, there are some good sides to him. On page 121, when Victor sees the "Monster", he says:
"I trembled and my heart failed within me, when, on looking up, I saw, by the light of the moon, the daemon at the casement."
The monster didn't always mean to hurt Victor, and at one point, he keeps attempting to save Victor. When Victor goes on the hunt to track down the "Monster" and get revenge, the "Monster" leaves him food to keep him alive.