ISFP 9w8 Characters
The Creature’s MBTI and Enneagram typing in Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein (2025) offers a haunting reinterpretation of Mary Shelley’s most tragic figure. Reimagined as an ISFP 9w8, the Creature embodies both the tenderness and the fury of the human soul—innocent, emotional, and capable of immense violence when wounded. Del Toro transforms the “monster” into a mirror of beauty and pain, tormented by rejection and longing. This Creature lives through touch, sound, and the quiet pulse of empathy, making him one of del Toro’s most deeply human creations. For fans of MBTI and Enneagram psychology, gothic romance, and the visionary storytelling of Guillermo del Toro, this exploration reveals the heart of Frankenstein: a meditation on love, alienation, and what it means to be human.
Introverted Feeling
The Creature arrives an innocent in the world, but almost instantly begins to connect to his intense silent emotions. Even though he cannot speak for a time, he shows wonder, fear, hesitation, and anger at his master, his god, his ‘Victor.’ But these feelings do not grow and flourish until Elizabeth enters his life and forms a silent bond with him; he falls in love with her gentleness, her tenderness, her kindness.
When his master attempts to kill him and thrusts him out into the world, the Creature then finds a home hidden away in a family’s old mill, where he watches and learns and yearns to be part of their lives. His greatest happiness is when the extended family leave for months and he befriends and is taught by the blind old man, who calls him a ‘friend.’ Eventually, the Creature knows what he needs; companionship, and goes to Victor to ask… nay, demand, that he create a wife so he need not be alone forever. It pains him that he must live eternally, that he can heal, because it means he can never end his own suffering.
The Creature has a deep sense of himself and what he needs, and it troubles him that he has no memories that go past Victor.
Extraverted Sensing
Almost from the first moment of his animation, the Creature falls in love with and is in awe of the physical world. He starts to touch things, including his master. When left alone in the basement of the laboratory, he examines beautiful leaves blowing in from the outside and sets them into the water channel to see where they go and how they float. He gives Elizabeth one as a gift and an expression of his love.
Later, when the lab explodes into flames, the Creature breaks his chains and follows the water channel out to the sea. In the woods, he makes friends with an elk, exploring beside it, touching it, eating the same food, curious about it. In the wood, he observes and learns by mimicking the humans, trying out words in his mouth, and collecting firewood and kindling for them. At night, he becomes their ‘guardian spirit’ of the forest, fixing their fences and providing for them.
When the wolves come, he kills them to protect his friends. And when Victor will not help him, he wanders the world, leading Victor on an endless chase, after the death of his brother. Even his final act is one of sensory-driven kindness, when he frees the ship from the ice so its people can return home rather than die in the artic circle.
Introverted Intuition
It takes him a long time to learn things at first, because of his innocent and blank mind, but as the Creature does, he starts piecing things together about his existence, the meaning of it, and the implications of it. Realizing that if he can heal from any wound, death will never find him. It might come with old age, but no mortal wound. And that he will be forever alone, an outcast, alienated from society, unless Victor creates him a companion to share in his extreme loneliness. This becomes his single-minded obsession, and when it is denied to him, he takes on the eternal torment of his master instead.
Extraverted Thinking
At first, the Creature is docile and sweet, but as he encounters more and more abuse at the hands of Victor and the world, he becomes cynical and can lash out in unfeeling acts of terror. He kills people who come after him without remorse; he destroys all Victor has built. But at the end of the story, having told his own side of events and been asked forgiveness, he returns to his humanity at last.
The Enneagram 9
We first see the Creature as an innocent, mild-mannered, obedient man-child, who cowers away from Victor’s cross words and flinches whenever he shouts. Rather than learn things, he just looks at them or touches them in silent appreciation. He stays calm even when left chained up in the basement, and accepts that fate, because it’s all he knows. The Creature connects to Elizabeth because she does not hit him or yell at him, but sits quietly with him accepts his gifts, and lets him touch her without pushing him away. He feels safe and wanted with her. 9s have a way of self-forgetting, and that’s what he did for a time; they also can be forgiving, and that’s what he offers to his master when Victor asks for it and lays dying; because he is tired of holding so much anger, resentment, and bitterness against him. He knows it is time to release it and move on.
The 8 Wing
The Creature has another side to him; one of violence and rage. When he finally realizes Victor has left him to die in a fire, he becomes furious, rips his chains out of the wall, beats them off on a column, and takes his freedom. From then on, his inner peace is interrupted by humanity abusing him, chasing him, shooting at him, and trying to kill him. He has to fight wolves, rip off a man’s jaw, and even tosses people through the air so hard, they are instantly killed when they strike walls. He follows Victor through the frozen north, dragging him out of his tent, breaking his limbs, and saying, “You only listen to me when I hurt you!” He tells Victor if that stick of dynamite will blow him up, that will be a relief, but if it doesn’t, he will never stop hunting Victor. Then he fearlessly has Victor light it, and hangs onto it in the explosion. 8s can handle pain and they can take suffering; and the Creature has more than his fair share. He feels constantly on the defensive, because everyone is out to get him. But whenever his 8 wing isn’t needed, he reverts to a kind, gentle creature.
Mary Shelly’s Creature
Every time I think about the Creature, I feel all the intense emotions its true creator, Mary Shelly, intended. This is an Enneagram 4 story at is heart. The themes are all about alienation, abandonment, not fitting into society and never being able to do so; forever an outsider, envious of what others possess, but knowing you can never become one of them. That’s what 4s feel and what Mary Shelly probably was in her life. A 4, who poured all of her internal angst and turmoil into one of the greatest, most moving stories of all time, that of a monster and his Creation. Entire theses have been written about her themes, but it comes down to this: Mary had a lot of loss in her life, from never knowing her mother to her father abandoning her, to the death of her illegitimate child, to the suicides of her sister and extended family and even her friends. She grappled with these things and, as an intellectual, wondered why God would put her here to suffer. And the result is a tortured Creature who touches us on a level few characters do, because he does not even have a name. Victor gave him nothing to connect him to being human, least of all that.
