Fan-Lit: Frankenstein Review pt 2

Welcome Everyone!

Welcome Everyone!

Thanks for visiting my blog where I review books and stories. I am a published author and I have a Master's Degree in English and Creative Writing. Some of my favorite books are The Hunger Games series, the Percy Jackson and the Olympians series, The Great Gatsby and The Joy Luck Club. I love to read and write short stories; as well as discuss writing and literature in any medium. Hope you enjoy and feel free to comment and make recommendations.



Wednesday, November 6, 2019

Frankenstein Review pt 2



I left off with the book telling the story of the creature since leaving Frankenstein. When the creature meets Victor in the hills, he says something quite interesting that gives some insight into how he views himself. “Remember that I am thy creature; I ought to be thy Adam, but I am rather the fallen angel, whom thou drivest from joy for no misdeed” (Frankenstein, Shelley). I like this, because it draws an interesting comparison between the God creating the Angels and Victor creating his monster. The power to create life is often referred to as a power that only God should have; but here Victor carelessly creates a life. The monster wants to see himself as “Adam” but the people he interacts with often refer to him as a monster. Leading him to believe that he is not an Angel of God but the fallen angel, Lucifer. As someone who is not Christian and hasn't read the Bible, I am not qualified to discuss the comparison and what it means for the characters in Shelley's novel. I just find it to be interesting, pairing well with the philosophy of the story.

He went to the mountains and lived in a hovel in the woods and spent his time observing a family in a cottage. He taught himself how to speak words and observed their behaviors. The creature realizes that the family have something that he doesn't. A companion, someone to love him. When he confronts the family hoping they will understand him, he is welcomed with terror and disgust. This is what drives the creature to hate people. He then sets his revenge on Victor. Trying to draw Victor to Geneva, the monster runs into Victor's brother William, who reacts by screaming, despite the creature amiable greeting. The creature decides to kill him, takes a piece of jewelry then runs into a barn where he finds Justine asleep. At first attracted, he feared she would not respond well to him, so he placed the jewelry in her pocket, framing her for the murder. And then his story catches up with Victor's. The Creature asks Victor to create a companion for him, and Victor ultimately decides not to, so the monster threatens Victor.


Victor’s eventual refusal to satisfy his creature by completing a female companion for it — allegedly to prevent the couple from hurting other humans and from having offspring — is not a sincere ethical stance but rather a self-serving attempt to control both women and the creature” (Segal, ). This is interesting because Victor reason for not creating a second creature is that the new one might not want to be as benevolent as the old. And if the new creature starts killing then, Victor cannot live with that on his already guilty conscious.

The book is less about the creature itself and more about Victor's experience creating the monster and his responsibility or lack of when dealing with the monster. “Victor builds an eight-foot-tall being simply because larger body parts are easier to work with. He never ponders his creature’s appearance until he brings it to life” (Frankenstein, Shelley). This shows that Victor never considered how the monster would fit in to the world, but merely focused on the science of bringing it to life.

One thing upon finishing the book that occurred to me, was the idea of who in the story is the true monster? We are to believe that the creature is the monster, but it is only his hatred by people that causes him to be violent. Had the family in the woods responded to him with kindness, and if William had not screamed, then would the creature have need to kill anyone? An interesting topic that is still relevant to this day. Is it society that creates the monster? Rather than violence and hatred being an inherent trait within the creature. Victor's own reaction to his creation is what drives the creature away into hiding, but it's not what made him kill. And while Victor feels guilty over the deaths of his brother and Justine, it's not enough to undo what the monster has done. Victor does blame himself, but he blames himself for the creation and not how he treated the creature, I find that to be telling of Victor's true nature.

After finishing the book, I think that Shelley was ahead of her time with the themes that she wrote about. The language is unique to the time period in which it was written but the story very much feels like something that would be relevant today. Now that I have read both Dracula and Frankenstein, I'll say that Frankenstein was a bit more ambitious with it's themes, but I prefer the characters in Dracula much more. There's really no character that we get to know well, in this book and as a result I don't really like any of the character, besides maybe the monster. The story plays with a duality of Victor and the monster but I think I side with the monster.

Much like Dracula my expectations of this book were very different. Pop culture and the movies have made these stories about the horror of the monsters but really they are character studies and deal with issues in society. At some point I'll revisit this book and gain a better appreciation for it, I am proud that I finally read this staple of American Literature and one the most influential writers of the science fiction genre.

Let me know what you think of the book in the comments below!

Works Cited
Segal, HP. “Victor and Victim - The True Message of Frankenstein Is about Morality, Not Mad Science.NATURE, vol. 412, no. 6850, p. 861. EBSCOhost, search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=edswsc&AN=000170689000023&site=eds-live&scope=site. Accessed 12 Oct. 2019.

Shelley, M. W. (1818). Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus. London, England: Lackington, Hughes, Harding, Mavor & Jones.



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