Frankenstein (or The Modern Prometheus) by Mary Shelley
ISBN: 0375753419
303 pages
published in 1831
July 7th – July 12
You can buy this book at this link.
This book is on the suggested reading list by the English department of Clarion University for English majors, where I’ll be attending at the end of August. This is obviously a book that I should have read a long time ago, most likely, but for some reason avoided it except to skim it a couple of times when I was younger without getting too far. To be honest, though I had seem various movie adaptations and examples in popular culture of the figure of the monster, I really had very little idea of what to expect. The book is not as in depth as I thought it would be, but I enjoyed it a lot. It was a bit tedious in places but completely entertaining.
The novel starts off as a series of letters written by a man about to set off on an expedition to his sister, whom he seems to care for a great deal. This was interesting to me as a parallel to Victor’s love of his cousin/adopted sister/wife (that sounds so wrong) further into the novel. But, anyway, to make a long story short, on his journey he runs into Frankenstein, who is just doing terrible, and gets the entire story from him.
I’m sure you all know this part of the story. Frankenstein, overcome with the fact that he was able to figure out how to DO this, decides to create life by making a human being. He wins epically and it works, except he is totally repulsed by what he’s created and abandons it abruptly. There is a lot of explanation in there too about his relationship with his family in the beginning and those he loves, and while it’s all done very well and you do care a lot about Victor and his family and friends, I’m not going to babble about it. Eventually what happens is his monster, because he is so reviled by society and hated, takes this out on Frankenstein and his family. He tries to reason with him at one point and almost convinces him to create another being like himself so he wouldn’t have to be so lonely, but it doesn’t quite work out and thus the two of them settle on making life miserable for one another (or at least, more miserable than it already is, which is saying something for both of them).
It’s really interesting the mixed feelings you get for the monster. I mean, on one hand, you can totally see why he is upset. Life has been utterly deplorable to him. But then, you know, pointless, brutal killing and everything kind of makes you lose that affection. So you go through the entire novel sort of back and forth from being on his side to being on Victor’s and so on. By the end, you just don’t know what to feel at ALL and I think that may be the point? Anyway, I enjoyed it, and I’m actually a bit offended that this story has been warped into the embarrassing pop culture image that it has become, but I guess there’s no way to escape that nowadays. It’s DEFINITELY worth reading in any case.
