Frankenstein (Case Studies in Contemporary Criticism)

After seeing at least five versions of this tale in film - one of my great childhood monster loves - I was happy to finally read the novel. As so often occurs with classics, I was as surprised as I was fascinated.

For starters, the characters are far more subtle than any of the film versions: Victor F appears as a brooding and obsessed genius, but also as a great lover of life and nature. The monster, who is an articulate and literate creature who read Goethe, is even more interesting, from his hopeful beginning to his bitter reaction at rejection and his thirst for vengence. His eloquence was vivid and his pain horribly realistic.

But the work is also fascinating as a window into the mind of the Romantics, who at once strove to reject the rationalism of the Enlightenment yet reflected it. The creature starts off empty and what it becomes is due entirely to his experience. Knowledge is not always good, etc.

Finally, the themes are timeless and full of conflict: creativity giving birth to unimaginable destruction, tampering with nature as its necessities overwhelm even genius, and the like. THe book is a kaleidescope of philosophical reflection. The pain of the creator and the monster alike are inescapably linked like father and son.

I did find the style of the book a bit difficult. It is full of florid rhetoric and lengthy circumlocutions, as the doctor and then the monster tell their stories in almost identical prose.

Highly recommended.

Although the beginning of the novel becomes tiresome, the underlying story is fantastic. It is hard to imagine that an eighteen year old girl could come up with such a grusome horror novel. Frankenstein, in addition to being a superb horror story, shows the true nature of society as a whole. Because of the monster's physical deformities, he was automatically rejected by people. Nobody even stopped to see what he truly was on the inside. This novel comes with my high praise as well as that of many other literary critics.

I didn't like the main character at all. He took no responsibility for devoloping the humanity of the being he created. He abandoned and later betrayed it meanwhile cursing the creature for its actions. The daemon, learned and soulful, might have offered much to humanity besides the evil that Victor had condemned it behind its isolation and deformity. By itself, the daemon could not overcome its exterior despite its attempts. Not being accepted by humanity because of its appearance, the daemon teaches us despite how noble intentions may be that people often let appearance get in the way. I wonder whether the daemon would have accepted in a leper colony.