Frankenstein (1818)

I'm actually really glad I read this book--I'd always been put off by the movie image of the creature, with screws and stitches all over the place, but that's not how he's described here, and this book doesn't feel like that at all.

The nestling narration is really intriguing--it draws the reader into one story at a time.

Victor Frankenstein and the Creature are both morally, shall we say, gray. Interestingly, I sympathized greatly with the creature whose morality was pretty straight for most of his early 'life'. And yet, I also can't blame Frankenstein for the creature's actions.

Really good story, highly recommended. ( )

What makes this story magnificent is that it doesn't rely upon cheap thrills or blood or gore to achieve its horror (not that I'm opposed), and yet without any of these things it chills you to the bone with its monster. Although there are shocks and twists along the way, truly terrifying is what Shelley exposes about the nature of humanity, it's biases, its frailty in memory and perception, and its conceptions of truth, beauty, and purpose. As you approach the end, you have a sneaking suspicion the real monster of the book is you, in the emptiness of all that you think you are and all that you are not. That's the magic. As so few books can, this story transcends its pages to include you as one of its destined characters, to spook you with your own conclusions it had set lying in wait…and in this way you sympathize with both Frankenstein and his monster in having both created an existential terror while also being one! And thus you are left unhinged.
Beware: the more you chew on this book the more it will haunt you...someplace deep, very deep.

Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein has endured in the popular imagination for two hundred years. Begun as a ghost story by an intellectually and socially precocious eighteen-year-old author during a cold and rainy summer on the shores of Lake Geneva, the dramatic tale of Victor Frankenstein and his stitched-together creature can be read as the ultimate parable of scientific hubris. Victor, “the modern Prometheus,” tried to do what he perhaps should have left to Nature: create life.



Shelly depicts birth as both creative and destructive, and the monster becomes a disfigured mirror of the natural cycle of life.
The monster, therefore, embodies Dr.Frankenstein’s corruption of nature in the quest for glory.
The protagonist's hamartia (fatal-flaw) - the god complex - is most clear in the line:
“Life and death appeared to me ideal bounds, which I should first break through, and pour a torrent of light into our dark world.”

This, for some, maybe an allegory of Gnosticism whereby God is a tyrant who creates evil in the world through repression.
What is the final verdict in terms of the Creature's good or evil identity?
Also are we, as human beings, formed by "nature" or "nurture" or both?
It is really hard to say who is the monster/evil, Creator =!= Createe.
But then again, how would we measure humanity in either of them?

The Daemon* was innocent, sweet, and caring, but also abused, abandoned, and unloved. The fact that society fails in its ability to sympathize with the creature is evidence enough of the absence of morality and common decency. As a result, the creature is a prime example of isolation. Essentially, the Creature does not begin as the cruel and monstrous murderer, but rather is a product of the lack of sympathy from society, and more importantly from his creator, Victor. Even being the source of the Creature's misery, a dying Victor earns his "child's" loyalty as the Creature drapes himself over his dying "father" and exclaims, "Oh, Frankenstein! Generous and self-devoted being! I...destroyed thee by destroying all thou lovedst". As if facing the reality he has painfully known all along, the Creature beholds his dead father and states, "Alas! He is cold, he cannot answer me".

Maybe the monster is more human than the human.

( )

What makes this story magnificent is that it doesn't rely upon cheap thrills or blood or gore to achieve its horror (not that I'm opposed), and yet without any of these things it chills you to the bone with its monster. Although there are shocks and twists along the way, truly terrifying is what Shelley exposes about the nature of humanity, it's biases, its frailty in memory and perception, and its conceptions of truth, beauty, and purpose. As you approach the end, you have a sneaking suspicion the real monster of the book is you, in the emptiness of all that you think you are and all that you are not. That's the magic. As so few books can, this story transcends its pages to include you as one of its destined characters, to spook you with your own conclusions it had set lying in wait…and in this way you sympathize with both Frankenstein and his monster in having both created an existential terror while also being one! And thus you are left unhinged.
Beware: the more you chew on this book the more it will haunt you...someplace deep, very deep.

Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein has endured in the popular imagination for two hundred years. Begun as a ghost story by an intellectually and socially precocious eighteen-year-old author during a cold and rainy summer on the shores of Lake Geneva, the dramatic tale of Victor Frankenstein and his stitched-together creature can be read as the ultimate parable of scientific hubris. Victor, “the modern Prometheus,” tried to do what he perhaps should have left to Nature: create life.



Shelly depicts birth as both creative and destructive, and the monster becomes a disfigured mirror of the natural cycle of life.
The monster, therefore, embodies Dr.Frankenstein’s corruption of nature in the quest for glory.
The protagonist's hamartia (fatal-flaw) - the god complex - is most clear in the line:
“Life and death appeared to me ideal bounds, which I should first break through, and pour a torrent of light into our dark world.”

This, for some, maybe an allegory of Gnosticism whereby God is a tyrant who creates evil in the world through repression.
What is the final verdict in terms of the Creature's good or evil identity?
Also are we, as human beings, formed by "nature" or "nurture" or both?
It is really hard to say who is the monster/evil, Creator =!= Createe.
But then again, how would we measure humanity in either of them?

The Daemon* was innocent, sweet, and caring, but also abused, abandoned, and unloved. The fact that society fails in its ability to sympathize with the creature is evidence enough of the absence of morality and common decency. As a result, the creature is a prime example of isolation. Essentially, the Creature does not begin as the cruel and monstrous murderer, but rather is a product of the lack of sympathy from society, and more importantly from his creator, Victor. Even being the source of the Creature's misery, a dying Victor earns his "child's" loyalty as the Creature drapes himself over his dying "father" and exclaims, "Oh, Frankenstein! Generous and self-devoted being! I...destroyed thee by destroying all thou lovedst". As if facing the reality he has painfully known all along, the Creature beholds his dead father and states, "Alas! He is cold, he cannot answer me".

Maybe the monster is more human than the human.

( )

I haven't read this since high school so it felt like I was reading it for the first time. There was so much more here than I remembered, both in plot and in ideas. Well worth a re-read. ( )

I can understand all the love I hear for this book. It is writing is eloquent and you can fell the time period the author is from. Sadly, this extreme difference is noticed because of how many (terrible) writing styles there are in this day. I cant say much that is not already said about this book. If you are someone who enjoys very well written art, this is for you. Writing style is not what I judge highly, as long as I can feel what the characters are feeling and see what they have seen, I enjoy a book. As for the person who wrote that Hollywood got it terribly wrong, they did. I listened to this on audio book (amazing reader btw, George Guidall is brilliant -I loved his audio reading of The Ear, The Eye, and The Arm By: Nancy Farmer. ( )