As the onslaught of the felled leaves graces the paths and the chill in the air approaches (along with the new movie coming out very soon), I find it most appropriate to share a personal review of the Gothic horror book “Frankenstein” by Mary Shelley. I will try my best to sustain the spoiler-free nature of this review, and with respect to that, here is a recap.
Victor Frankenstein, the story’s central protagonist, seeks to test the limits of his scientific knowledge by attempting to animate life with his own hands. With his success, he is imposed with a perverse exhibition of life, and decides to abandon his creation out of terror of what the book refers to as the “daemon.” The story progresses in consequences to Victor’s own wrongdoing as something irredeemably wretched. I will leave it at that … for it was an excellent read.
Prior to reading this classic, I acknowledged the whole mythology of Frankenstein in utterly contrasting ideas from what the original provided. The culturally conceived notion of Frankenstein was nothing more to me than narratives of a despicable monster brought upon by a mad scientist. A wholly fantastic idea, but that was all that remained in what I knew. I even thought Frankenstein referred to the monster. In fact, the original story is heavily layered in philosophical ideas and socially relevant themes, which proved the book to be thoroughly captivating. These elements turned it from not merely a good horror story, into a legendary parable. To name a few of these subjects and themes explored in this parable, they include knowledge paired with unlimiting ambition, isolation, the relationship between creature and its creator, vengeance and more (Read the book!). To quote a line that encapsulates those ideas quite nicely, Victor denounces: “Learn from me, if not by my precepts, at least by my example, how dangerous is the acquirement of knowledge, and how much happier that man is who believes his native town to be the world, than he who aspires to become greater than his nature will allow.” I would also like to include his meditations in creating the daemon: “A new species would bless me as its creator and source; many happy and excellent natures would owe their being to me. No father could claim the gratitude of his child so completely as I should deserve theirs.”
It’s impressive to note that Shelley was only 18 when she wrote this book. She did so knowing that readers might conjecture some parts of the story to reflect her own meditations on the acquisition of knowledge during an age when she was eager to learn. These themes brought the story to a powerful level and got me to finish the book in merely a couple of days, rendering it stronger than it would have been if it were purely horrific.
Another aspect that made the book so great was Shelley’s brilliant writing. I have read online reviews of people saying they found tedium in her repetitive writing and subjects reiterated constantly throughout the book that exhausted the literature. It is true I caught her using the words “wretched” and “ardour” almost a hundred times and describing the abject miseries of Victor and the daemon just as much, but that never proved to me to be an obstacle to seeing her craft of such beautiful and effective expressions of literature. To quote a few lines, she wrote: “But I am a blasted tree; the bolt has entered my soul; and I felt then that I should survive to exhibit what I shall soon cease to be—a miserable spectacle of wrecked humanity, pitiable to others and intolerable to myself.” With this, she brilliantly conveys, almost in a confessional style, descriptions of the most wretched experiences. I surmise she was a thoroughly innovative writer for her time.
I have to say, although this might be a personal effect, I found the book so captivating and immersive that I caught myself under the contagion of such narrations of misery and turmoil that I honestly felt quite terrible at times when I read this book. Her descriptions of the subjects of such a perversion of nature, such a swallowing guilt and irrevocable wretchedness in Victor, and especially the daemon as a misunderstood creature were highly palpable,I swear! Read these lines spoken by the daemon in one melancholic passage: “I am malicious because I am miserable… If I cannot inspire love, I will cause fear… I allowed myself to be borne away by them, and forgetting my solitude and deformity, dared to be happy… My person was hideous and my stature gigantic. What did this mean? Who was I? What was I? Whence did I come? These questions continually recurred, but I was unable to solve them.” Brilliant. Needless to say, I implore you to replace your underwhelming knowledge of Frankenstein with the original horror, and make sure to watch the movie after!
