Frankenstein: Who is the Monster and Who is the Man?

 

    How do you do, 

   To start the countdown to Allhallowtide (or, as the non-Catholic readers would know it as, Hallowe'en -- which precedes All Saints' and All Souls' Day) I will reveal that every year, between this season and the Autumn Equinox, I commence to a binge reading of dark and spooky works. I don't have a particular order in this, unlike in most reading binges, which means I could start with just about anything. I could begin with Washington Irving's "Legend of Sleepy Hallow" and jump ahead to Poe's poems and stories, just as I would do with the American literature. Then it's fast fowarding to 1911 with Gaston Leroux's The Phantom of the Opera. I sometimes add in Oscar Wilde's Picture of Dorian Gray in the mix and Nathan Hawthorne's House of the Seven Gables as they contain dark themes. Some years even include Goethe's Faust, mostly with the grim scenes in the first part's climax, along with H.G. Wells' The Time Machine, The Invisible Man, and The War of the Worlds, and Stephen King's Carrie was included when I was in high school and college. Recently, I even included H.P. Lovecraft's "The Call of Cthuhlu" and Dante's Inferno (since it takes place in Hell, it does count as a kind of Medieval haunted house feel). At some point, I eventually reach Mary Shelley's Frankenstein: Or the Modern Prometheus, one of my favorite novels in English literature. 

    Technically speaking, almost anything written or published after Christ rose from the dead and ascended into Heaven has some degree of darkness, including the Revelations of St. John that provides one of the darkest chapters in the Bible (the days when Satan will be at his peak power and the evil in the world will be at the worst, while the faithful face their greatest challenge ever, and finally the End of the World). In Western Literatures, you can mark the trend from the Fall of Rome (as Petrarch named the period as the Dark Ages) with darkness as a sign of chaos and light of God brought forth in the heroes, such as in the epic of Beowulf and the Norse sagas. It later transfers down into the Medieval period, especially in wake of the Black Death, and the foreboding theme of death echoes through many works. Shakespeare wasn't immune to this as evidenced by his three darkest plays: MacBeth, Hamlet, and King Lear. Somewhere in this evolution of story telling, the core of the Christian doctrine (being resurrection of Christ who will bring a resurrection of the dead in the Second Coming) has become perverted with stories of the dead walking among us, and with the undead coming forth, all of which cause chills in our spines and goosebumps on our skins. In short, European literatures have some fascination with death and darkness, which is still present today (think of Harry Potter's chief antagonist, Lord Vordemort, who's name means "Fly from Death", and is also the embodiment of Death itself). So, when it comes to the clash of life and death in the realm of light and darkness, a discussion of Mary Shelley's novel comes into being as it deals with those themes, while also taking on other themes. 

    Imagine, female readers out there, you and your husband are newlyweds going on a vacation in the Alps. Once there, you meet up with the famous man of letters, George Gordon Byron, 6th Baron Byron, or Lord Byron as most call him. He and Mister Polidori are vacationing near lake Geneva and you and your husband meet up with him. You have plans of using this retreat for nature hikes, boat rides, and some sports you know of in the meadow. However, upon arrival, the weather goes from pleasant and sunny to rainy and wintry. What the heck? you wonder. It's June, the start of summer, and it's freezing outside. Who turned off the summer? Welcome to Eighteen Hundred and Froze to Death, as we in America call it. So, instead of doing all those things mentioned, you are stuck inside, keeping warm by the fire with glasses of sherry, and reading a few ghost stories of German origin translated into French. Then, Lord Byron decides to host a constant where everyone will come up with a ghost story that is original. You hear the men tell all sorts while you busy yourself with one. Then, one night, you dream of seeing "the pale student of unhallowed arts kneeling beside the thing he had put together"[1] which is put into motion by incredible means, then seek out his creator who fled from the creation and try to reach out to him at the bed curtains. This is enough to wake you up and narrate the scene to the men. 

   If this story is about you, your name would be Mary Wolstonecraft Shelley, nee Godwin, named after the feminist writer of the late 18th Century, 19 years old and wife of the poet Percy Shelley (admit it, you saw the footnote and panned down to take a look). Mrs. Shelley dreamed up the scene that later became chapter five of the novel, Frankenstein. She evidently was encouraged by her husband to expand on the scene and it became a short, three part novel, finally published in 1818, which means it will turn two hundred years in 2018. Over the two centuries since it was first published, Shelley's break out book (or not since all of her later works didn't match the power of Frankenstein and were forgotten) has been translated into many languages, adapted to plays and movies. We all know of the 1931 movie starring Boris Karloff as Frankenstein's creation and the franchise that spawned forth of the robotic giant, with scars and bolts, walking toward you. There are also the lesser known Hammer films with Peter Cushing of Star Wars fame playing Doctor Frankenstein, and one had his fellow Star Wars costar, David Prowse, play his creation. 1994 saw Sir Kenneth Branagh team up with Robert De Niro in Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. Then there are the loose adaptations like Young Frankenstein (a spoof on the Karloff movies, mostly), Rocky Horror Show, and Frankenweenie (in which a kid resurrects his dog). More recently, American author, Dean Koontz, made a re-imagining of Frankenstein and even titled it that way. First time readers of Shelley's novel may or may not be familiar with all these, but they would be in for a few surprises upon opening it up. 

   For starters, contrary to the Universal films, the setting doesn't happen in Transylvania. In the book, Victor Frankenstein states he is Gevenese, though born in Naples[2]. He creates his "monster" not in Geneva, either, but in the University of Ingolstadt, in Bavaria (today part of Germany). The setting switches between Switzerland and Germany a couple of times, with one visit to the British Isles, before climaxing in the White Sea. Another thing to surprise the reader is in the name. Frankenstein is not the name of the Creature, despite the popular branding of him. Frankenstein is the name of his creator. The book offers no name to him, but he does say to Frankenstein "I ought to be thy Adam"[3], a reference to the first man, created in the image of God, yet is called "Devil" by his creator which made him reference his status as a fallen angel[4]. Third, Shelley offers no description of how the monster was brought to life. She doesn't even give us a clue to how he was fashioned together. It's basically we see the sausage but never see how its made, if we could use that phrase. And there is a fourth surprise: the hunchback assistant Igor who populates the image of a mad scientist who is compared to Frankenstein does not exist in the book. 

  In fact, Frankenstein hardly resembles the mad scientist sort. He is often called Doctor Frankenstein, yet he is still a student in Ingolstadt when he made his creation. That is basically like calling Howard in The Big Bang Theory as Doctor Wolowitz, despite the fact that he is an engineer with a masters. Frankenstein did go into the university to study chemistry (or alchemy, as it was called), but later switched to poetry. The thing of him creating his creation is more about wanting to make another break through in science: to conquer death. That basically leads us to the subtitle: "The Modern Prometheus." 

   First, get rid of the movie you saw back in 2012. Prometheus was a titan in Greek Mythology who created Man out of clay. He then stole fire from the gods as humans were less likely to survive than animals who had the best gifts around. For that, Zeus had him chained to a mountain in the Caucasians and his liver would be pecked by ravens. Prometheus had also taught humans to offer poor quality sacrifices to Zeus and keep the meats for themselves, which angered the god farther. Prometheus stayed there until Heracles, son of Zeus, came along and freed him. Since Antiquity, the legend of Prometheus is more than the Greek retelling of the Discovery of Fire. A being dares to take what belonged to heaven, even with the intention of aiding the lowly in the process, which is still an act of theft, and is thus cast down and given a harsh punishment. For most of the history of Europe, the thought stayed on as it seemed an example of "Thou shalt not steal", until the Romantic period (of which the Shelleys and Lord Byron are a part of) came along and re-translated the legend to be anti-authoritarian. The fire that the gods hold is suddenly the key to the lowly becoming equal to the high, yet the people above don't want it shared and thus the hero takes it away and upsets the delicate balance. Two generations later, German philosopher, Frederic Nietzsche, made Prometheus a tragic figure in rebellion against the universe, yet is defeated and brought down. Of course, the Romantics understood the danger to this deed and showed it. A generation prior, William Blake had Bromion take Oothoon from Theotorman in Visions of the Daughters of Albion and he winds up chained with her and suffer remorse for his actions[5]. In the same instance, Mary Shelley has Victor Frankenstein take the ability to create life from God through science and winds up doing that cliched phrase "created a monster". 

    One thing with Frankenstein is also seen in the name: Victor. It is an obvious parody of victor, as in winner, but it leans more toward the vicar, a clergyman. Take also the surname being of German origin, meaning "Stone of the Franks", than you basically get the name that means "Vicar, Stone of the Franks". Before he creates his creation, Frankenstein starts out as the doted child of a loving couple. He has two brothers named Ernest and William, a cousin named Elizabeth, to whom he falls in love with, plus his best friend, Henry Clerval. These are English names, as Shelley was writing to English readers, so we can't doubt Elizabeth actually was christened Isabella while Henry was Henri or Heinrich, and Ernest was Ernst. Frankenstein spends many days of his childhood reading, which leads to Shelley making discourses on philosophical works that happen in the narrative (if they don't interest you, you can skim them over, though I don't really recommend it). One can see why Stephen King compared it to "a college dormitory bull session"[6] when reading it over. After reading and studying, he goes to Ingolstadt for higher learning, which makes him run into two professors, Messers. Krempe and Waldman, who stand in for the faculty of the institution (my interpretation of it, as I don't think they ever existed). Waldman is the one who takes Frankenstein on to his path of infamy, especially with this speech: 

"The ancient teachers of this science," he said, "promised impossibilities and performed nothing. The modern masters promise very little;...But these philosophers...have indeed performed miracles."[7]

   The speech is very biased against Ancient sciences, especially against the Greeks who coined the word. We know now that the ancients were able to invent things to benefit man, charted the universe, constructed structures, and created ways of solving equations. What the modern scientist does is merely follow in their footsteps, sometimes standing on the shoulders of genius. What made the men Waldman spoke of fascinating was how they were able to demystify the world after centuries of seeing it one way. They did prove that the sun and the earth weren't supported by giants, but by gravity (as well as the earth going around the sun, instead of the other way around), that lightning is electricity and an atmospheric discharge, and so on. It would seem that science has taken the magic out of the world, becoming the light to replace darkness, and expose the ghosts as nothing but illusions. I shouldn't have to add that Ingolstadt is also the place where the Illuminati was formed, met for a while, and then was disbanded, roughly in the time frame of the book's story, and its name means "light." 

    This light now entices Frankenstein take the next step, going along with what Dr. Ian Malcolm is saying in Jurassic Park (which shares many themes with Frankenstein). Instead of making a quote and placing a footnote, why not just watch this clip and listen for yourself. But, after that and taking some knowledge of mixing chemicals to make the elixir of life, Frankenstein goes out finds pieces of a human corpse and makes something out of them while the year flies away. This is not coming up with getting a baby to live outside of its mother's womb or to keep the body of a person gone vegetable kicking; he is using parts and parcels of people who lived their lives and were selected to die. Yet, he uses those pieces to bring together a reanimated man. Then, he brings it to life and realizes too late he made a mistake. In this period where men were rationally explaining away the existence of demons, imps, witches, and ghouls, all of a sudden, we got a demon that lives and breathes like any mortal creature. 

    The Creature is a very interesting character to walk the pages of English literature. He is a stark contrast to Boris Karloff's interpretation. He is big, but he is not a robot or a zombie (if anything, he could be likened to the Revenent, an undead creature that dies but is brought back to life). He evokes the image of the Egyptian god Osiris, who was killed and mutilated, but put back together and resurrected. Yet, where Osiris remains the same when he comes back, the Creature here begins as a newborn lamb. 

    While we may call him Frankenstein, that is not really his name. In the book, he is constantly referred to as Demon, Wretch, and, one time, Devil. Monster is the common name used, though he hardly seems like it. Creature is the working name, though it does dehumanize him somewhat. Another is Creation, which is also dehumanizing. The only logic to naming him Frankenstein is largely to make a kind of paternity between him and his creator, though by that logic Adam would have been called Adam, Son of God, in scripture and we'd all be bearing the title "Son / Daughter of God" in our names. So, basically, the Creature has no name, mostly as Frankenstein never thought to give him one and just referred to him by degrading terms. 

    The Creature leaves Ingolstadt and resides in the country, allowing for the Pasterol setting so familiar in Romantic arts to appear in the novel. He sees nature at work and learns how to support himself as no one is around to help him. During his life, he figures out how to make fire and how to acquire food, becoming a strict vegetarian who lives on nuts and berries. One day, he comes upon a cottage and watches a family consisting of an old man and his children, named the De Laceys. One day, they are joined by an Arabian woman named Safie, who the youth, Felix, is attached to. Through this setting, the Creature learns how to talk and read, eventually reading great works of literature in the process. He also learns of Man and the good and the bad of the human race. Finally, he learns of his creation and how even his own creator hates him.
   If there is one thing modern readers may find not so PC in this section is the constant appearance of discrimination. The Creature comes off as an analog to the era being that Shelley wrote at the end of the Napoleonic Wars, which were preceded by the French Revolution, which was in turn foreshadowed by the Age of Enlightenment, as though the Revolution and its ideals were the monster made by the thinking of Voltaire and Franklin. As Shelley was writing, Britain was in the Industrial Revolution which was sweeping Europe also, radically changing life. Political movements to dominate the century had their beginnings at this time like feminism and liberalism, both of which have created their own monsters. Some things in the novel can seem dated, especially the knowledge the Creature obtains. The history he learns is slanted toward the Europeans and the subplot of Felix and Safie presents two types of Muslim characters: the exotic Arab and the treacherous Turk. These do have some purpose to 19th century readers as the Ottoman Empire was still a power at the start while Arabia had not had many visitors from Europe since the Crusades. The exotic Arab is in Safie whose beauty attracts a young Frenchman named Felix De Lacey. The treacherous Turk is her father who promises her to Felix, only to go back on it after being freed from justice at the ruining of his potential in law's family. The portrayal might seem slanderous to Muslim readers, but it serves a purpose to let the Creature see Man's dark side, which gives him one in turn. The Creature also learns of poverty and classism while near the cottage, which enables Shelley to make a commentary on society itself.
    So, the Creature holds up a mirror for the reader, regardless of his skin color or religious beliefs, his political stance or his orientation, and asks the reader look at oneself and examine those stances, as opposed to picking something for a stance. He could say how he is excluded because he is one of his kind and how the actions of people have made him this way, pointing it out in every form. Imagine how the Creature might react to our current society, especially having something to say about recent tragedies and our leaders.
   When the Creature tries to communicate with the cottagers, it starts out with some awkwardness as he never got a chance to socialize, and even the Blind Man's children scorn him. He seeks out Frankenstein and kills William during his tenure, thus making in a matter of chapters the corruption of a soul that happens without will. The Creature wasn't born to be wicked, but circumstances made him that way. He only wanted companionship, but because of his ugliness he gets turned away at all turns and even harmed when he does one good thing (can you imagine Superman getting shot at for rescuing Lois? by one of her friends?). But, worst of all, to the Creature's mind, is that his own creator has spurned him and now he can offer nothing but torment to Frankenstein. So, after reading the book, it's hard to not watch the speech in Young Frankenstein that the Creature gives to keep the mob from killing Frederick, or that Apple commercial where the Creature attempts to sing "Home For the Holidays" to a crowd of tree gawkers, without getting misty in the eye, for in both examples he gets that warm welcome he had long sought out. Even that Hugh Jackman movie, Van Helsing, has the Creature becoming heroic. 

     This is not what happens in the book, though. The Creature requests a companion of Frankenstein with the promise that he would leave Europe for South America and they would be content. However, Frankenstein goes back on his promise and destroys the work, just as Safie's father went back on his promise to Felix. The Creature then declares war by murdering Henry and later Elizabeth, in his promise "I shall be with you on your wedding day". You can just imagine that in this day and age, such a threat would be taken serious and you would think a restraining order or something would help. Of course, how would you explain to the judge that you want a restraining order to someone who was just a year ago a corpse that you brought back to life. You might get dismissed from the court room as a loon. This is also why Frankenstein held his silence when William was murdered and the nanny, Justine, was punished. An innocent woman is executed for the crimes by another, in a portrayal of the justice system (note the pun, Justine and justice) that comes across as Anti-Catholic at times -- she is threatened into confessing the murder by the confessor and the confession is a lie.

     Eventually, Frankenstein is left with only Ernest alive and he chases the Creature into Russia and then up north. Shelley opens and closes the book with Captain Robert Walton and his expedition in the North Pole, which follows closely the plot of The Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner (even with the mention of the Albatross). Just like in the movie, Titanic (1997), the book ended scenes feature a man searching for something (Walton's case is adventure to the unknown as shown with the North Pole) while probing the Arctic with a ship manned by Russians. Then he meets a character who narrates the story, thus making it a story within a story, plus another through the Creature's narrative. Frankenstein dies of hypothermia and the Creature repents of his deeds. He waxes poetic of his deeds to Walton and vows to die up in the North Pole, thus ending the book as a downer. Both Frankenstein and his Creature die cut off from humanity, for the former matches to Prometheus. 

    Frankenstein; Or the Modern Prometheus is not a long book. It's 196 pages long (fifteen of which are devoted to the two introductions) split across three parts and twenty four chapters. That doesn't sound like much, you might think, but why did it take two years for Mary Shelley to publish all that? The publishing process was a little different then. It was published in a serial form, originally. As to the style, if you took out all of the philosophical digressions and angst passages, plus shrink the backstory of Frankenstein down some, the book would be vastly shorter, barely passing the 100 page marker. The dialogue is poetic sounding with the Creature's initial speech to Frankenstein sounding like that of a prayer (he uses Thee and Thy when addressing him the way a priest does to God). I will say Shelley is able to make a representation of men in the book better than she does with her fellow women, which seems surprising. Elizabeth and Justine, plus Caroline Frankenstein, are the main women in the book whose roles are fleeting and tragic as they die off one by one. Agatha and Safie are brought up in the Creature's narrative as either the dutiful daughter or the damsel. At the same time, the men are little more than symbols: the professors being the Pan like tempters, Henry is the boyhood friend, and so on. The only really fleshed out characters are Victor Frankenstein, his Creation, and Captain Walton, who each seek something. Walton and the Creature are seeking a companion and Walton shares Frankenstein's quest for glory. It should be pointed out the truly fleshed out characters are the ones narrating the book.
    Looking over the book, Mary Shelley is able to create scenes of desolation and horror, especially once the Creature has been created. The first four chapters are spent on setting up Frankenstein and his ambition to conquer death. Chapter four mentions him raiding charnel houses, slaughter houses, and dissecting rooms[8] just to get the pieces of the body, as opposed to simply unearthing a dead man and using the body for his experiment. Then comes chapter five, from which point things get dark, including the pivot-able scene of the Creature coming to life. The moment is a parody of the Creation of Adam, even making an inverse where the Creation holds out the hand to the Creator. When the Creature narrates his tale, we seen pastoral scenes of nature, that makes one thing of paintings. Even Frankenstein's ascent of Mont Blanc is like the painting of the man on the mountain. It gets dreary afterward, finally climaxing with Elizabeth's murder that is done to the style of the painting "Nightmare." Thus the light and dark of the Romantic period is exploited with artistic imagery in the text.

   When looking about the story, one common image pops up in the descriptions: ice. Remember, Shelley was inspired to write Frankenstein in the summer of 1816, which was the Year Without a Summer. Through out the book, you see this image of snow and ice that often makes the book feel cold: the book opens and closes in the North Pole, with Walton's ship trapped by ice, the Creature spends his early days in the cold, Frankenstein climbs Mont Blanc and scales its glaciers, and the Creature dies alone in a frozen waste land. It also matches to Dante's Inferno where, instead of the usual fire and brimestone you get in a Sunday sermon, Hell is shown as a giant, dark, eternal freezer with a lake of ice holding the worst of sinners. Frost brought that up in his "Fire and Ice" by stating:

If it had to perish twice, I think I know enough hate, / to say for destruction ice is also great / and would suffice.[9]

    Light and darkness. Fire and ice. Contrasts of the matter are present in stories, with European literature consisting of darkness frequently. The darkness of death is present in Frankenstein where Victor Frankenstein sees it as the ultimate enemy to beat. The irony was his action of creating life to beat death resulted in more death as the Creature does murder, either deliberately or inadvertently. Of course, it is Frankenstein whose soul bleeds from this as it was him who set the events into motion. The Creature never sought to murder people, not at first. All he wanted was companionship. However, coming upon a dark world as this where people are repelled by ugliness (even today, where good looking guys could get away with certain actions and racial profiling is rampant in major cities) makes it harder and it breaks his heart. So, he becomes a monster. At the same time, could he really be a monster? Or as Disney's The Hunchback of Notre Dame had us decide: "who is the monster and who is the man?"[10]
     One thing to add is the book Frankenstein turns 200 years old next year. 


1: Shelley, Mary, Frankenstein. 1818 Author's Introduction (1831). pg. x-xi.
2: Shelley. pg. 33
3: Shelley. pg. 95.
4: Ibid.
5: Blake, William, Visions of the Daughters of Albion. 1793.
6: King, Stephen. Introduction to Frankenstein, Dracula, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Signet Classic. 1978. pg. vii.
7: Shelley, Mary, Frankenstein. pg. 47.
8: Shelley. pg. 53.
9: Frost, Robert. "Fire and Ice."
10: "The Bells of Notre Dame", Alan Menkin. 1996.