Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein

The Frankenstein story is notorious. I come from the same perspective most of us come from. I have seen countless reproductions of the story through satires, such as Young Frankenstein and through the original black and white films but I didn’t realize how different the original story was until I read Mary Shelly’s version. The biggest difference in the story was the story perspective. Telling the story through letters of a voyager heading to the arctic, at first I thought I was reading the wrong thing. Instead the letters added a sense of realism, we weren’t hearing the story from the lone scientist but from someone who believed his tale and thought it was credible enough to retell. As I was reading I was also waiting page after page for the notorious description of the monster, bolts in the neck, a forehead with stitches. The description however never came, the monster was left up to your own imagination, I just wish I didn’t have so many other iconic scenes stuck in my head to prevent my imagination from running wild with my own version of the creature. There was also a beautiful relationship between the creature, Victor, and the sailor. All seem to be romanticists and they all had a similar relationship with companionship. The Creature was just the most extreme, an outcast from society with the original deadbeat dad. Victor too had an element of being an outcast. The voyager had the same element but only played to a small degree. The fact that he is sailing to the desolate arctic, even with his crew he feels alone. There is a potential for friendship with Victor and its his same passions such as his love for science with draws the sailor to Victor. The other problem I had with the story was with the settings, like where the creature was made. I realize I only had these hang ups because of all the other adaptations I have seen and wish I didn’t but Geneva is not the same as Transylvania or some other god forsaken back country cliffs with horribly dusty laboratories that always seem to have a thunderstorm of a lifetime looming about the place.

introduction

This blog has been created as a tool to respond to literature for the horror, fantasy, sci-fi class at Ringling college of art and design. Each week a minimum of 350 words will be posted in response to reading assignments and films seen.