false 4 6 false false Mon Dec 10 00:00:00 -0800 2007 Mon Oct 20 15:01:19 -0700 2008 Mon Oct 20 15:03:10 -0700 2008 Frankenstein is a fantastic character-driven piece with one of the finest endings in literature.

Despite being considered one of the first fully realized science fiction novels, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein really got the shaft when it came to adaptations. It’s the monster slain by pop culture perception. (Dracula, on the other hand, did quite well outside of the book.) Frankenstein is not a big, groaning zombie with a hump in his back, bolts in his green neck and a jagged cut across the forehead. Frankenstein is the man who made the monster. The book’s subtitle, “The Modern Prometheus,” is an allusion to the dangers of the industrial movement and man playing God. As technology continues to fly off the rails, the novel’s commentary still rings true today.

The novel is recorded by Captain Robert Walton in letters to his sister. Walton’s ship is icebound, and after a seeing a large man go by on a dog sled, they come across Victor Frankenstein, a scientist who pursued the large man until he fell very ill. Frankenstein tells the captain of his past, being influenced by teachers of science and having a great interest in alchemy, until deciding to create a man out of dead corpses. Frankenstein intended this man, the one now riding on the dogsled, to be beautiful, but when the creature awoke, he was horrified. At over eight feet tall, with translucent skin, black lips and yellow watery eyes, Frankenstein fled from the creature without giving it a name (save the insults he spat at it as they continually crossed paths).

The greatest strength of the book is the outstanding character development. In an admirable role-reversal, the reader really feels for the monster. The creator’s rejection fuels the creature’s dark motives. You understand him, the reasoning behind what he feels/does, but you disagree with the things he ends up doing. The scientist, Frankenstein, however, grows in morals, misery and regret. He cannot control what he has created, yet he cannot give in either. He’s still got family; he’s still got responsibilities. Frankenstein has a heart to keep going, even if his mind says otherwise. There’s this great part where Victor Frankenstein is out on a boat in the middle of his misery. So much strife has already hit, so much strife has yet to come (and he knows it), but as he’s watching the sun come up he’s struck with that odd and strange beauty that seems to stick in life: “How mutable are our feelings, and how strange is that clinging love we have of life even in the excess of misery.”

If there’s any downside to Frankenstein, it’s the sheer lack of science and constant monologues. Come on, who really talks like that? Blabbing on uninterrupted for what would be hours. Then again, the creature is so lonely and Frankenstein is so guilt-ridden it almost seems plausible. In the end though, the strengths of the novel far outweigh the questionable method of storytelling. Four stars.
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