Eddie Whitlock's Blog: Reader and Writer - Posts Tagged "frankenstein"

I'm struggling right now to listen to the audiobook for Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. It is a struggle, but it is much easier than my repeated attempts to read the book.

Like so many folks, I loved the Frankenstein Monster created by James Whale and Boris Karloff. To struggle through the original source material hurts. I really want to like this book. I love the Old Monster.

The book, though, is less a horror story and more of a reflection on our nature as the abandoned children of God. Created and then set free to find agony in the rejection of others and the recognition of our own hideousness, we are angry Adams, challenging God to give happiness to His creation.

I realize the book was really a short story originally and was probably more exciting in that format. In its published form, it is padded with unnecessary meandering that doesn't do a lot to further the plot nor our understanding of the characters. Instead, we - at best - may see the horridness of the life of the Monster because it is juxtaposed with those of various "normal" folks.

Despite this, I have all the more respect for Shelley's having written this, the first science fiction novel. Never once do I question the "science" behind the creation of the Monster. (Btw, it's done with chemistry and without lightning.)

I'm about halfway through the book at this point and it's been a long journey. I'm determined to make it. And then, well. Lookout, Dracula.

Several times in the latter part of the novel Frankenstein, the monster tells Frankenstein, "I shall be with you on your wedding night." The implications of this threat are wonderfully horrific and handled in a way that may have been typical of the period it was written, but that now lend a subtlety that is often missing from modern horror.

Stephen King says that if you're going to write horror, eventually you have to show them the monster. Mary Shelley certainly showed us the eight-foot-tall monster vividly, describing him:

His yellow skin scarcely covered the work of muscles and arteries beneath; his hair was of a lustrous black, and flowing; his teeth of a pearly whiteness; but these luxuriances only formed a more horrid contrast with his watery eyes, that seemed almost of the same colour as the dun-white sockets in which they were set, his shrivelled complexion and straight black lips.

Still, it was his threat to his creator that makes him a monster.

Never mind that he has killed the narrator's little brother (leading to the execution of an innocent for the crime) and a fellow named Clerval, the monster's threat about the wedding night suggests so very much more.

(I found it interesting that Victor Frankenstein marries his cousin and childhood playmate pretty much on the suggestion of his father with no hint having been made of it before. Still, I am a modern reader of this 195-year-old story.)

I found myself thinking of a more twisted ending for the story, an ending that has the monster inseminating Elizabeth and bringing about his race of creatures. It's no wonder so many writers and movie-makers have launched ideas from this story for the past two centuries.

I'm reading Volcano Weather by Henry and Elizabeth Stommel. It's the story of 1816, the year some called "Eighteen Hundred and Froze to Death." Only one person apparently died in the event - and it does not seem definite that his death was caused by the weather; it may have been a heart attack.

The eruption of Mount Tambora put enough ash into the air that it darkened the area, making day appear night. The ash cloud drifted and apparently changed the weather in Western Europe, Eastern Canada and New England. Significantly lower temperatures killed crops and ultimately altered dietary habits, the economy and population shifts.

I don't know a lot about the event, but I find it interesting as an actual episode of climate change in our recent history. I have no interest in using it for any political goals. I'm interested in using it - maybe - as portending a similar event in the future.

Suppose a bigger volcano erupted in a different location and the ash cloud lowered temperatures world-wide by several degrees?

This book is good, but another book on the subject was released earlier this year. I've put it on hold at the library and I'm looking forward to seeing what it adds to my knowledge of this.

Damn, but I do love a good WHAT IF?!?

One other thing: The novel I just finished, Frankenstein, was written by Mary Shelley. She and her friends were sitting around, suffering through the uncommonly cold summer of 1816, when they decided to write horror stories.