Eddie Whitlock's Blog: Reader and Writer - Posts Tagged "monster"
I Shall Be with You on Your Wedding Night
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.
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.
Reader and Writer
I began to write because it seemed to be a realm in which one could exercise omnipotence. It's not.
My characters demand to make their own decisions and often the outcomes are wildly different from wha ...more
My characters demand to make their own decisions and often the outcomes are wildly different from wha ...more
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