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Frankenstein

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

Start date: October 1, 2018

Finish date: October 31, 2018

Why we're reading this: Revisit the Shelf Classic Read, October 2018

Previous Group Reads:
Revisit the Shelf Classic Read, October …more
[close] Revisit the Shelf Classic Read, October 2018

Previous Group Reads:
Revisit the Shelf Classic Read, October 2016
Revisit the Shelf Classic Read, October 2014
Old School Classic Group Read, October 2013

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Jun 13, 2010 Stephen Hegedus rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

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I love this novel!

I loved it when I read it in Grade 11 and I love it now after just reading it. Upon re-reading it I found so many things I never found before.

I have to say that I don't really feel sorry for Victor. There. I said it. Victor Frankenstein got too caught up in his ambition to see that what he was doing is wrong! He brought someone into the world who he shouldn't have brought in and he paid for it. I don't think his punishment was harsh - he did abandon his own creation!

I also got I love this novel!

I loved it when I read it in Grade 11 and I love it now after just reading it. Upon re-reading it I found so many things I never found before.

I have to say that I don't really feel sorry for Victor. There. I said it. Victor Frankenstein got too caught up in his ambition to see that what he was doing is wrong! He brought someone into the world who he shouldn't have brought in and he paid for it. I don't think his punishment was harsh - he did abandon his own creation!

I also got the feeling in the final chapter of Frankenstein that it was kind of a Shakespearean tragedy. Victor Frankenstein would be our tragic hero, his tragic flaw would be his ambition. It works! Death plays a key role, another element to the tragedy! You can also argue that Victor is the villain of the work while the monster is the anti-hero.

I noticed a few words repeat as I read the text. Soul was one of them. I couldn't help but think of Wuthering Heights where the soul places a key role as well. The soul represents everything that a person feels and indeed this is true in this novel. The soul is the spiritual part of the body and it's connected to loneliness. Heathcliff and Catherine are connected by their souls. The monster and Victor are connected by their souls too - not in the same way, of course, in the exact opposite! Their desire for revenge is what connects them with their souls! The moon is also another world I noticed when repeat a lot. The moon is an individual object in the sky - a very lonely object in the sky. Perhaps Shelley is suggesting that the moon is a metaphorical symbol for the monster and/or Victor.

Nature is a huge theme in the novel. It as written in the Romantic period after all and the Shelleys were admirers of nature. Nature is the calming force in the novel. Whenever Victor or the monster are angry or upset, they look upon nature to be revitalized. Even when the world is a dark and danergous place, nature always seems to be a bright and welcoming world where everything is calm and secure.

The novel is subtitled "The Modern Prometheus." Prometheus was a character in Greek Mythology that stole fire from the Gods and gave it to the Titans (I think it was the Titans, at least). Inaccuracy aside, the punishment for his theft for for him to be chained to a rock and have a vulture peck out his liver all day and they it would regenerate the next and it would happen all over again. This continuous cycle suggests the torture of both Victor and the monster. Their agonies, their ideas of revenge are all continuous, or never-ending forces in the novel until, of course, its conclusion.

This is truly a masterpiece of science fiction and I hope one day to teach its genius to the next generation! ...more

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