Frankenstein

by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

"every instant that you have wasted on those books is utterly and entirely lost. You have burdened your memory with exploded systems and useless names. Good God! In what desert land have you lived, where no one was kind enough to inform you that these fancies which you have so greedily imbibed are a thousand years old and as musty as they are ancient? I little expected, in this enlightened and scientific age, to find a disciple of Albertus Magnus and Paracelsus. My dear sir, you must begin your studies entirely anew."

Victor Frankenstein has hallmarks of a pseudo-scientist, in his resistance to modern scientific method and theory, his preference for things long disproven like alchemy, etc.

I had retrod the steps of knowledge along the paths of time and exchanged the discoveries of recent inquirers for the dreams of forgotten alchemists. Besides, I had a contempt for the uses of modern natural philosophy. It was very different when the masters of the science sought immortality and power; such views, although futile, were grand; but now the scene was changed. The ambition of the inquirer seemed to limit itself to the annihilation of those visions on which my interest in science was chiefly founded. I was required to exchange chimeras of boundless grandeur for realities of little worth.

the thought made me shiver, that the creature whom I had left in my apartment might still be there, alive and walking about.

your baby

nothing but the unbounded and unremitting attentions of my friend could have restored me to life.

a little love, a little electricity

"I can offer you no consolation, my friend," said he; "your disaster is irreparable. What do you intend to do?"

Job should have had such a friend

Who could arrest a creature capable of scaling the overhanging sides of Mont Saleve?

who can contend with Leviathan? (Job 41)

The wounded deer dragging its fainting limbs to some untrodden brake, there to gaze upon the arrow which had pierced it, and to die, was but a type of me.

The flame devoured her soft marrow; the silent wound throbbed in her heart. Unhappy Dido burned. Mad with love, she wandered through the city—like a careless doe pierced by a shepherd’s arrow from afar as he roams the Cretan forest with his bow. Unknowing, he leaves the shaft behind; she bolts through Dicte’s groves, the fatal arrow in her flank. - Virgil's "Aeneid," Book IV (Shadi Bartsch translation)

oh! That I could, with the extinction of your miserable existence, restore those victims whom you have so diabolically murdered!"

You cannot raise them on the third or the last day. You can reanimate their bodies in your own way.

My sensations had by this time become distinct, and my mind received every day additional ideas. My eyes became accustomed to the light and to perceive objects in their right forms; I distinguished the insect from the herb, and by degrees, one herb from another.

he observes and takes in everything like a good scientist would

all my past life was now a blot, a blind vacancy in which I distinguished nothing. From my earliest remembrance I had been as I then was

remember'st thou Thy making, while the Maker gave thee being? We know no time when we were not as now - Satan disputing that he is a created being, in Milton's "Paradise Lost"

I read of men concerned in public affairs, governing or massacring their species.

It moved every feeling of wonder and awe that the picture of an omnipotent God warring with his creatures was capable of exciting.

His take is not that it's a just war, but rather a parent warring with his own children. Like the men of government "massacring their own species"; he sees no just wars there either.

the human senses are insurmountable barriers to our union.

get thee to Notre Dame cathedral (though Quasimodo is long dead)

Yes, he had followed me in my travels; he had loitered in forests, hid himself in caves, or taken refuge in wide and desert heaths;

In cónfused march forlorn, th’ adventurous bands With shudd’ring horror pale, and eyes aghast Viewed first their lamentable lot, and found No rest: through many a dark and dreary vale They passed, and many a region dolorous, O’er many a frozen, many a fiery alp, Rocks, caves, lakes, fens, bogs, dens, and shades of death, - Milton's "Paradise Lost" ******************* Even so things might have gone far otherwise, if Gollum himself had remained unchanged; but whatever dreadful paths, lonely and hungry and waterless, he had trodden, driven by a devouring desire and a terrible fear, they had left grievous marks on him. He was a lean, starved, haggard thing, all bones and tight-drawn sallow skin. A wild light flamed in his eyes, but his malice was no longer matched by his old griping strength. - JRR Tolkien, "The Lord of the Rings"

the murderer of my peace

The murderer of your dear ones, and you say the murderer of your peace. As egotistical a statement as this is, it reflects the Monster's aim; he doesn't care for these victims one way or another; his aim is to make Victor suffer perpetually. The Monster is essentially playing God by wishing eternal condemnation on Victor Frankenstein and determining to make it happen. Or better yet, he's Zeus, who punished Prometheus by chaining him to a rock, where an eagle would eat his liver on daily basis, the liver regenerating every day in an eternal cycle of suffering.

Who can follow an animal which can traverse the sea of ice and inhabit caves and dens where no man would venture to intrude?

Beowulf

But revenge kept me alive; I dared not die and leave my adversary in being.

Victor should apply to Darth Plagueis the Wise.

Once I falsely hoped to meet with beings who, pardoning my outward form, would love me for the excellent qualities which I was capable of unfolding.

this is what we must do if we ever meet extraterrestrial beings, and what we hope they would do for us