Frankenstein's Monster: Growing Pains

A dreary castle perched on a cliff.  Lightning cracks in a dark sky and suddenly we're brought to a mad scientist in his lab, instruments bubbling, fizzing, and steaming over everywhere. The camera pans to something hidden under a sheet, something huge, unnaturally huge, resembling a human figure. A familiar croak of “yesss masster...” as the scientist laughs with devilish glee and flips the fateful switch.  We watch as the figure rises and begins his hellbent rampage of terror on unsuspecting villagers.

The story, of course, is Frankenstein, one of the most well-known monster stories in the popular imagination.  We can all call to mind the figure of a freakishly tall, green, stitched together creature walking around with a dead-pan face, eliciting screams and shrieks from unsuspecting ladies.

We've all grown up seeing or hearing the tale one way or another, but do we really know this monster as well as we think we do?

A little while ago, I picked up a copy of the 1818 version, written by the Mary Shelley when she was just 20. The story was birthed after a night of debating with her writing group over who could tell the best Gothic horror story (I think she won).  

I went into the novel expecting a generous helping of limb-tearing fury and fire-brandishing villagers, all screaming "kill the monster" and other such exclamations.  Much to my surprise, there was very little of this; what I found was much better.

I found a monster thrown into the world, alone, abandoned, and inherently good.  He suffered immensely, spoke passionately, and wrestled endlessly with his creator, Dr. Frankenstein.

In this post I hope to show just how different Shelley's original monster was from the monster of today's popular imagination.  The version of the book I'll be quoting from is the Oxford University Press, 1998 version.

So here we go.  The monster.  He's pieced together over time from a collection of cadaverous remains and Dr. Frankenstein's wild ambition to "create a human being" (p. 53).  The doctor toils unceasingly at this until he witnesses his creation come to life.  However, instead of greeting the monster as he had planned, as a father who "could claim the gratitude of his child so completely" (p. 54), he found that "the dream vanished, and breathless horror and disgust filled my heart" (p.57).  He describes the monster:

"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 luxuriancies 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 shriveled complexion and straight black lips." (p. 57)

From the start, the monster is branded as a disfigured wretch, so ugly and vile that not even the one who brought him life will accept him (later in the novel the monster makes some poignant connections between himself and God's Adam from Paradise Lost).

From there, Dr. Frankenstein, after abandoning the monster, goes on a series of journeys, external and internal, where he wrestles with the consequences of his hasty undertaking.  In an attempt to soothe his troubled spirits, he retreats into the mountains for some rest and relaxation.  It doesn't last long.  The monster somehow finds him and forces his creator to listen to the story of his life so far.

His narrative starts with the moments immediately after he received life and escaped the laboratory. After being violently dismissed by some of the local villagers, he reflects that he

"Was benevolent; my soul glowed with love and humanity: but am I not alone, miserably alone?           You, my creator, abhor me; what hope can I gather from your fellow-creatures, who owe me                nothing? They spurn and hate me." (p. 100)

 When he realizes that all he can find in humanity is scorn and rejection, he runs into the neighboring woods, feeding on berries and roots, finding that he can survive on very little.  Eventually, he finds a small hovel under a woodpile on the property of a small French family.  The narrative that centers on this family and the monster's development here is one of the most telling about what he has had to endure, and just how hard it is to live in a world where you're made of other people's remains.

As the monster makes a temporary home for himself by the French cottagers, he "longs to join them" (p. 100) but knows that this is impossible and would only get him the same kind of treatment he received at the hands of the viallgers.  Despite all this, and because of his deep longings for inclusion, companionship, and acceptance that he was created with, he stays around, watching and waiting for his time to present himself

Many things happen while he watches them.  He sees the effects of poverty on the small family and the sadness they experience.  He longs

"To discover the motives and feelings of these lovely creatures; I was inquisitive to know. ...I               thought (foolish wretch!) that it might be in my power to restore happiness to these deserving             people" (p. 115).

By listening to one of the cottage family members reading aloud, the monster learns about the darker side of humanity.  Interestingly, he reflects that he "looked on crime as a distant evil" (p.127) and that he "could not conceive how one man could go forth to murder his fellow" (p. 119), contrasting these with the "gentle manners and amiable qualities of the cottagers" (p. 120).

Another harsh blow the monster has to take comes when he realizes that he is the only one of his kind.  He remarks that

"When I looked around I saw and heard of none like me. Was I then a monster, a blot upon the             earth, from which all men fled, and whom all men disowned? I cannot describe to you the agony         that these reflections inflicted upon me: I tried to dispel them but sorrow only increased with               knowledge." (p. 120)

Watching the cottagers is a bitter-sweet experience for the monster.  He realizes how strong the desire for virtue and love is within him, but at the same time knows how utterly impossible it is for him to attain these qualities.

The sad story continues, the monster keeps watching, and eventually can't take his isolation anymore.  He talks himself into believing that "when they should become acquainted with my admiration of their virtues, they would compassionate me, and overlook my personal deformity" (p. 130).  When I was reading this, I really wondered if the monster actually believed that, or if he knew it was all futile.

Either way, he had nothing to lose, so he eventually appeared to his dear cottagers.

It didn't go well.

The father, being blind, talked with him for a while and offered him a place to stay and food to eat out of the goodness of his heart.  Unfortunately, this was short lived.  Felix, the son, came home to find this hideous monstrosity at his father's feet, crying out "don't desert me!"

Look what happens next:

"Felix darted forward, and with supernatural force tore me from his father, to whose knees I clung:       in a transport of fury, he dashed me to the ground, and struck me violently with his stick. I could         have torn him limb from limb, as the lion rends the antelope. But my heart sunk within me as with       bitter sickness, and I refrained." (page 135)

All that the monster had hoped, longed, and waited for came apart before his watery, yellow eyes.

He was alone.  Again.

Things don't get much better from there.  The monster goes on with his story (cursing his creator multiple times), and tells us his next idea: find a child who is too young to have any idea about what he (the monster) really is, and forcefully "adopt" the child as his companion.

What could possibly go wrong?

It turns out that the child he finds is none other than Dr. Frankenstein's little brother.  And what's more is the unfortunate child makes the completely understandable mistake of finding the monster horrifying.  The monster, finally having enough "grasped [the child's] throat to silence him, and in a moment he lay dead at [his] feet" (p. 143).

Brutal.

From here, the monster's story gets darker and darker.  There's a string of family murders aimed at Frankenstein, the framing of an innocent girl which leads to her death, as well as the complete torment of Dr. Frankenstein through it all.

But despite all his evil, malicious murders, I found myself feeling bad for the monster.  Obviously what he did was dreadful and inexcusable, but the fact remains that his story is extremely tragic.  I think it would be hard to deny that.  Every one of us can recall a time when we've wanted to be accepted and loved; for us there was always a possibility of it happening.  But for the monster...no way.  Not ever.  He was totally isolated in a way that no one could ever understand, and that no one would ever even care to understand.

The point I'm trying to make by explaining all this is that I think we've lost the original sense of who the monster is and the important messages he brings us.  Many of us have no idea that when he was first written about, he was a complex, deeply conflicted, perpetually tormented creature who even considered Satan better off than he was.  After all, at least Satan had "his companions, fellow-devils, to admire and encourage him” (p. 130).

When we compare Shelley's monster with the monster in films like Victor Frankenstein (2015), it's clear that much has been lost .  Whereas the 1818 monster is conflicted, and laments his murders even to the final pages, the 2015 monster shows no remorse whatsoever.  Whereas the original monster is eloquent, rational, and shows understanding, the modern day creature merely utters incomprehensible grunts as he kills randomly.

After I read Frankenstein, I was left with questions like "what does it really mean to be human?" "how capable are we of kindness to others?" and "in our modern age of technology, how precariously are we treading that fine line between man's domain, and God's?"  All questions which are worth the time it took to read the book.

In closing, if you will be so kind as to allow the use of a well-known cliche: the book was definitely better than the movie.

- The Frosty Hound