Book Review - Frankenstein by Mary Shelley

Title: Frankenstein
Series: -
Author: Mary Shelley
 
Description: A twisted, upside-down creation myth, Mary Shelley's chilling Gothic tale lays bare the dark side of science, and the horror within us all. It tells the story of Victor Frankenstein, who plunders graveyards to create a new being from the bodies of the dead - but whose botched creature causes nothing but murder and destruction. Written after a nightmare when its author was only eighteen, Frankenstein gave birth to the modern science fiction novel.
 
Review: Mary Shelley’s “Frankenstein” is the classic tale about Victor Frankenstein who created a “monster” out of body parts of dead people.
 
When most people think of Frankenstein, the think of the big, green monster with bolts screwed into his head, that came to life due to a strike of lightning. But all of that was not what Mary Shelley wrote about. The story follows ambitious scientist Victor Frankenstein, who manages to create a living creature. His creation, this his so-called “monster”, feel abandoned by its creator and begins to wreak death and destruction, out of desperation.
 
Frankenstein just wants to create life and beauty and experiments with body parts of corpses. To his own surprise, he succeeds in giving life to his creation, but when he discovers that the creature is hideous and behaves in a very primitive way, he becomes frightened of it and chases it away.
 
Like I stated before, many things that we belief to know about the classic story, weren’t actually in Mary Shelley’s book. He was no green monster, he had no bolts in is head, there was no laboratory where he was created, no strike of lightning to bring him to life, no assistant named Igor. So in that perspective, the story was very surprising to me, because I always assumed that those elements came directly from Shelley’s book. And although these things all sound exciting, I wasn’t missing it while reading “Frankenstein”. The story goes in depth of the character of Victor Frankenstein and his creation. Seeing both their perspectives.
 
The big question raised in this book is, who is the real monster: Victor Frankenstein or the creature being called monster? Frankenstein is a very unlikeable character, hard to sympathize with, egotistical, judgmental. The creature created has no idea of the world, doesn’t know how to speak, knows nothing of people and their behavior. He has to learn their ways in order to survive. But because of his appearance, the name “monster” is easily given, so for him it’s only natural to also act like one. So both parties are doing bad thing. But Frankenstein is well aware of what’s good and evil, when his creation is not yet familiar with it.  
 
Even though the book is fairly short, it took me some time to finish it. It’s very slow paced and it need some more brainpower to fully comprehend it. But “Frankenstein” is a beautifully written horror classic.

Rating: 4/ 5