(Book Review)
Started: October 11, 2017
Finished: November 7 2017
So, this is one of those classic books that I should have read years ago, and I'm embarrassed to admit that I'm only getting around to it now at the age of 39.
However, I have had several encounters with this story over the years, prior to reading the original Mary Shelley.
My History With This Story
So, my first encounter with this story was at the age of 7, through Fisher-Price Classics.
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In 1984, Fisher-Price released the comic book versions of 6 classic stories: Alice in Wonderland, The Arabian Nights, Frankenstein, Robin Hood, Robinson Crusoe, and Treasure Island.
The comic books were themselves reprints from the Marvel Classics series (W), but Fisher-Price re-released them with an accompanying audio-cassette. So that young children could listen to the story as they read it.
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My parents would buy these for us as a way to keep us occupied during long car trips. Every time we went on a long car trip, they would give us a new one. Until eventually we had the whole collection. (I've already mentioned the influence this series had on me when reviewing Treasure Island, and Alice in Wonderland).
Frankenstein was the last one my parents bought. (I suspect that they were a bit nervous about the subject material, and were holding out as long as possible until all the other stories in the series had been used up.)
Of course I knew about Frankenstein's reputation as a horror classic even before hearing the story. (I didn't have much cultural awareness as a 7 year old child, but the Frankenstein monster is so ubiquitous in pop culture that he's as recognizable as Mickey Mouse).
This was my first exposure to a real horror story, and I remember being slightly surprised that the genre didn't meet my expectations. Before reading Frankenstein, I always used to imagine that all horror stories just consisted of the monster going around killing one person after another. I remember being surprised, therefore, to find out that there was an actual plot, and that there were main characters besides the monster.
From about 7-9, I read this story over and over and over again. I also listened to the audio tape over and over again. (If anyone is interested, some kind soul has put the old audio tape up as an MP3 over here).
I found the story fascinating. In part, no doubt, because of the macabre fascination that all children have with the horror genre. (A strange phenomenon of human nature that I've commented on before here and here).
But not everyone was so taken with the story. I remember one afternoon I asked my grandpa to read the story to me.
(I'm not sure why I needed him to read it to me since I had the cassette tape. But this is something I used to do at that age for whatever reason. I liked adults to read my favorite stories to me.)
My grandfather begrudgingly obliged, but as we went on, he got more and more upset with the story. "What kind of story is this? Now all these people are dying just because he created a monster?" Eventually I just told him he could stop reading.
As I got older, this Fisher-Price Classics edition was the main reason that I never read Mary Shelley's original 1817 text. I already knew the story, so my curiosity was satiated.
At Calvin College, Frankenstein was required reading for the core class History 102: From the Renaissance to the Modern Period. And so most of my friends were forced to read it.
I, however, never took History 102. (At 18, I was more interested in the ancient world, and so I took History 101 for my core history requirement.)
Based on what my friends have told me, I believe that Frankenstein was required reading in History 102 because it was the quintessential book of the Romantic Movement.
This intrigued me--the notion that this wasn't just some stupid horror book--that this was an important historical and philosophical book--piqued my interest to read the original text.
But, the fact that all of my friends absolutely hated this book, and resented the fact that they were forced to read it, did a lot to push me in the other direction, and essentially scared me off of this book for the next 20 years.
The principle complaint my friends made was that this book was way too long winded, way too talky, and way too slow moving.
It was a complaint that I would hear repeated several times over the years. My friend the Cinephile used to complain of this book that any monster who talks for 40 pages straight can't possibly be scary.
And yet, for all that, this book was always on my list of "classic books I intend to read someday". (Plus, on the positive side, in 2005 my friend Guamo did put this as number 2 on his list of books that changed his life. Which has also been in the back of my mind the last 10 years).
I reviewed the grader reader version of this book in 2013.
I put this book on my reading list graveyard in 2014 (a list of books I started in 2014, but then abandoned). But to be fair, that was never a serious attempt. I only got a few pages into it before I got distracted by other books.
In my book club, we'd been talking about this as a possible future book for months now (see here and here). The other members were in the same position I was. Nobody had yet read it, but everyone considered it a classic book that they'd been meaning to get around to someday.
Eventually we decided to read it for the month of October, and then discuss it on Halloween.
...a nice idea, at any rate. As it happened, we ended up having to push it back a week due to everyone's schedules, and discussed it in the first week of November.
And here I am with my review.
The Review (Spoilers)
So... what to say about this book?
I actually enjoyed it. But admittedly, I think some of that was being forewarned ahead of time about the book's faults. I knew it would be talky, and I knew it would be long-winded, so it didn't even faze me when characters would go off on long tangents.
Tom, another member of the bookclub, expressed some frustration with the tangents. "I wish that just once we could meet a character in this book without getting into their whole life-story," Tom said.
But because I had been warned to expect this in advance, it didn't bug me. In fact, I considered it part of the book's charm.
Also, I think this is one of those rare books where having the plot spoiled in advance actually increased my enjoyment. Because I already knew who was going to die (and when, and how) I wasn't left in suspense. It didn't frustrate me that the book took forever getting to the dramatic parts. I just figured that the book would take it's own sweet time, and in the meantime I enjoyed the scenery.
There are a lot of long descriptions about how beautiful nature is. (Part of the reason why this book is considered the quintessential book of the Romantic Movement). It's a bit much at times, but it is also kind of charming in its own right.
And, despite the fact that my eyes did glaze over slightly at some of the longer descriptions, there's some interesting philosophical stuff going on in this book that was not in the Fisher-Price version.
There's a question that could easily have religious implications: How much responsibility does the creator have for the beings that he's created? And how much gratitude should the creation feel towards its creator?
While Frankenstein is still in the act of creating, he imagines how much gratitude his creatures will have towards him for the gift of life:
Despite the fact that the reader knows this is not how the story will turn out, it almost makes sense as you read it. Of course Victor Frankenstein would expect this new species to bless him for the gift of life. How would they not feel grateful for the fact that he brought them into existence?
"A new species would bless me as its creator and source; many happy and excellent natures would owe their being to me. No father could claim the gratitude of his child so completely as I should deserve theirs." (Chapter 4)
It made me think about how God (if there is a God) must feel about his own creation. Did God similarly expect that humans would be eternally grateful for the gift of life, and then get confused when it turned out that all we humans did was complain about everything? Do we owe God more gratitude and less complaining?
But then Frankenstein's monster, once he is created, has a different view of the equation. The monster believes that since Frankenstein created him, Frankenstein has a duty to look after him and ensure his happiness. The monster believes it is an awful thing to bring a creature into the world, and then abandon it, the way Frankenstein did.
If we take the monster's view, then do we have a legitimate complaint against God? Having created us, is God then responsible for protecting us and ensuring our happiness?
On another note, I also thought the framing story about the Arctic exploration was quite clever. (This also had not been in the Fisher-Price version). I thought it was quite clever how closely Robert Walton paralleled Victor Frankenstein.
I also thought it was interesting how Victor Frankenstein told his whole life story in order to try to save Walton from making the same mistakes, but then, right at the end, when the sailors want to give up the expedition and go home, Frankenstein seems to forget all the lessons he has learned, and gives the sailors a long speech about the importance of striving for glory.
It's the little touches like that which make me really glad I finally read the original novel. Even if you already know the story, this book is still worth reading.
I was also surprised to find out that the book wasn't a horror story at all.
Not that I ever expected it to be scary, of course. This book was written all the way back in 1817. It couldn't possibly hope to still scare any generation that has been overly desensitized by Hollywood slasher flicks.
But I had expected this book to try to be scary. I thought it would at least attempt horror.
But horror doesn't seem to be the emotion Mary Shelley is aiming for at all.
The book is definitely going for "eerie" at times--like when Frankenstein first encounters his monster in the middle of a lightening storm.
But none of the deaths are ever played for horror. There's no suspense building up to any of the deaths, and in fact we the reader never even see the monster kill anyone--we just find out about the dead body after the fact.
Instead, I noticed how much Mary Shelley was building up the wonderful friendship that Frankenstein had with Henry Clerval, and the great love that Frankenstein felt for Elizabeth.
Since I already knew what was going to happen to these characters, I realized that the reason Mary Shelley kept repeating over and over how precious these people were to Victor Frankenstein is because she wanted to milk the pathos of their deaths for everything they were worth.
In other words, this book isn't horror. It's tragedy.
Sure, it has a high body count. But then, so does Hamlet. The point is not the number of deaths, it's the emotions that the author is trying to wring from those deaths. And it was very clear that Mary Shelley was milking these deaths for tragedy, and not horror.
And I suppose it makes sense. This is almost a perfectly defined tragedy in the classic sense. Victor Frankenstein is a great genius, but he is brought to complete ruin by the very same thing that made him great in the first place.
Other Notes
* In my "history with this story" section I almost forgot to mention that as an adolescent I was obsessed with the old Universal Monster Movies, and, with the exception of "The Ghost of Frankenstein", I saw all the old black and white Frankenstein movies.
I forgot to mention this because these movies have pretty much no relation to the book. So it's best to skip over them completely. (The first two movies Frankenstein and Bride of Frankenstein borrow some plot points from the book, but also diverge from the book significantly. All the movies after that bear no relationship to the books at all.)
* But actually, speaking of Bride of Frankenstein, another thing I liked about the book was that Victor Frankenstein thoroughly weighed up all the pros and cons of creating a bride for the monster, so that when he decided to destroy the bride, it wasn't a rash decision, but something that the reader understood entirely. (This was yet another thing which didn't come through on the Fisher-Price version.)
* Amazing to think Mary Shelley wrote this novel at the age of 19.
Aside from how blatantly unfair this is--(imagine writing a classic work of literature before you even hit 20!)--she shows a knowledge of the world and of human nature that is far beyond what you'd expect any 19 year old to know. (And for what it's worth, this wasn't just my opinion. The other members of the book club also commented about how amazed they were that Mary Shelley had been only 19).
* There's actually a lot more interesting themes in this book to tease out. (I haven't even talked about all the parts of this book which illustrated the mindset of the Romantic Movement).
But I'm going to stop the review here.
If anyone is interested, however, there are lots of good videos on Youtube that really get into the themes of this book.
Crash Course put out a 2 parter on this book: Part 1, and Part 2.
Overly Sarcastic Productions put out a really interesting video here.
And Extra Credits (I'm a big fan of their history series) is in the processing of doing a whole series on this book. Really interesting videos. At the time of this writing, they've got 3 out, and I presume more are coming: Frankenstein: The Modern Prometheus, Frankenstein: The New Romantics, and Frankenstein: The Sorrows of Young Werther.
Video Review
Video review here and embedded below
Link of the Day
Noam Chomsky on the Animal Farm
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