(As the attention getter, I thought it would be interesting to educate the readers of this analysis about the book Frankenstein, not the stereotyped Frankenstein)

 To keep the surprises and disappointments to a minimum, it is best to list the important differences between this novel and popular perceptions of Frankenstein:
-”Frankenstein” refers to Victor Frankenstein, the scientist who created the creature, not the creature itself.
-The creature is not an ugly, mean spirited, inarticulate, mindless ten-foot lurcher with bolts in his neck.  He is, in fact, very intelligent, extremely strong and coordinated as well as being graceful.
-There is no lightning and laboratory scene in which the creature comes alive.
-There is no hunchback assistant to a mad scientist.
-His brain is not from a criminal corpse.
-There is no mob of villagers or burning mill.

    Frankenstein by Mary Shelley is hailed as one of the greatest novels dealing with the human spirit ever to be written.  Shelley wrote this nineteenth century sensation after her life experiences.  It has been called the first science fiction novel.  Shelley lived a sad, melodramatic, improbable, and tragically sentimental youth hood.  She was the daughter of Mary Wollstonecraft, the brilliant pioneer feminist in the late eighteenth century.  However due to complications in childbirth and inept medical care, Shelley’s mother passed away soon after her birth.  Later on, Shelley married the famous romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley.  Surrounded by famous literary figures, it only seems right that Mary Shelley be one too through Frankenstein.  She was inspired partly by Milton’s Paradise Lost:

“Did I request thee, Maker, from my clay
To mould me Man, did I solicit thee
From darkness to promote me?”
The novel explores the theme of how society can ruin good through human alienation.  Shelley powerfully expresses that theme through the development of Victor Frankenstein’s failed aspirations, the creature’s plight, and the inevitable destruction of Frankenstein.

    Frankenstein is a novel about a creature that was made by a scientist driven by ambition.  It first introduces Victor Frankenstein, the protagonist, and his interest in science.  However, he doesn’t have an interest in modern science as his father wishes, he is appealed by the fascinations of alchemy and mystical sciences.

“It was the secrets of heaven and earth that I desired to learn; and whether it was the outward substance of things or the inner spirit of nature and the mysterious soul of man that occupied me, still my inquiries were directed to the metaphysical, or in its highest sense, the physical secrets of the world” (p. 26).

These sciences are greatly criticized and condemned by the society for being too mysterious.  In addition, Frankenstein possesses a private passion.  This passion is to make something great that he can show to the world.  However, this passion he has soon turns to an obsession.  “My passions vehement...” (p. 29).  This eventually leads to his inevitable destruction after he has passed the point of obsessive compulsiveness.

    After realizing his keenness in this condemned science, he slowly became more excited as he read works by many famous alchemists.  “I little expected...to find a disciple in Albertus Magnus and Paracelsus” (p. 39).  Inspired by his research and studies, he decided that he would create a creature.  This creature would be beautiful, pleasing to look at, and the entire world would praise his creation.  He engaged himself so deeply into his project and put all of his resources into its success.  Yet when he finished, the creature is exactly opposite of what he wanted.  “How could I describe my emotions at this catastrophe” (p. 51).  Instead of being a work of art, to Frankenstein the creature is a monster, a fiend.  It is grotesque, horrifying to look at, and the scariest thing alive.  “Oh!  No mortal could support the horror of that countenance” (p. 52).  He is utterly devastated by his failure, which contributed to his declining health.  “For I had deprived myself of rest and health” (p.57).  Now his goal drastically changed.  He must destroy his creation, his monster.  However, the creature escaped the lab and he must find it in order to destroy it.

    The novel continues on as Frankenstein moves closer to the doom of his life.  He searches and follows the fiend.  The monster turns against his creator, and kills Frankenstein’s closest friends and family.  “Torn by remorse, horror, and despair, I beheld those I loved spend vain sorrow upon the graves of William and Justine, the first hapless victims of my unhallowed arts” (p. 88).  Frankenstein’s life is now ruined as it becomes a personal vengeance of his to eradicate the problem he has created.  He fully devotes everything left he has to the journey he must take to see that the monster is wiped away from the face of the earth.  Through seeing the death of his creation, he becomes delirious and insane as seen by society.  Ironically, his passion is to kill what he so passionately sought to create in the first place.

    Shelley treats the protagonist with no mercy.  Frankenstein fully suffers deep and bitter torment as long as his creature lives.  He mental state grows into worse and worse as he pursues his monster.  “Sometimes I grew alarmed at the wreck I perceived I had become...and I believed that exercise and amusement would then drive away incipient disease...when my creation should be complete” (p. 50).  The poignance of this novel becomes clear, however, as the reader realizes the pain and suffering the creature faces.  Frankenstein’s struggle in life is only small scale when compared to the monster.  The readers begin to sympathize with the monster, an innocent creation that was despised from its birth.  He has a good and kind heart, yet people reject him because of his physical appearance.  He pleads with Frankenstein to give him a mate, yet Frankenstein refuses.  “My companion must be of the same species and have the same defects.  This being you must create” (p. 149).  The novel eventually ends with Frankenstein dying aboard a ship by the north pole, where he is rescued by a research ship.  Frankenstein dies in his quest to eliminate the monster, who escapes because of his inhumanly strength and power.

    In many ways Frankenstein can be considered a double to the monster he creates.  In fact, many critics claim that the novel only could end with the protagonist seeking to confront his double, exactly what Shelley did.  However, Shelley did more than write a piece of entertainment.  She wrote a sensational novel which explores the depths of the human heart and soul.  She developed the theme that man is innately good, but can be turned to evil by a narrow, perverse, and immoral society.  First, she explores this through the building of Frankenstein’s character.  In the beginning, we learn about Frankenstein’s idyllic  domestic situation - material security, loving parents, a devoted best friend, and a childhood sweetheart.  “My family is one of the most distinguished of that republic [Geneva]” (p. 19).  Prior to his creating though, the readers are exposed to Frankenstein’s vulnerability to obsession.  His aspirations through the studies, research, and experimentation become suspicious.  As Frankenstein becomes increasingly obsessive, he turns his back on his home, his family, and nature itself.  After succeeding in his work, he turns his back on his creation.

    The readers slowly begin to understand the monster as the novel continues.  He is absolutely hated and rejected, yet he has always been innocent.  “ ‘Hideous monster...Ugly wretch’ “ (p. 149).  Shelley cleverly uses the reader’s emotion and sympathy to the monster to explore the truth about human alienation.  All humans inherently have faults and society somehow copes with these faults.  However, Shelley criticizes society for passing judgment based on superficial aspects.  The society in the novel was scared to death of the creature and hated him because they passed judgment of him by his looks.  Think of it from the point of view of the monster.  He had never done anything to deserve such hatred.  In fact, in the novel he even helped a poor family by doing chores for them, all unnoticed.  He had a kind heart, yet he was absolutely hated because of what he looked like.  This judgment on him, although not in exact proportions, directly addresses how humans alienate each other.  Instead of acceptance, understanding, and love, humans treat each other with hatred, despise, and disdain for superficial flaws.

    It is perhaps most poignant that the creature himself comes to understand his own nature and situation.  He is an adult “inhuman being.”  Rejected by his maker, he finds no meaning, direction, or even acknowledgement of his existence.  “You may render me the most miserable of men, but you shall never make me base in my own eyes” (p. 162).  Yet, as he discovers what man is, he desperately wants to identify himself with them, communicate with them, and become part of society.  “I learned, from the views of social life which it developed, to admire their virtues and to deprecate their vices” (p. 126).  He has a burning to seek a family, or at least a mate, that will understand his plight.  “But where were my friends and relations?  No father had watched my infant days, no mother had blessed me with smiles and caresses” (p. 129).  When it is emphatically denied, his passion turns to violence.  Shelley demonstrates with the creature the thesis that man born innately good turns evil by an immoral, narrow, and perverse society.  Initially, a kind of “noble savage,” the creature has his need to belong corrupted into a violent rage against all whose who reject him.  This is the truth of humans.  Society has been corrupt since the beginning, yet hope exists through good people.  However, it damages society when the unscrupulous characters destroy hope by turning the good into evil by something as little as rejection.  Human alienation has the power to destroy good and regenerate evil.  It perhaps, as Shelley suggests, is the reason for so much emotional pain and destruction in society.  This powerful message is conveyed to the readers, as their hearts stir in sadness for the creature.

    Finally, the death of Frankenstein is inevitable.  The creature faced the plight of hatred by society, and thus his motive in life is simple:  he must reduce his creator to the same state of isolation that he must endure.  The creature has no choice.  He alienates Frankenstein with violence and prolonging Frankenstein’s obsession to destroy him.

“I will revenge my injuries; if I cannot inspire love, I will cause fear.  And to you, my arch-enemy, my creator do I swear inextinguishable hatred.’  A fiendish rage animated him, his face was wrinkled into contortions too horrible for the human eyes to behold.  ‘I will work at your destruction, nor finish until I desolate your heart, so that you curse the hour of your birth.’ “ (p. 156).

As Frankenstein eventually dies, Shelley concludes on how isolation eventually leads to death.  Some critics suggest the theme is how ambition can lead to our own demise, it is more clear that she shares how judgment can destroy souls, a future, and hope.  The central irony of the novel is that even the creature is “inhuman,” it is in a situation which all of us can most strongly identify.  Frankenstein presents the readers with one of the most powerful images of human alienation in words.

    Pity and fear are the two most significant emotions that can explain the powerful hold the creature has on us.  Frankenstein animates his creature as an extension of himself, a double.  He is horrified by the product of his extensive efforts, and he tries to turn his back, but the creature won’t let him.  As long as Frankenstein runs from his creature he is weak and impotent, when he becomes the aggressor, his strength, energy, and purpose return.  In other words, only when Frankenstein seeks to confront his creature, can the novel move to its inevitable conclusion of death.  From this it can only be learned that alienation is a problem that must entirely be eradicated, otherwise death and destruction will occur.

    Frankenstein although science fiction, is a work characteristic of the Romantic Age and directly addresses the human heart.  It has become a novel which shared a secret to life that is more valuable than gold.  Human demise has always existed, and its cause was discover and explained through Shelley’s work.  The creature has become as famous as characters such as Hamlet, Sherlock Holmes, Dracula, Uncle Tom, Dr. Jekyll / Mr. Hyde, and many others.  However, this novel has shared insight and revealed a deep human understanding many of the above stories never did.  Frankenstein has evoked a persistent, deep, and even unconscious stirring in the souls of everyone who has read and understood.  Certainly, this novel which appeared at the height of the Industrial Revolution and Romantic Age has shown how science, rationality, materialism, and the attempts to control nature to bend it to man’s will has a deadening effect on the human spirit.  Frankenstein and his creature have become symbols of fear and the deeply rooted, complicated, and ambiguous culture society is today.  Without a doubt, Shelley was one of those writers who were destined to burn their talents out in life in one single pure flame.