Growing up watching the Frankenstein films, I always viewed the monster with green skin as brainless killing machine who didn't know right from wrong and couldn't be reasoned with. In the book by Mary Shelley, this yellow-skinned monster has intelligence, has real feelings and emotions, and creates diabolical plans of revenge and murder for his creator.
The tortured souls in Frankenstein are only happy when they are blissfully naive, unaware of their shortcomings. Frankenstein is happiest at childhood when he is thirsty for knowledge. I thought it was funny in chapter 3, when Frankenstein's professor asks him, "Have you really spent your time in studying such nonsense?," which only makes Victor want to learn more. When he created the monster, which should have been one of the most happiest moments of his life, his scientific curiosity died. Victor is tortured with his decisions, knowing he overstepped his boundaries as a human being, after the Monster murder his brother and his bride.
The monster is the happiest working for the people in the cottage. He compares his relationship with Frankenstein with Adam's relationship with God from Paradise Lost, wondering if God abandoned Adam the way Victor did to him. I thought it was interesting that he identifies himself with Satan. He lives in the shadow of his creator's rejection and declares Victor his enemy, like people who have lashed out at God after they feel God has let them down. A constant theme is nature versus science, as well as God versus man. Can anyone just enjoy their humanity or do we enjoy playing God? Why as humans, do we feel the need to have more power over our own lives and world than we actually have?
It's obvious her deceased mother Mary Wollstonecraft had a huge effect on Mary Shelley as a writer, because Shelley use lines in her story from her mother's writing. I wonder how much more her mother would have effected Shelley's writing process if her mother had lived.
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