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A review by miimiisbooks
Frankenstein: The 1818 Text by Mary Shelley
4.0
Mary Shelley's "Frankenstein" is far from what I expected it to be like. I didn't fall in love with any of the characters, especially the main-characters, nor did I start to hate any of them with a burning passion. Instead, they left me conflicted - I felt bad for both of them, but also despised their actions at the same time.
Although Victor Frankenstein, the main character and the one whose creation comes to life, suffered from many heartaches and hardships because of the so called 'monster' and his doings, it was ultimately his own fault that he existed in the first place. I saw it as him being so ambitious in his studies and experiments that he started to wish for himself to become kind of all-powerful; for him to be praised for what he had achieved. But when that failed, he escaped and did not want to deal with the consequences. Once his ambition backfired, he was not ready because he had never considered the consequences of his actions and how they could affect others besides himself.
His creation, who never did earn a name (which was a bit disappointing in my opinion but I guess it served the purpose of further separating him from humanity), was driven to murdering and destruction because his attempts at compassion and friendliness were reciprocated with nothing but malice. He said so himself that his "heart was fashioned to be susceptible of love and sympathy", but humans only saw what was on the surface - a creature with unconventional looks and a big stature, in which they saw only ill-intent. In reality, if he had been allowed to grow in a supportive and friendly environment, he wouldn't have started to detest himself and probably would not have resulted to violence as means of escaping from situations and getting revenge.
I saw him mostly as the victim - Frankenstein created him out of selfishness and then when the outcome was not what he had anticipated, completely abandoned this creature, who knew absolutely nothing of the world, to fend for himself. I don't mean to apologize for his creation's murders, but you have to admit that ultimately it was Victor's and the other people's disregard of him as a being capable of compassion and love that led him to those awful deeds. Also the fact that his own "father" was the one to leave him, must've been one of the main reasons he felt such anger at the world and at himself.
Moving on from the characters, I overall really love Shelley's writing style! I for some reason expected that her writing style would be something similar to for example Oscar Wilde's in "Portrait of Dorian Gray", which for me at the time of reading it was (at least language-wise) a bit difficult to keep track of. but with this book, the reading process was enjoyable and went by really fast. I really liked that in this case it was a framed story -a a story within another story. When Frankenstein's creation was telling Victor the story of his early life, it was even a story within a story within a story. It gave it almost a fairy-tale-esque quality, though much creepier and more dramatic.
Also! Something that I found that this book does well is show paranoia in a way where the reader can also understand what the character is currently going through and how big of a toll it's taking on them. One sequence that I found really shocking in a sense, was when Frankenstein said that he could not make himself look up from the floor, afraid that the creature would be there. I don't know why, it's just something that stayed with me.
All in all, I really quite enjoyed this! Took me only a few days to finish and was quite enjoyable and engaging throughout the entire novel. Thanks to this I would very much be interested in also checking out Shelley's other works.
Although Victor Frankenstein, the main character and the one whose creation comes to life, suffered from many heartaches and hardships because of the so called 'monster' and his doings, it was ultimately his own fault that he existed in the first place. I saw it as him being so ambitious in his studies and experiments that he started to wish for himself to become kind of all-powerful; for him to be praised for what he had achieved. But when that failed, he escaped and did not want to deal with the consequences. Once his ambition backfired, he was not ready because he had never considered the consequences of his actions and how they could affect others besides himself.
His creation, who never did earn a name (which was a bit disappointing in my opinion but I guess it served the purpose of further separating him from humanity), was driven to murdering and destruction because his attempts at compassion and friendliness were reciprocated with nothing but malice. He said so himself that his "heart was fashioned to be susceptible of love and sympathy", but humans only saw what was on the surface - a creature with unconventional looks and a big stature, in which they saw only ill-intent. In reality, if he had been allowed to grow in a supportive and friendly environment, he wouldn't have started to detest himself and probably would not have resulted to violence as means of escaping from situations and getting revenge.
I saw him mostly as the victim - Frankenstein created him out of selfishness and then when the outcome was not what he had anticipated, completely abandoned this creature, who knew absolutely nothing of the world, to fend for himself. I don't mean to apologize for his creation's murders, but you have to admit that ultimately it was Victor's and the other people's disregard of him as a being capable of compassion and love that led him to those awful deeds. Also the fact that his own "father" was the one to leave him, must've been one of the main reasons he felt such anger at the world and at himself.
Moving on from the characters, I overall really love Shelley's writing style! I for some reason expected that her writing style would be something similar to for example Oscar Wilde's in "Portrait of Dorian Gray", which for me at the time of reading it was (at least language-wise) a bit difficult to keep track of. but with this book, the reading process was enjoyable and went by really fast. I really liked that in this case it was a framed story -a a story within another story. When Frankenstein's creation was telling Victor the story of his early life, it was even a story within a story within a story. It gave it almost a fairy-tale-esque quality, though much creepier and more dramatic.
Also! Something that I found that this book does well is show paranoia in a way where the reader can also understand what the character is currently going through and how big of a toll it's taking on them. One sequence that I found really shocking in a sense, was when Frankenstein said that he could not make himself look up from the floor, afraid that the creature would be there. I don't know why, it's just something that stayed with me.
All in all, I really quite enjoyed this! Took me only a few days to finish and was quite enjoyable and engaging throughout the entire novel. Thanks to this I would very much be interested in also checking out Shelley's other works.