You'd never read "Frankenstein" before, but you are totally the kind of guy who always complains when other people have only ever seen the movie or the TV show but have never read the book. You figured it was time to practice what you preach and read up on the old familiar story of the mindless monster and his mad scientist master. Everyone knows the story so well already that you figured reading the book would just be a reminder of where it all got started. Surely there would be no surprises. You were wrong.
You've always loved the story of how Shelley wrote this classic novel. She was touring central Europe with her lover the famous poet Percy Shelley (they would later marry), the flamboyant and aristocratic poet Lord Byron, and physicist and poet John Polidori (who would go on to write the first published vampire story). They all decided to have a contest to see who could write the scariest horror story. Shelley thought about it for days and had a dream about a scientist who created life on his own. She turned the dream into her story. Shelley undoubtedly won the competition. She also created in one stroke both the horror and science fiction genres in modern literature.
The novel opens with letters written from an Englishman to his sister as he sails out of Archangel, Russia. He recounts to her how he has given up on his lifelong dream of being a poet (remember who Shelley was writing for?) and he has decided to be the first human to reach the North Pole.
What? That's not how the story is supposed to start! Where are the spooky mountains and the tower with the mad scientist? Where is Igor? From the opening page of the book, it became clear that this story is nothing like you were expecting.
After four months, the poet turned explorer, named Captain Walton finds his ship surrounded by sea ice. He and his crew are stuck fast and hoping for a break in the ice to allow the to sail to safety. Through the fog and the snow, he and his crew see something they never expected. A team of dogs is pulling a sled over the ice not far from the ship. In the sled is no normal driver, but a gigantic man. He and his dogs leave Walton's crew slack-jawed and shocked as they disappear into the distance, there is not supposed to be anyone this far north. That night, the ice breaks up, releasing the ship. In the morning Walton finds another sled, a different sled, floating on an ice floe with a man clinging to life inside. Walton orders his crew to rescue the stranger, but the man asks in a foreign accent where the ship is headed, north or south. Only when the crew answers that they are headed northwards does the strangers say that he will allow them to rescue him.
Captain Walton, still writing to his sister, sees the stranger is near death and nurses him back to health. The stranger reveals to Walton that he is on the hunt, chasing after the giant the crew had seen before. He calls his quarry "the demon." He says he has been chasing him for many months but he is sparing with details. Walton recognizes a kindred spirit in the stranger and soon comes to see him as a close friend. Both men share a passion for knowledge and agree that human beings cannot be complete unless they share deep friendships and also personal success. The stranger becomes distraught at this and decides to tell Walton his story. He intends it to be a warning for the Englishman to beware of chasing knowledge without considering all of the ramifications of his actions. Captain Walton dictates the stranger's tale word for word.
The stranger is, of course, none other than Victor Frankenstein. The story he tells Captain Walton bears little resemblance to the tropes you have grown up thinking constituted the story of "Frankenstein." Victor grew up in Switzerland and Italy and attended college in Ingolstadt, Germany. As a young man, Victor became fascinated by ancient sciences like alchemy. In school, his professors introduced him instead to the modern practice of science and physical philosophy. Victor is hooked immediately.
Deeply affected by the death of his mother just before his leaving for college, young Frankenstein develops a fascination with the origin of life in individuals, the spark that sets inanimate matter into motion. He claims that, after much study, he discovered how to impart life to the lifeless. Frankenstein tells Captain Walton that he will never reveal this powerful knowledge because of the ruin it brought to his own life. He does not wish his fate on any man. He reminds the captain that he is not insane, merely a genius, and his discovery will remain a secret.
Energized by his new-found knowledge, Frankenstein relates how consumed he became with the prospect of creating a new being. He worked himself to the bone, nearly suffering a psychotic break finding the raw materials needed to stitch together a vessel into which he could ignite the fires of life itself. For two years he worked in an upstairs lab on the campus, obsessing over the perfection of his dream. Shelley describes his toils in macabre and disturbing language, maintaining enough morbid vagueness to let the reader's imagination run wild.
One night (neither a cold nor stormy one) he succeeded in his greatest ambition. There was no harnessed lightning, no dutiful Igor, no screaming of "It's alive!" Frankenstein simply performed whatever secret procedure it was that he had discovered. He created life from what was previously dead. But on looking at his creation for the first time, instead of triumph he felt utter revulsion. The monster that stirs at his feet is so hideous, so disgustingly inhuman, that Frankenstein spends the rest of the night hiding from his own creation. When the dawn arrives the next morning, Victor wanders the streets of Ingolstadt, terrified at every turn that he will run into his creation.
It is two full years until Frankenstein sees his creation again. His brother had been murdered back home in Geneva and Frankenstein returned there to comfort his family and confirm his suspicions of who the murderer might be. Victor sets off into the heart of the Alps and finds the monster he created hiding on a high glacier.
Frankenstein's creation, his demon, is not a staggering mindless ghoul. He is eloquent and articulate, a man possessed of reason and logic. He is no mindless monster. He is persuasive and passionate. He shows an appreciation for beauty and a thirst for knowledge. Victor sees this and realizes his duty to his creation, telling Captain Walton that he had an obligation to make sure the creature was happy before he condemned it's wickedness. He stays with his monster to hear his story.
The creature ran into the mountains after he first woke to life, after he witnessed his own creator fleeing from the sight of him. His every attempt to introduce himself to civilization are met with fear, anger, torches, stones, and pitchforks. In the mountains he finds a small poor family to secretly observe from a camouflaged vantage point. The De Laceys live in a modest cottage and the monster learns to speak and read through his observations of their lives. His surreptitious education leads him to become self aware. Frankenstein's demon starts asking himself the questions that eventually occur to all of us. "Who am I? What am I? Where am I going?" Like most of us, the monster proves unable to answer these metaphysical questions. But he has an idea for how he can assuage his loneliness.
The monster demands that Victor create a companion for him, a woman to keep him company and furnish him with the sense of love and belonging that humans have proven incapable of providing. The monster then becomes sinister for the first time in the story. He reveals that he did indeed murder Victor's brother in order to lure him to the mountains to make this very demand from him. The creature swears that he will hound Victor, no matter where he goes, until his request is met. He promises to make Frankenstein's life one of unimaginable misery if he refuses the request.
Frankenstein tells Walton that he acquiesced to the monster's demand out of a sense of compassion rather than of fear for his safety. But soon, the fear sets in. Victor takes his best friend to England to create a bride for his demon. Filled with worry and paranoia, he retires to a remote island north of Scotland, one of the Orkneys, to perform his gruesome task, the creation of another monster. But at the last second, he stops himself. Victor realizes that he cannot be responsible for unleashing another monster in the world and destroys what progress he has made. As soon as he does this he looks up to the window and sees the enraged face of his monster. The creature disappears into the night, hell bent on fulfilling his promise to ruin Frankestein's life.
The monster then enacts his vengeance, murdering Victor's best friend, his new wife, and causing so much heartache to Victor's father that he too dies of a broken heart. With nothing left to live for, Victor Frankenstein makes killing the monster the sole goal of his life. He chases him all across Europe and even almost all the way to the North Pole.
The former scientific genius becomes consumed with worry and anguish and fear. He is afraid that everyone he loves is doomed and he his right. But it is not the inhumanity of his creation that proves Frankestein's undoing, it is his own. He has no sympathy, no compassion. He sees only what his fear tells him to see. He sees a monster so he creates one, not when he breathes life into a corpse, but when he believed his creation to be unworthy of love. And, ultimately, love is all the monster wants.
Like any good horror story, the genre it created, "Frankenstein" is a warning. It is Shelley's warning to be careful to not put too much stock in the burgeoning Industrial Revolution. As wonderful and inspiring as technology is, as important as it is for humans to constantly push the boundaries of what is possible, it is even more important for us to be guided by principles, to remember that just because we can do something doesn't always mean that we should. It is a warning to never obsess over work and professional pursuits at the expense of other, more valuable things. Shelly's novel also serves as a reminder that often, much of the hardships we find ourselves the victims of are the results of evil we ourselves put into the world. Violence only begets violence and vengeance is ultimately an empty pursuit.
Most importantly, most poignantly, "Frankenstein" is a warning to never surrender our capacity for empathy, our compassion to fear of the unknown. Just because something is not beautiful it is no less worthy of our love. You can find inspiration even in the most unlikely of places. Men like John Rabe and Claus Von Stauffenberg remind you that even amongst Hitler's Nazis, there were men who were worthy of respect and admiration. And men like Hal Halvorsen remind you that even the smallest acts of mercy and compassion can affect the course of world history. This is a common theme you have noticed arising throughout all of the books you find yourself reading lately, both fiction and nonfiction... maybe it is a common theme amongst all story tellers. The greatest evil humanity can commit is always a result of our refusing to recognize the humanity in others. The greatest good we can perform is always a result of embracing that quality in others. Mary Shelly's "Frankenstein" was a reminder that sometimes you have to embrace that humanity even in the most monstrous and hideous among us.
On to the next book!
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