Seriously. This book has more to say in less than 250 pages than most books say in 600. I won’t go on and on here about its technical qualities, because I believe they have been praised to hell and back, for good reason. But suffice to say I’ve seldom come across authors with such talent to embed emotion in their words. Sorrow, anger, solitude, joy, regret, despair, I felt it all every time, for every character, and held back tears for both Victor and the creature. The way she conveys the creature’s loneliness and fall into hatred after being abandoned is absolutely brilliant.
I also would like to say, I kind of disagree with the “Frankenstein was the true monster all along” idea. I understand where it comes from, but I think it lacks nuance in a very important way. I dislike calling people who do evil “monsters”, because no one (well, maybe some of the worst serial killers, but that’s besides the point) is all darkness inside. That’s true for real people and it’s true for Victor.
We live around “monsters”. They have friends and families whom they love. They sometimes have children whom they care for. They do charity. They go to work, they tell funny jokes, they sometimes are very smart, handsome and talented. But they are also sex offenders, pedophiles, blackmailers, manipulators, liars, kidnappers or murderers. Stating their good deeds is not, in this context, an excuse for their behavior: it’s a necessary acknowledgement that extremely hideous things can be done by people who are _not_ perfectly evil villains. You don’t have to be a “monster” to do evil things, you can just be human.
We shouldn’t fall into the trap of thinking everyone who does bad things must be all bad, all the time, because that blinds us for the bad behavior committed by our friends, neighbors and loved ones. We know _they_ are not “monsters”, so whatever they did, mustn’t have been _that bad_, right? It’s easy to fall into that binary, and be left with weak excuses when it is challenged. But, sometimes, yeah, it is that bad.
We shouldn’t distance ourselves from Victor Frankenstein by calling him a “monster”. Aside from creating the creature (that involves way too much blind obsession and grave robbing for the average person to be ok with), I wouldn’t put most of Victor’s actions past most people, given the right circumstances. Abandoning his creation at the sight of its hideous appearance, hiding from his mistakes, breaking his promise, neglecting to protect his loved ones, etc. He’s extremely obsessed, neglectful, selfish, stubborn and prideful, but he is still very human, warped and mad as he is. In a way, I think that’s the point, or one of many points, of the novel.
What are your opinions on Victor and the novel as a whole?
PS: I think the author herself didn’t want anyone to think of Victor as a perfectly evil villain either. She emphasizes in the beginning, through Robert’s letters, how caring and kind he is to the crew, and how good friends they became. He is constantly thinking about how much he loves his friend and his family, even if he expresses it in a selfish way and inevitably thinks of their safety second to his own. I think he’s just a case of extreme darkness existing alongside light, but progressively growing and growing until it obfuscated it completely.
by Leticia_the_bookworm