The only problem with that theory is that NONE of the male characters in this book sounded remotely male. Ladies, do you remember that time in your life probably around middle or high school , when you thought that guys actually had the same sort of thought waves running through their heads that we do?
You know, before you realized that the really don't care about You thought that while they were laughing at the booger their idiot friend just flicked across the room, something deeper was stirring in their mind. It just had to be! I'm not sure when it happens, but at some point, every woman finally realizes the fairly obvious truth. Men aren't women. That booger was the funniest thing ever, and nothing was stirring around in them other than maybe some gas. And that's ok.
Fart-lighting and long distance loogie hawking contests aside, they can pretty darn cool. But this author was too young to realize that. My personal opinion is that Mary was probably fairly sheltered when it came to real men. She was a teenage girl apparently running around with a bunch of artsy-fartsy dudes. Much like today, I would imagine these junior emos were probably blowing poetic smoke up her young ass in the high hopes of getting into her pants.
Although it's possible I'm totally misreading the situation. Anyway, Frank tells his story, and Sea Dog writes it all down for his sister. In excruciating detail. Rivers, flowers, rocks, mountain tops And the weather? God forbid a breeze blows through the story without at least a paragraph devoted to the way it felt on his skin or affected his mood!
And speaking of Frankenstein's mood. I don't think I've ever had the pleasure of reading about a character this spineless before. What a pussy! He didn't talk so much as he whined. And the swooning! He was like one of those freaking Fainting Goats!
I can't even count how many times he blacked out and fell over. Of course, then he would get feverish and need "a period of convalescence" to recover. Again, every episode was recounted with incredible attention to detail. I'm thrilled that I never had to miss a moment of his sweaty brow getting daubed with water!
Shockingly, I only know this because it was in the appendix, and not because I have any real-life experience with reading that one.
Was this the most painfully unnecessary book I've read this year? Is there a deeper moral to this story? Some would say, that the monster is a product of a society that refuses to accept someone who is different.
Or maybe that Victor Frankenstein was the real monster for not realizing that he had a duty to parent and care for his creation? Perhaps it is meant to point out our obsession with perfection, and our willingness to disregard people who don't meet the standards of beauty as non-human? Some might say any of those things. I, however, learned a far different lesson from Frankenstein.
And it's this Trust no one. Not even someone who just an example has been your Best Friend for decades! Let's read a classic, Anne. It'll be fun, Anne. We can call each other with updates, Anne. It'll be just like a book club, Anne. Liar, liar! Pants on fire! I read this whole God-awful book, and you quit after 10 pages! I'm telling your mom! Here's the quote that sums up my experience with Frankenstein : "Blah, blah, blah If I cannot satisfy the one, I will indulge the other.
For years, like many others, I thought Frankenstein was the name of that slightly green dude with the bolts in his neck. Did Frankenstein scare me? Did it have me staying awake and sleeping with the light on, jumping at every slight creak in the house? Was I terrified of the monster and technology and the dangers of playing God? Because the beauty of this story is that it isn't the one so many people think it is.
Which is almost my favourite thing about it. This book is not a Halloween kind of story with Halloween kind of monsters. This story is heartbreakingly sad. For example, allusions to religion and Genesis, possible criticisms of using science to "play God", and the relationship between creator and creation. All of these things interest me, yes, but it is the painfully human part of this book that has always so deeply affected me.
Because the sad thing, the really sad thing, is that pretty much everyone has heard of Frankenstein's monster Created as a scientific experiment by an overly ambitious man, he comes into a frightening and hostile world that immediately rejects him on sight. Even the man who made him cannot look upon his creation without feeling horror. It's that same thing that gets me in books every time: things could have been so different.
If people had just been a little less judgmental, a little less scared, and a little more understanding. This being, created from different parts of corpses, seeks love and finds hatred, so he instead decides to embrace it. Fuelled by his own rage at the unfairness of the world, he gradually turns towards evil.
He belongs in my own little mental category with the likes of Heathcliff and Erik aka The Phantom of the Opera. Scared, angry villains who were made so by their own unfortunate circumstances. The kind of characters you simultaneously hate and love, but most of all hope they find some kind of peace. So call it science-fiction, if you want. Call it horror, if you must. But this story is brimming with some of the most realistic and almost unbearably moving human emotion that I have ever read.
View all 62 comments. No stars. That's right. Zero, zip. It's been almost 30 years since I've detested a book this much.
I didn't think anything could be worse then Kafka's The Metamorphosis. Seems I'm never too old to be wrong. This time, I don't have the excuse that I was forced to read this for high school lit. Oh no, this time I read this of my own volition and for fun.
Yeah, fun. Kinda like sticking bamboo shoots between my fingernails type of fun. Watching paint dry fun. Going to an Air Supply conce No stars. Going to an Air Supply concert fun. OK, to be fair, I need to tell you what I liked about this Well, Mary Shelley was a teen when she wrote this. Color me impressed. At 19 I was just looking for my next college boyfriend, not penning the great English classic. Kudos to Mary for that. Why did I persist, you may ask? Well, at the point where the pain became mind numbing, I decided to channel my inner John McCain and just survive the torture.
Figured it would make me a better, stronger reader. Might even make me enjoy a re-read of Breaking Dawn Frankenstein is a classic alright. A classic melodrama. Complete with a wimpy, vaporish, trembling prima donna main character and a pseudo monster whose only sin is being uglier then Bernie Madoff in cell block D. Were we supposed to be outraged at the monster's killing spree? By the books end, I was merely miffed that the creature murdered the wrong Frankenstein sibling. He would have saved himself a good deal of traveling and saved me a good deal of suffering had he snuffed out his maker before he could high-tail it out of the birthing room.
I'm sure that the fans of this book will say that I didn't understand the deeper, symbolic nuances of this book, and I'm sure that they are right. At this point in my life, all I know is what I like and don't like in a book, and as far as I'm concerned, this book is unadulterated, mind-numbing crap. But that's just me. Your mileage will vary as I sincerely hope it does. As for my own mileage, it can best be compared to driving a Ford Pinto in the Indy Don't like it?
But whatever. This book rules. Just thinking about that original audience who thought this was a horror. A creature of most unholy origin! Again, I digress. This is so beautifully written. Count me impressed. Bottom line: This is nonstop fun and everyone should have read: read it. View all 38 comments. I finally found someone who also enjoyed this book! Haha" what's not to love! Leigh Ann wrote: "What a great review! Some books teach you something new each time you revisit them.
I picked up the tragically wonderful Frankenstein for a fifth time this week, and I was totally mesmerised by the descriptive language used to describe the natural world.
In all my previous readings, I focused on all the classic tropes of man and monster though I never considered the importance of the serene beauty that surrounds the story. The natural world dominates the background of the novel. What struck me most about it was the fact that both Victor and his creation long for a real life, a life where one is truly alive. And they both ponder what this means at length, reaching the same conclusion: to go completely nomad.
They both wish to live a life free of burden and complications, no money, no commitments and no responsibility. They just want to be totally free in the wilderness with the ultimate goal of finding happiness by looking after their most immediate and natural desires. And for me this says a great deal about society, not just the society in which this was written, but society in general: how many of us feel truly alive?
Then we can abandon our marvellous creation to fend for itself with his childlike innocence, and then wonder why it goes so horribly wrong and blows up in our faces. Victor you silly, brilliant, man. Because if we did it would end in blood Yes, lots of blood: the blood of everyone you love, the blood of all your family Victor.
You blame the monster, but you are his creator. You should have taught him the ways of the world and guided his first steps. The things you two could have accomplished together. So I ask you this Victor, who is the real monster? Is it the creature that has gone on a murderous rampage or it you? You are the man who played at god and was horrified at the consequence. You judged your creation by his physical appearance, which was more a reflection of your vain soul. The creature is a monster on the outside but Victor is on the inside, which is a form much worse.
By abandoning the creature he has taught him to become what his appearance is. The first human experience he receives is rejection based upon his physicality. His own creator recoils in disgust from him. He cannot be blamed for his actions if all he has been taught is negative emotion, he will only respond in one way. He is innocent and childlike but also a savage brute.
These are two things that should never be put together. There is rage in me the likes of which should never escape. If I am not satisfied in the one, I will indulge the other. Indeed, in this case Victor takes on the role of a God by creating new life.
She also shows us what can happen to a man if he so driven by this thirst for knowledge and how it will ultimately lead to a fall. Faustus is a man who sold his soul to Lucifer for unlimited knowledge in the form of arcane magic. Victor, like Faustus, has stopped at nothing to gain his goal, but in the end is ultimately dissatisfied with the result.
Suffice to say, I simply adore this book as you may have gathered from my ramblings. I think this, alongside Dracula, are amongst the strongest representations of Gothic literature. Furthermore, I have a real soft spot for epistolary means of storytelling. You see inside their heads more and understand their motifs and feelings. My favourite quote: "This was then the reward of my benevolence! I had saved a human being from destruction, and as a recompense I now writhed under the miserable pain of a wound which shattered the flesh and bone.
The feelings of kindness and gentleness which I had entertained but a few moments before gave place to hellish rage and gnashing of teeth. Inflamed by pain, I vowed eternal hatred and vengeance to all mankind. Listen to the passion, to the intellect and witness such a wasted opportunity.
View all 40 comments. I think I find Mary Shelley and the way in which this book came to be far more interesting than the actual text, not gonna lie. View all 5 comments. Was the weather gloomy that summer of ? Were the companions bored to death? One evening, they challenged each other into writing the scariest ghost story they could come up with.
No one remembers what the fellows wrote on that occasion. Since then, what was meant as an entertaining story, rose to the dimension of a myth. So much so that the original novel itself has been covered up by layer upon layer of external imagery, which has very little to do with it — in particular, the heavily made-up face of Boris Karloff in the unfaithful film adaptation of this book.
Nowadays, there are all sorts of adaptations e. Naturally, the idea of creating a living being — using some human technique instead of natural reproduction —, comes from the 16th-century Jewish narrative of the Golem of Prague. However, there is not much science or technology to speak of in Frankenstein , apart from a few mentions of Paracelsus and a couple of other alchemists and astrologers. The minor references to electricity, magnetism and galvanism are in the spirit of the times.
Still, Michael Faraday , who would soon bring significant breakthroughs in these fields, was about the same age as the precocious author of Frankenstein. Still, the presence of electromagnetism is not only a reference to the myth of Prometheus and the stolen fire.
If anything, it expresses a fascination with landscapes: now sunny, beautiful and pleasant; now stormy, sublime and menacing, with ghastly thunderbolts ripping the clouds apart. Mary Shelley had a couple of predecessors — Coleridge is quoted a few times in her novel —, but that sort of imagery was, by and large, a novelty at the time.
It might be interesting to note that while Mary Shelley was writing Frankenstein , Caspar David Friedrich was painting his famous Wanderer above the Sea of Fog see below. This obsession with ominous landscapes would soon become a trope within the romantic and gothic literary tradition cf.
Frankenstein is also considered an early example of the modern Horror genre. However, the general impression is not exactly a feeling of terror. Rather a romantic and quite often bombastic expression of strong emotions: despair, anguish, despondency, melancholy, misery, wretchedness, affliction, etc.
This accumulation of epithets might feel quaint and a little schmaltzy to a modern reader. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and later avatars of serial killers on a murderous rampage.
It might, nowadays, become once more a significant source of inspiration, as contemporary technology explores new forms of sentient and intelligent beings, out of GMO, silicon or some weird combination of the two. The biopic Mary Shelley by Haifaa al-Mansour, with Elle Fanning, is primarily a romance, recounting the complicated situation in which the young woman met her husband and how she got to write her masterpiece.
The portrayals of Percy Shelley and Lord Byron are rather unflattering. View all 48 comments. It's been fifty years since I had read Frankenstein , and, now—after a recent second reading—I am pleased to know that the pleasures of that first reading have been revived. Once again--just as it was in my teens--I was thrilled by the first glimpse of the immense figure of the monster, driving his sled across the arctic ice, and marveled at the artful use of narrative frames within frame, each subsequent frame leading us closer to the heart of the novel, until we hear the alienated yet articulat It's been fifty years since I had read Frankenstein , and, now—after a recent second reading—I am pleased to know that the pleasures of that first reading have been revived.
Once again--just as it was in my teens--I was thrilled by the first glimpse of the immense figure of the monster, driving his sled across the arctic ice, and marveled at the artful use of narrative frames within frame, each subsequent frame leading us closer to the heart of the novel, until we hear the alienated yet articulate voice of the creature himself.
In addition, I admired the equally artful way the novel moves backward through the same frames until we again reach the arctic landscape which is the scene of the novel's beginning This time through, I was particularly struck with how Mary must have been influenced by the novels of her father.
The relentless hounding of one man by another who feels his life has been poisoned by that man's irresponsible curiosity is a theme taken straight out of Godwin's Caleb Williams , and the cautionary account of a monomaniac who gradually deprives himself of the satisfactions of family, friends and love in pursuit of an intellectual ideal is reminiscent of the alchemist of St.
Her prose also is like her father's in her ability to make delicate philosophical distinctions and express abstract ideas, but she is a much better writer than he: her sentences are more elegant and disciplined, and her descriptive details more aptly chosen and her scenes more effectively realized.
The conclusion of the novel seems hasty and incomplete, but perhaps that is because the concept of Frankenstein is so revolutionary that no conclusion could have seemed satisfactory. At any rate, this fine novel has given birth to a host of descendants, and—unlike Victor Frankenstein—is a worthy parent of its many diverse creations. View all 25 comments. This was awesome. I listened to an audiobook on YouTube as it is under the public domain.
It was great. The narrator did a great job of building the atmosphere and excitement in the story. I always love reading the original stories behind some very iconic pop culture figures. Frankenstein is obviously incredibly popular. It was great to read and do a little bit of a personal independent study on major nerd here. The perfect Hall This was awesome. The perfect Halloween read! View all 9 comments.
Shelves: classic , own , audio , action-thriller , required-reading-high-school , favorites , , read-more-than-once , horror. I figure it was a good time for a reread since it was one of my favorites and it has been over 20 years since I read it. I did enjoy it again this time and it stands up to the 5 star review and designation of classic.
There were a few slow parts - mainly when Dr. Frankenstein would stop the narrative to wax poetical about something - but, not enough t take a way from my overall enjoyment.
I still recommend this for everyone and be sure to check out my full original review below. Also, it is my favorite of the classic horror novels. It is perfectly written, suspenseful, and is a bit more thought provoking than scary. One of the best ways I can compare it to other classic horror novels is to Dracula - which I read recently.
Dracula has so much repetitive filler that you do not find in Frankenstein, which is the main reason I find Frankenstein to be a more enjoyable book. Also, I would say that this is more a novel of the human condition than an actual horror novel. Some terrifying things happen, but it is the monster within all of us that may end up being more terrifying! Funny side story: when I read this in High School, it was around the same time that the Kenneth Branaugh adaptation came out at the theaters.
We were all encouraged to go see it and found it pretty close to the source material. What was amusing was that Time Magazine had a review of the movie bashing it as untrue to the source material and how disappointed Shelley would be that the Boris Karlovian depiction of a lurching, flattop monster with bolts in its neck was ignored for a more serious drama movie.
Time Magazine, for goodness sakes, published an article that claims to know the content of the book but is completely wrong and does it while bashing a movie that did a pretty good job with it!?
I mean, it it is okay if you prefer the old time movie version of Frankenstein - and it is a classic - but to make definitive statements that are completely wrong in what is supposed to be a well thought of publication not your typical tabloid supermarket checkout fodder , that is just too much!
We need a copy editor over here! Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus, Mary Shelley Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus is a novel written by English author Mary Shelley — that tells the story of Victor Frankenstein, a young scientist who creates a grotesque, sapient creature in an unorthodox scientific experiment.
Shelley started writing the story when she was 18, and the first edition of the novel was published anonymously in London on 1 January , when she was Her name first appeared on the second edi Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus, Mary Shelley Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus is a novel written by English author Mary Shelley — that tells the story of Victor Frankenstein, a young scientist who creates a grotesque, sapient creature in an unorthodox scientific experiment.
Her name first appeared on the second edition, published in France in Frankenstein tells the story of Victor Frankenstein, a young scientist who creates a sapient creature in an unorthodox scientific experiment.
Frankenstein is a frame story written in epistolary form. Robert Walton is a failed writer who sets out to explore the North Pole in hopes of expanding scientific knowledge.
During the voyage, the crew spots a dog sled driven by a gigantic figure. A few hours later, the crew rescues a nearly frozen and emaciated man named Victor Frankenstein. Frankenstein has been in pursuit of the gigantic man observed by Walton's crew.
Frankenstein starts to recover from his exertion; he sees in Walton the same obsession that has destroyed him and recounts a story of his life's miseries to Walton as a warning. The recounted story serves as the frame for Frankenstein's narrative.
View all 4 comments. I have a favourite Kate Beaton strip framed up in our book room: Full-size image here. Mary was — what? The surroundings were familiar. The last time Mary and Percy had come to Switzerland had been during their elopement a couple of years earlier, accompa I have a favourite Kate Beaton strip framed up in our book room: Full-size image here. The last time Mary and Percy had come to Switzerland had been during their elopement a couple of years earlier, accompanied by her sister, who was also in love with him; Mary had got pregnant, but the baby girl was born prematurely and died in February Now they were back, trying to put the past behind them and enjoy a holiday with Byron, who at the time was sleeping with Mary's stepsister.
Mary's other sister Fanny also drowned herself that year, , also pining for Percy. So it was in the midst of this complex love-dodecahedron that the holidaymakers, their festive plans foiled by constant rain, held their famous competition to write a ghost story. The result is something very different from its image in popular culture. Instead of the smoke of Victorian London, we have the Swiss Alps and the Orkney Islands; instead of Igor and bolts through the neck, we have meditations on personal autonomy, scientific responsibility and eugenics.
Frankenstein is overwritten and the narrative structure is a bit odd — she was still a teenager when she wrote it, let's not forget — but thematically, it's fascinating. I'm surprised by how few reviews I've read touch on what seems to me to be the intensely female experiences that it obliquely comments on. The confusion of bringing a creature into the world only to feel horror and revulsion towards it.
The stress of releasing it into a hostile and uncaring world. And perhaps most of all, the deep sympathy shown with someone who feels that their body is not their own, that it is somehow owned and regulated by others. A body that one is taught by society to hate. The monster's feelings are unimportant, because he was created by a man for the man's own gratification. For me though it's the beautiful first stanza that better expresses the ferocious intensity of Mary and her circle of friends and lovers, surrounded as they all seemed to be by imminent, premature death: We are as clouds that veil the midnight moon; How restlessly they speed, and gleam, and quiver, Streaking the darkness radiantly!
But the writing they left behind will last as long as English literature is read, and for all of its problems Frankenstein is among that select group. View all 33 comments. Frankenstein's Monster. Grim Reaper. Headless Horseman.
La Catrina. Swamp Monster. Woman in Black. Share on:. Pocket Edition PE. Xbox Mayor — The Super Mario Bros. President — The Super Mario Bros. X — Saturday Supercade Mrs. Gammliss — The Super Mario Bros.
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