In Which We Discuss Frankenstein and His Monster

I joined a bookclub. For some reason, saying that makes me feel embarassingly dorky.

It's fun.  The first book was Frankenstein, and I was the mouthy, snarky kid.  I hope I didn't annoy people.  I tried to stay quiet, but I got so into it, and carried away.

Anyway, thoughts on Frankenstein.  I'd never read the book before, or seen the films, to be honest, but I'm sure that I was promised castles.  And lightening.  And an Igor. And surely, at some point, someone was supposed to yell "pull the switch!"?.

In short, yes, Frankenstein is one of the books that has grown completely out of its original novel, like a butterfly bursting from a chrysalis.   We all know the basic story - a man creates a monster, and regrets it, since the monster is ugly.  The monster begins killing people, including, eventually, his creator.

None of us had much sympathy for Viktor Frankenstein.  He ran away from his monster as soon as it came to life because it was ugly?   He'd made the damn thing!  Then, throughout the entire novel, his reasoning for finding the monster evil is purely because of its looks.  We discussed whether people at the time would have had more sympathy for Viktor, whether they would have agreed with his idea of the monster being evil because it looked evil, as modern audiences had no sympathy whatsoever.  We generally agreed that they would - our culture is very much focused on difference being okay, while theirs still hadn't really figured out how to begin to handle things like disabilities.

Viktor also completely fails to take responsibility for anything.  He talks about how God and fate set him on this path, and cursed him, and never once takes responsibility for his own actions, or tries to make amends.  OMG, cry me a river, emo kid.

I wasn't completely entranced with the writing, either.  I found the book hard to get into, especially since the monster, the most interesting character, didn't show up for the first two thirds. I also think that Mary Shelley was a godawful scientist.

I'm glad I read it, but I wasn't all that fond of it.

One interesting thing about it; it's subtitled "The Modern Prometheus", and I wondered, why Prometheus and not Pygmalion?  Pygmalion is, after all, about creating a new life, while Prometheus is about stealing fire from the gods.

Then I realised.  Pygmalion is about forming and shaping new life, which Viktor didn't do.  Instead, he stole the power of life from the gods, and had no idea what he was doing with it.

In Which We Discuss December

Number	Name	Author	Dewey	ISBN	Date Began	Date Finished
1	Carrie	Stephen King	---	---	1/12/2010	4/12/2010
2	Beowulf	Neil Gaiman, Chris Ryall, Gabriel Rodriguez	Graphic Novel	978-1600101281	3/12/2010	3/12/2010
3	Where the Heart Is	Billie Letts	---	---	4/12/2010	9/12/2010
4	Frankenstein	Mary Shelley	---	---	12/12/2010	14/12/2010
5	Professor Stewart's Hoard of Mathematical Treasures	Ian Stewart	---	---	13/12/2010	---
6	The Picador Book of Contemporary Chinese Fiction	Various	---	---	14/12/2010	---
7	The Accidental Father	Greg Williams	CF	978-0-7528-8428-8	16/12/2010	17/12/2010
8	The Lost Diaries of Adrian Mole 1999-2001	Sue Townsend	Fiction	978-0-718-15489-9	17/12/2010	18/12/2010
9	20 Fragments of a Ravenous Youth	Xiaolu Guo	Fiction	978-0-701-18155-0	18/12/2010	20/12/2010
10	Just a Little Disco on an Open-Top Bus	Candy Guard	Fiction	9780141023236	20/12/2010	22/12/2010
11	The Dark Lord of Derkholm	Diana Wynne Jones	Fiction	---	22/12/2010	28/12/2010
12	Year of the Griffin	Diana Wynne Jones	---	---	28/12/2010	30/12/2010
13	Survivor	Chuck Palahniuk	---	---	28/12/2010	---
14	Game Control	Lionel Shriver	---	---	30/12/2010	---

I'm going to split this into monthly posts, and then put it all together next year.