Hello everyone! Time for another book review! I decided to go classic on this one and I was not disappointed. I read Frankenstein by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (179 pages). Now remember, Frankenstein is the CREATOR of the creature, not the creature himself. He has no name.
“I felt as if I had committed some great crime, the consciousness of which haunted me. I was guiltless, but I had indeed drawn down a horrible curse upon my head, as mortal as that of a crime.” – Victor Frankenstein
Frankenstein starts out with Robert Walton writing letters to his sister Margaret. The whole book is compiled of his letters. He is on a voyage to discover new lands and he and his crew get stranded in ice in the arctic and they find a strange man named Victor Frankenstein. Walton takes him aboard and nurses him back to health and Victor decides to tell Walton his story. Victor created a creature as a result of a twisted obsession in occult science. He brings it to life, but then abandons it immediately. The creature is confused and sacred and eventually we get to hear his story through Victor and how their decisions brought the downfall of both Victor and the creature’s lives.
This book was absolutely amazing. While reading it, I tried to analyze and decipher the meanings that are buried in this book. There are so many references to other literature that Mary Shelley referenced in her novel. One that she referenced many times throughout the story is John Milton’s Paradise Lost. It’s an epic poem about Satan’s fall from Heaven and his efforts to destroy mankind to get his revenge. I love that Mary Shelley used this poem so much in her story because it gives the story so much depth. I like how she made her characters so complex. The creature was so misunderstood. For a while in the book, you have much pity for Victor and his plight, but a little more than half way through, my opinion started to change drastically. I realized how cold hearted Victor was for abandoning this creation he worked so hard for. The creature was left to fend for himself in a world he knew nothing about. I like that Shelley pulls at my heart strings with her characters.
I didn’t find anything in this book that I didn’t like. Something that could turn people off about this book would be the old English language that can be a little flowery and difficult to understand at first. If you start out slow and look up any words that you don’t know and just follow the references at the bottom of the page, you should be able to follow the story fairly well!
Overall I loved this book. It really challenged me to think hard about the characters’ decisions and how that effected what happened to them in the end. I highly recommend that everyone read this book at some point in their life. It has a lot of good content that a young person could learn from. There is a great play adaptation of this book by Danny Boyle, I can’t find it on DVD which distresses me, but here is the trailer. Well that’s all I’ve got today! Until next time my friends.
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One girl/many words 
I never knew that the creator was actually called Frankenstein and not the creation. It seems like a very interesting book by how you’re writing about it. I tried to read it before but like you said about the old English, it just got really complicated for me.
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You should definitely try again!! My suggestion would be to find one that has commentary and notes in the margins. My version was edited by Susan Wolfson and it’s really good and the notes helped me understand the references and situation. Also it had awesome commentary in the back and several excerpts from poems and books that inspired Mary Shelley to write Frankenstein 🙂
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