Frankenstein: The Modern Man-Made Man

For moviegoers Frankenstein’s Monster is a green, shambling corpse, with its stitched together construction held together by two bolts on its neck, as it moans and groans inhumanly. A deeper look into the actual book by Mary Shelly, Frankenstein Or, The Modern Prometheus, however, shows a far more terrifying visage: something that’s almost, but not quite, human. A being that, while “about eight feet in height”, still had a soul that “glowed with love and humanity” at birth, which causes it’s transformation into a serial killer to be far more chilling (Shelly 100). The source of the Monster, and how it differs from other characters, is what obviously creates this irreconcilable gap from the human characters. Contextually, during the writing of Frankenstein, industrialization swept through Mary Shelly’s Great Britain. The change in society caused by industrialization can be seen in the work as a whole. Thus it is clear Frankenstein argues that the loss of originality in an industrialized society leads to dehumanization and alienation, as exemplified in the manufactured Monster.

The monster as a symbol of industrial products is clearly developed in the text. When the Monster is speaking to his creator, Victor Frankenstein, he mentions a journal written by him, in which Victor “minutely described in these papers every step [Victor] took in the progress of your creation” (Shelly 130). Later, in the climax of the book, after the titular doctor has died of exposure, the Monster promises the narrator Walton that he will burn himself to destruction. He swears that “I shall collect my funeral pile and consume to ashes this miserable frame, that its remains may afford no light to any curious and unhallowed wretch who would create such anothe...

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... of giving life, something wonderful and Godly, could end in murder, suicide, and hate. Because the Monster was made, industriously, into something so hated, and so abhorred, he casts doubt on industrialization itself. To the people of the time, the science seemed all too possible, living as they were. Perhaps the green, shambling man isn't too far off the mark: creating something so powerful and strange changed Victor – but how could it have changed society? The Monster is more than a movie monster, shambling yet startling – he's a deep and complex character with morality and personality, but due to his origin damned to a life of suffering. The Monster a warning, for as Victor's invention says to Victor “On you it rests, whether I quit [...] and lead a harmless life, or become the scourge of your fellow creatures and the author of your own speedy ruin" (Shelly 101).