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. Because the sad thing, the really sad thing, is that pretty much everyone has heard of Frankenstein's monster... but so many don't know how human the character is. 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. Mary Shelley takes the reader on a journey through St Petersburg, to the beautiful Swiss Alps, to the desolate waste of the Arctic Circle, in a story that has sent a chill down the spines of generations.

That booger was the funniest thing ever, and nothing was stirring around in them other than maybe some gas.

A partir de un análisis ligero, Frankenstein trata la venganza y el abandono. Son las dos cuestiones principales que hacen esta historia una historia con movimiento. La venganza desde el arrebato y la venganza desde el rechazo. También cabe destacar que es admirable la caracterización del Creador y su Criatura, y sus interminables pugnas por quién posee la más dañina amenaza; ya que, si lo vemos de esa forma, y teniendo en cuenta la completa implicación de las circunstancias en la novela, ¿qué es más nocivo, el rechazo injustificado o el asesinato como consecuencia de una iniquidad anterior? An upper-crust guy sails off to the Arctic to make discoveries, and to pass the time he writes to his sister. Supposedly, he's been sailing around on whaling ships for several years. And he's been proven an invaluable resource by other captains. 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 1931 unfaithful film adaptation of this book. Nowadays, there are all sorts of adaptations (e.g. Kenneth Branagh’s movie, with De Niro, more on that below), parodies (Mel Brook’s Young Frankenstein), and probably even spooky porn versions. Third: My heart shattered for the “monster” and I haven’t felt this strong a desire to “hug it out, bitch” since reading Grendel and Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter. The “wretch” is so well drawn and powerfully portrayed that he form the emotional ligament for the entire story. He is among the finest creations the written form has to offer.

once I falsely hoped to meet the beings who, pardoning my outward form, would love me for the excellent qualities which I was capable of unfolding.” Let’s have a party Victor. Let’s get together and celebrate all things Gothic, and dark, and wonderful. Let’s have it in an attic in an old house in the middle of a thunderstorm, and then afterwards let’s go to the graveyard with our shovels and our body bags. Sounds good doesn’t it Victor? We could then create our own doppelgängers from the corpses of criminals and geniuses. 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. And also the fact that I can Finally I can be one of those assholes who’s like “Frankenstein is the SCIENTIST, not the monster!!!!” Es extremadamente bella y a la vez terrible la manera en que la autora nos acerca ambas historias, ya que logra conmovernos en ambos casos, a punto tal que no sabemos cómo lectores a quién apoyar. So this guy goes on and on in these letters to his sister about how he wishes on every star that he could find a BFF at sea. After a few ( too many) letters, they pull a half-frozen Frankensicle out of the water.

Honestly, I have a predisposition against books written in the archaic-feeling style of Frankenstein. It is something I always thought I’d grow out of as I aged. Alas, it has been two decades since high school, and my bias against writers who use thee and thy still abides. Fantásticos los personajes secundarios, tanto la familia de Víctor como la familia con la que aprende su criatura o el capitán del barco.

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. El mejor relato de todos es del de John Polidori, “El vampiro”, que es el disparador de lo que en la actualidad conoceríamos a través de Bram Stoker con “Drácula”, y esto se debe a que "El vampiro" anticipa a la inmortal novela de Stoker 56 años antes de su publicación.La versione cinematografica che trovo più prossima al romanzo della Shelley è questa, del 1994: regia di Kenneth Branagh, Robert De Niro interpreta la mostruosa creatura. That is not to say I recommend skipping this novel, because I don’t. I also did not hate it, not by any means. The story works better in summary than in execution, and it requires close attention, but it is a genuine triumph of imagination. It is also far more polished and thematically coherent than Bram Stoker’s later attempt at Gothic horror (which has also turned out to be undying). The well-meaning attempts of Mary Shelley's son and daughter-in-law to "Victorianise" her memory through the censoring of letters and biographical material contributed to a perception of Mary Shelley as a more conventional, less reformist figure than her works suggest. Her own timid omissions from Percy Shelley's works and her quiet avoidance of public controversy in the later years of her life added to this impression.

Mary Shelley’s book is considered one of the earliest examples of the Science Fiction genre. 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. the often ridiculed Bulwer-Lytton’s “dark and stormy night”).No voy a omitir la prosa, que acompaña a la perfección la calidad de este libro. No hay mejor pluma que la que te abraza y te lleva consigo en un viaje por el tiempo y el espacio hacia su historia. Mientras leía Frankenstein, me sentía allí, junto a Víctor y a su Criatura, percibía la realidad que me rodeaba como falsa, como un pobre bosquejo de lo que estaba leyendo, y creía que mi pertenencia radicaba en el siglo XVII. La ambientación de Shelley es tan estupenda que fue capaz de sobrepasar los límites de la narrativa e invadir el mundo real. Excelente trabajo de la autora. Su estilo de escritura es de los puntos más fuertes del texto. Now the question here proposed by Shelley is, who is the ‘true’ monster? The man who reached for the profane and abandoned it into a life of torment turning toward evil, or the misunderstood being thrust into the world already considered an abomination and becoming ‘ malicious because I am miserable.’ Its ethical quandaries like this that make this a fantastic classroom choice or one to toss and turn with for days. The National Theater had an excellent stage adaptation where the two leads, Benedict Cumberbatch and Jonny Lee Miller, alternated roles as Frankenstein and Frankenstein’s monster to further interrogate this question. Though perhaps the creation says it best: ‘ Listen to me, Frankenstein. You accuse me of murder; and yet you would, with a satisfied conscience, destroy your own creature. Oh, praise the eternal justice of man!’