Frankenstein

What started out as a fun contest amongst friends gave birth to one of the horror genres most iconic and gruesome creatures: Frankenstein’s Monster. Classified as a gothic fiction, science fiction, and horror fiction novel, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein asked the question of what would happen when the powers of the natural world clashed with mankind’s curiosity.

Her 1818 novel also introduced readers to grave robbery, corpse mutilation, body horror, and horrendous murders. Readers were also presented with a story within which the lines between villain and victim are blurred, and with a monster and man we can simultaneously empathize with and despise.

Before we began looking for isolation in Frankenstein, there are two misconceptions that need to be clarified: first, Frankenstein is the name of the doctor, Victor Frankenstein, who created the creature. Frankenstein is not the name of the Creature. He is never given an actual name and is referred to as the Creature, Frankenstein’s Monster, daemon, and Frankenstein’s Creation.

Second, Frankenstein, similarly to Dracula, was written in a somewhat unique way, as the perspective from which the story is told changes a few times throughout the course of the novel. It begins as letters from a ship captain to his sister, then switches over to the perspective of Dr. Victor Frankenstein as the captain retells the tale that he was told by a dying man he rescued from sea. Halfway through, the novel switches and is told from the perspective of the Creature, as it details what he experienced within the first few months of existing. The novel then switches back to the perspective of Victor Frankenstein and finally ends with the ship captain.