How Frankenstein has evolved

The Monster presented in Mary Shelley's Frankenstein is a complex, sympathetic character. He is of a higher intelligence than the average person, a far cry from the shambling Boris Karloff in the 1931 film. Yet this image of Frankenstein has endured far longer than Shelley's original creature because of his relative simplicity.

The Monster, as he is originally presented, commits one sin that endearing, classic monsters can't do: He is complex. He is more than just a symbol of terror or a great other. He is intelligent, savvy, passionate and sympathetic, and instead of terrorizing the public, he really just sort of broods. It's ironic, because this makes him a much more relatable character, but it actually stymies his universal appeal; kids don't want to see a sad monster. A sad monster doesn't look good on window clings and lawn decorations. A sad monster has no place among the "fun" of fear.

A shambling, giant green man is easily identifiable as a great other, in a way that the thin-skin, watery-eyed Monster that Shelley describes simply isn't. The Monster treads the thin line between deformed and hideous, a grey area that is incredibly painful to tread for many people.

However, there are still echoes of Shelley's portrayal in contemporary Frankenstein stories. Frankenstein is usually run out of town by the villagers, he's still composed from the dead, and he's still a very lonely creature. Those elements provide a motivation and a gruesome origin. They give Frankenstein an explanation. They clarify the creature instead of complicating him.

And echoes of Shelley's monster also exist in other media. The best example comes from comics namely Alan Moore's Swamp Thing. Swamp Thing was, for a long time, just another monster comic, until Moore took over and told the tragic story of a man's metamorphosis into something less than human. Beyond his great power, the Swamp Thing was intelligent enough to understand what he had lost. He straddled the line between human and other, and he looked at humans with an envy, envious of their ability to relate to one another, just like Frankenstein's Monster.

Finally, it's interesting to note that Asimov used the term "Frankenstein Complex" to describe characters with a fear of mechanical men. The trope of a scientist creating life with machines is everywhere, from Metropolis to Star Wars, and these stories arguably wouldn't exist if it wasn't for the Monster.

Poor Victor Frankenstein. His name will be forever remembered for the son he tried to forget. In a way, it's the ultimate victory for the literary monster; he's truly conquered his father and taken his identity. We remember the monster with this name for two reasons:
1. It's easy shorthand for an iconic character.
2. It's endearing, yet still scary.
"Frankenstein." It sounds German and Gothic and horrible. It fits the green-skinned monster like a glove. While his creator may have never given him a name, we, the readers, are ready to welcome him with open arms and adopt the monster, the way no one else would.

Dracula and Sexism

*Spoiler Alert*

     As the old saying goes, bad things happen to sluts in horror movies.

     First I have to apologize, twice. There’s no such ridiculous old saying. I just made it up. And I apologize for using the word “slut”, which is definitely insulting and uncomfortable. However, it is also the case in the movie Dracula, and in a majority of horror movies nowadays. What’s more, the character Lucy in the movie, meets exactly all the stereotypical standards and the negative aspects that a “slut” will be in a gendered society. To put it simple, Lucy deserves whatever happens to her because she, as a woman, loves sex.

     It’s understandable, not preferable, that Dracula depicts all female characters in a traditional and conservative way based on the social gender norms due to the whole setting of that era. However, even though the movie is about some imaginary creatures that don’t even exist in any place in the world, the power hierarchy in the monster society is still typically patriarchal. Dracula is the most powerful creature in the movie, controlling several female monsters and apparently representing the upper-class image. Van Helsing, the mystic who represents the most erudite authority in the area of mysteries, may be the only one who can fight against Dracula by his own ability. The leaders from either the good side or the bad side appear to be male. And women are only nuns, well-educated ladies, maids, and monsters sexually seducing men and begging for some mercy from Dracula. In other words, they are either powerless or dependent on men.

     Furthermore, Mina and Lucy are the two sides of the same coin, the coin of sexism. Mina is the innocent virgin who is interested in sex but resists it due to the social requirement of women. She will say “Disgusting” when she accidentally sees a drawing of two people having sex. On the other hand, Lucy never hides her curiosity and her eagerness to sex. She flirts with every man she meets, chooses from several candidates, and openly talks about and shows her interest in sex. What’s more, when she is seduced by Dracula, Van Helsing claims that she’s willing to be recruited and an honest follower to Dracula. Van Helsing also refers Lucy as “a bitch of devil” and “a whore of darkness” in the movie. 

     Wait. Isn’t Lucy a victim of rape? Apparently she’s not voluntary to have sex with a werewolf, but under the effect of Dracula’s power. She’s more like intoxicated when all of these happen. What Van Helsing claims is a classical victim-blaming in most rapes. She’s a slut so that is not rape; she wants it so that is not rape; she deserves it so that is not rape. All based on some stupid assumptions made by some privileged men without asking what she really thinks. Unsurprisingly, the so-called “whore” and “bitch” eventually turns into another monster and gets killed by the patriarchal representative Van Helsing.

The Evolution of Frankenstein’s Monster

Reading Shelley’s Frankenstein was really interesting for me because up until now I had only known Frankenstein as the green monster with the screw through his neck. I had never known, nor would I have ever guessed, that in the original version of the story Frankenstein is not the monster at all. The initial results of a Google search for Frankenstein show not a doctor or a mad scientist, but the classic monster from the movie. A large portion of the credibility for the confusion largely comes from the movie being a more accessible and entertaining media, leading to many people likely only watching the movie without understanding the real story behind the monster. However, I think the fact that Frankenstein’s monster has taken Frankenstein’s name over time actually signifies much more.

            The fact that over time, Frankenstein’s monster has taken upon the name Frankenstein signifies a lot of things. In Shelley’s book she avoids giving the monster a name, which makes the monster less of a figure and makes it even more inhuman. By naming Frankenstein’s monster Frankenstein, it suddenly becomes a much more real and memorable figure because there is a specific title attached to it. The fact that Frankenstein’s monster took on his own name is also significant in its own way. While Frankenstein was arguably more of a monster in the book, in popular opinion it is the monster that is the monster. In both versions, Frankenstein is the name for the monstrous.

Visualizing minsters (#2 option)

I noticed that one of the huge differences of Frankenstein’s monsters between the novel and the film is the portrayals. The portrayals of Frankenstein’s monsters leave the audience a totally different impression comparing to the one describing in the book.

In the book, Frankenstein’s monster was just human like creatures, made of mashed-up body parts. It is definitely not green skin or monstrous look. The monster was depicted as human. He is smart, with human motions, and have willing to learn human stuff. You could see it as human without his odd appearance. The only thing that made him cannot fit in the society is that people could not treat him as normal human being except the De Lacey family. People were really mean to him. He got shoot after he saved the young girl. He was nice to people and wanted people treat him normally and fairly as other human being, however, people cannot die to his appearance. And he starts to revenge after realizing that he cannot be treated fairly even all the stuff he had done was just being nice, which took a long time to change himself a real monster.

However, in the film, in order to leave audience an impressive outlook, Frankenstein’s monster was shown as green skin, ugly facial structure. Also in the movie, it did not show all positive sides of the monster, such as his intelligence, and kindness. He learnt how to speak, and read. In the movie, Frankenstein’s monster could not talk. When he first showed himself in the town, he made a huge mass. The movie tried to create a monstrous look and horrifying movie plot to make it frightening. He was a mistake by Dr. Frankenstein and his irresponsibility, who is totally excluded by the society. The film skipped all the parts that why he started to became violent. There was nothing really monstrous about him at the beginning. It was brought out by the way how he was treated by the society, in other word, the whole society was the reason that made him a real monster from the deep inside.

Sparky: The Closest Representation of The Monster in Recent Times

In the original Mary Shelley interpretation of Frankenstein, the monster of Victor Frankenstein is depicted as a large, horrifying man sewn together out of various dead body parts. As terrifying its appearance may be, the monster showed signs of a rather high degree of intelligence and empathy. So why are there so many variations of the monster in modern media that depict it as a dumb, slow, and evil?

I have never seen the 1931 film version of Frankenstein, but it’s famous enough to have been referenced in several other popular media sources. The Frankenstein monster is almost always depicted with a squared head, two bolts attached to its neck, and walks with its hands upright. While the appearance of the monster is free to be interpreted according to the viewers’ imaginations, there are several other traits of the monster that has changed through the many different versions that has made the monster very different from the one that originated from Mary Shelley’s novel. For example, the monster from Shelley’s book is very cunning and intelligent. It was able to evade an entire fleet of humans that tried to track it down and kill it. It even outsmarted the brilliant scientist and its creator, Victor Frankenstein. The monster is also very agile and able to avoid detection from humans when it wants to. It is only discovered by people when it wants to, such as when it tried to talk to the family it was providing food for. The monster is also probably the most empathetic character in the entire novel, since all it does from the moment of its creation is to try and find a being that it can connect and relate with. While the monster may have killed several people, all of these instances can be considered an act of self-defense or an accident. Finally, the monster in Shelley’s book remains nameless. All of these traits are what is lost in the modern versions of the Frankenstein monster. It is depicted as an unintelligent, rigid, and murderous by nature. It is essentially a zombie that is large and reanimated by lightening striking body parts that have been sewn together. The monster is also usually named Frankenstein for some reason as well, even though that is the surname of its creator. The new monster barely resembles the original of Shelley’s book. A monster changing drastically from its source material is nothing new however. We learned in class that witches and werewolves were significantly different from their modern versions. The Frankenstein monster probably changed for similar reasons, such as what is relevant in the world at the time of its creation. For example, the monster might have represented people’s fears of scientific advancement, which is not quite relevant in modern times. The monster might have lost all its depth and personality due to be simpler and easier to depict in a motion picture. The monster may have lost its humanity so that it can be easier to hate compared to the human heroes. There are several reasons that could explain the transformation of the way the monster acts. The reason behind the name Frankenstein being tied to the monster is most likely due to the monster being the title character of every media it appears in. The monster is usually the most important character of any monster story, and the title of monster films and books usually refer to the monster (for example, Alien, The Thing, Godzilla, etc.). Another less likely explanation for its name is because some people may view the monster as the child/family member of the creator, Victor Frankenstein. The monster considers Victor as its father or at least a family in Shelley’s novel. It is understandable why many believe that the monster is named Frankenstein instead of its creator. The closest representation of the Frankenstein monster I can remember is oddly the dog Sparky from the animated film, Frankenweenie. That dog is not named Frankenstein (his creator/owner is, actually), he is quite mobile and agile, he loves humans, and there are evil humans that want to hurt him. Sparky of course is much better off than Shelley’s monster, since he was created by someone who actually loves him, unlike the egomaniac Victor Frankenstein. I am sure that there have been accurate depictions of the original monster, but the majority of the versions only loosely represents the unnamed monster.

Class, Race & Gender

Frankenstein, as we have spoke in class, can be seen as a metaphor for race, class and gender. I think that on a deeper, more personal level it relates to the mental illnesses related to being an outcast forced into solitary.

Given no name, Frankenstein’s monster lacks an identity to give himself. Everyone portrays their own beliefs onto him creating him to be something he is not. If we look back in any point history we can see groups of people wrongly treated in this manner only to be realized as normal years later.

Being outcasted can create mental illnesses ranging from depression and wanting to die (the monster asking Frankenstein to take him out of his misery) to becoming mass murderers. Creating solitary towards a person or group can cause deep-rooted emotions that many besides the affected do not see until it is merely too late.

A continuation 200 years in the making.

Before having ever read the novel I was under the belief that the monster associated with the name Frankenstein was indeed Frankenstein himself; although the movies never call the monster itself Frankenstein, it seems by leaving out so may details of the original story and advertisements showing the monster with “Frankenstein” typically written on it has caused a subconscious association between the two. It is interesting to see how the original book has been adapted and changed so many times in movies and side stories, at first a strong-willed monster that was self-educated and had noble aspirations to become a part of society, to an unintelligent creature who appears to only desire destruction. Typical Frankenstein monster movies revolve around a creature whose appearance strikes fear into those who behold him, although a switch from the original has been made a few times where children do not run in fear of him. One of the most interesting film adaptations of Frankenstein in my opinion was the movie “I, Frankenstein” from 2014. The film picks up where the book left off and we come to find out that the monster did not kill himself as he state he would and has been living in humanities shadows for some 200 years battling demons in a war between them and gargoyles who were created by an archangel. Here the monster is named Adam, he walks among humanity as he is of normal stature but a scarred appearance, has super human strength and possesses a slightly advantaged intelligence. Throughout the movie he battles the demons alongside the gargoyles and at the end earns the name of “Frankenstein,” his true name. This story is just another Hollywood action flick and much of the original story’s societal struggles are ignored in order to film more fighting but yet it is an interesting continuation of the story of the monster.

The argument can be made that Frankenstein, Victor Frankenstein in this context, is the true monster so perhaps associating the “monster” with the name Frankenstein is not incorrect in itself. Victor created the monster, abandoned it, never warned his loved ones of the danger he had put them in, and many other things that classify Victor as the true monster of the story. The movie “I, Frankenstein” the name of Frankenstein is held in respect but only in the case of the monster itself. The gargoyles tell the monster that his true name is Frankenstein which poses an interesting question as to why his true name would be that of his creator? A more literal interpretation to the question could be simply that he would take the name of his creator as he has no family, no friends, no associates, or anyone he can relate to other than his creator. 

Who's the real monster?

Honestly, I never really knew there was a Frankenstein's monster before the green-skinned, square-headed Frankenstein's monster. Also, when I was growing up I have only known the monster to be named Frankenstein, I didn't really know it was actually Frankenstein who created the monster. I believe this is true for most people and then they tell their kids what they know and it's incorrect because people don't grow up knowing the truth anymore. Over the years, the word Frankenstein has just become a symbol for the monster. Nobody wanted to say Frankenstein's monster anymore so whenever someone was talking about the monster they would refer to it as Frankenstein and people would understand. People feel the need to put a name to a face. They needed a name for the monster and Frankenstein is the one that stick. This is most likely because Frankenstein is the one that created the monster that ultimately ruined his life and the lives of others. He created the monster, therefore Frankenstein could be considered the real monster. He is the reason a monster came to life and killed innocent people. The reason everyone thinks of Frankenstein as a green-skinned, square-headed monster and not what the original monster looked like is because that is the only image they have seen of Frankenstein. They are putting a face to a name in this case. This image of Frankenstein must have stuck better for people. It's unique, represents the name Frankenstein well, and has a very monstrous look. More of a monstrous look than the old version anyways. Also, I feel the newer image stuck well with kids. They find it humorous that a big green monster with a square head is stupid. Parents like seeing their kids happy and kids enjoy Frankenstein so Frankenstein keeps on prospering. I'm sure there are many other factors that have effected the image of Frankenstein and the monsters name a long time ago, but these are the reasons that make the most sense to me.

The Ever Changing Nameless Monster

In our 1818 edition of Mary Shelley’s novel, Dr. Frankenstein described his monster on page 35. His monster has yellow eyes that are “watery.” His hair and lips were black and intense white teeth. His yellow skin barely covered the arteries, bones and muscles. The monster has a shriveled complexion but Dr. Frankenstein had made the monster with perfect proportions. Even though Dr. Frankenstein had spent two years making his creation and thought it was beautiful before it had life, he is still repulsed by it. All those years of work and he just gives up and runs away.  The monster starts off with the brain of a child, but learns a lot of things remarkable quickly. I’m not quite sure why some Frankenstein adaptations paint the monster as stupid. The picture below is an image of the monster in the 1831 edition of Frankenstein by Mary Shelley (photo from Wikipedia):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frankenstein%27s_monster#/media/File:Frontispiece_to_Frankenstein_1831.jpg



I think the monster’s image changes because society’s overall opinion of what we find repulsive changes. When the novel came out, it seems like people were afraid of giant, yellowish men. One thought I had is that Shelley used the yellowish skin as a similarity to being ill. Some diseases that were common back then (and frankly there are medicines with side effects today that cause yellow skin as well) had an effect of looking yellowish. Your skin can also turn a yellowish hue when you are malnourished. I think the image of Frankenstein’s monster changes through time because it is what society is unwilling to accept. So when Shelley wrote the novel, a sick, incredible tall person would be shunned from society. But for another example, the film adaptation mentioned in the blog assignment, the monster has green skin. This does not fit in any known category of human race. The green skin pushes it even further of the possibility of belonging to any group, and humans are afraid of things that don’t belong and are unknown.  However, in recent shows (Once upon a Time and Penny Dreadful) the monster is very human looking with maybe some scars. The images of the monster are not completely off putting right away, which could mean that society’s view of the monster has shifted the monsterness (sorry not a word) internally.

I think the name Frankenstein could be tied to the monster because the name Frankenstein itself, is so iconic. That name has been used everywhere for a very long time. People use it for comparisons or insults. The name also could have arisen because of false information that people interpreted from the book. To be honest, I didn’t know Frankenstein was the name of the doctor until I read the book for the first time a couple years ago, I always assumed it was the monster from things I heard about or adaptations I watched. It could have stuck also because Dr. Frankenstein is the creator, so the monster takes the creator’s name. I also think that the name Frankenstein has stuck because of society’s need to name things. We nickname serial killers, cars, literally almost everything. I don’t think society would have agreed with Shelley with keeping the monster nameless, they would have thought that the monster needed a label, and what easier label than the famous name of the doctor that created it?

Dracula's origin

Dracula, a real person in history, whose full name (in Romanian) was Vlad, Vlad Tepes Dracula. Vlad is just one of his nicknames. Vlad was born in 1431 in today’s Romania. At that time, the emerging Ottoman Empire captured Constantinople, coveting Europe. They ware regarded as the enemy of the Christians. According to historical records, in 1442 Vlad and his younger brother were sent to the capital of Ottoman Constantinople as hostages for six years. 

During this period, Vlad suffered not only because of the hostile environment, but also because of the news saying that his father and brother had been assassinated by renegade aristocrats. At the age of seventeen, with the support of the Turkish Sultan, Vlad led the army hit back and retook Walachia. He seized the power back and after that the first thing he did was to purge dissidents relentlessly. He used a variety of draconian treatments of offenders to straighten his rule, the most famous one is the puncture punishment. To counter the powerful Ottoman, and to protect the weak Romania, Duke Vlad did not hesitate to violate a taboo. 

Many complex primitive beliefs were popularity with those Germans when whom were still in the forest in Eastern Europe as some savage tribes. There was one specific belief referred to a worship of wolves and the moon, according to legend it can gain strength from wolves. Believers obtained blessing could get great strength and would be covered with thick hair. They could also grow facially teared to deformation. They were like ferocious and bloodthirsty beasts, losing self-control and etc. All this was because of the influence of tidal action under full moon. Old Believers bit through the new believers to "share" this blessing. As can be seen, although the original inefficient was difficult to control, this native belief in Eastern Europe to the wolf has a very close features as vampires.

But with the persecution and slander by the Christians, this belief at that time was on the verge of extinction, left a so-called "werewolf" demonized legend. During the suppression of pagans, Duke Vlad first came into contact with this "werewolf" belief. Coupled with the record from the Catholic Church on the ancient enemy, and his impressions of the ancient literature at the time when he was as a hostage in Turkey, he restored the rite of human vampire and become a vampire in the modern sense of history first.

No Face No Name

In the book Frankenstein, Mary Shelley never gives a name to the monster that is created. Nor does she give a detailed description of the monsters features allowing the reader to come to their own conclusions. In my mind, the monster was always changing because as the story progressed my image of the monster would shift to match the mood. This is a drastic change to the early film Frankenstein monster image. In early films, the monster was given the name of his creator and made into a slow green giant. Was this monster one person’s idea of how the monster looked and it caught on or was it a way for filmmakers to hide the  seriousness of Shelley's monster.

In the book, Shelley’s monster is an intelligent figure that brings into question what does it mean to be human. The first film adaptation, the monster is green and seems to be slow. That is because the film is a slightly colored silent film that runs for 16-minutes. Kind of hard to represent real world struggles when you can’t speak. It is possible that film makers used the image of the original film to design their monster and gave it the name Frankenstein so the monster wasn’t just a random object in their plot.

In a more recent film, I Frankenstein (2014), the story continues where the book ends. The monster looks over his creator’s gave when he is attacked by demons. Gargoyles save the monster and give him the name Adam because they are not sure what he is since he doesn’t have a human soul. Years later the monster now named Adam meets a scientist who is trying to discover what Frankenstein did all those years ago. The scientist learns that Adam has been struggling with what he is and if he can ever be human.

This movie is a nice refresh form the clumsy ofe of a giant. It brings to life some of the struggles that the book originally brought up and allows the audience to be drawn to the monster’s plight since the monster looks human. This film could a sign that filmmakers have realized that they have chained an intellectual monster could draw audiences in just by being so dumbfounding .

Narration Bias

Besides the obvious physical and social characteristics that relate Frankenstein’s monster to African slaves, the fact that Frankenstein’s monster did not get to narrate his own story is an even stronger correlation between these two agents. In class, we talked about how there was a progression of narrators in the book Frankenstein; the reader takes the role of Walton’s sister who is initially narrating his sequence of events. Then, when Frankenstein is introduced, he takes the narration reins and relays his perception of events including the perceptions and tales of his monster, until Frankenstein dies, at which point the narration is taken over by Walton again. The monsters human experience was ultimately filtered through the lens of Frankenstein. Sure, the reader gets direct quotes from the monster with the goal to unravel his emotional and cognitive framework, but even those quotes are marred by Frankenstein’s perception and analysis of the unfolding events. Clearly, a connection can be drawn between the monster’s lack of agency over the perception of his life and the lack of agency African Slaves had over their perception as well.

Were African slaves historians or cultural anthropologists who had a say on the actual cultural and historical underpinnings on their class of people, no, the non-oppressed white man had the say about what and how they thought and felt. The people that made up the group were not the narrators of their own story just like Frankenstein’s monster. Looking at the relationship between African slaves and Frankenstein’s monster from this perspective offers value in the conscious realization of the historical progression of bias regarding African slaves and their story. However, it doesn’t stop at race, the conscious realization of any class or group of people lacking agency in their widely held perception is a cognitive framework to understand the progression of stereotype and bias not only a historical level, but also on an intrapersonal level as well.      

Frankenstein or Frankenstein's monster?

Many people over the years have been lead to believe that Frankenstein is the green monster as always depicted in comics or the movie that it is most likely well known for.  We can attribute the fact that rather than knowing the green “monster” as Frankenstein’s monster, we have him correlated to Frankenstein.  This may be the result of many different aspects.

One of these points would be that media’s advertisement of the movie itself.  Many people may have seen the advertisement with the green monster and just associated the movie title “Frankenstein” with the green being on the front cover.  If the general population doesn’t watch the movie or read the source material itself, they would be stuck associating him with Frankenstein rather than Frankenstein’s monster.  This is due to the media’s advertisement basically misleading everybody into believing the monster is Frankenstein himself rather than his monster.

Another reason that this association can happen is that Frankenstein, being the scientist creating the monster, is truly seen as a monster in many people’s eyes.  Due to the nature of Frankenstein’s monster, it would have been fine to accept the monster as it were and most likely many of the murders enacted by the monster may have been avoided.  The murders could be linked to the behavior of Frankenstein and his essentially cruel acts towards the monster (ex. Getting rid of the monster that was to be the partner of Frankenstein’s monster) as well as denying the identity of the monster who wanted to be accepted.

The change to the original base of Frankenstein's monster had also created a change in the image of Frankenstein's monster himself.  I would almost attribute to the visual change of the monster due to the fact that make-up and ways to depict monster's over actors were limited back in 1931.  Since the movie and other adaptations were well received, it was only natural that the image were shifted to a more humanistic appearance with a few inhuman characteristics added to depict that he were the monster.

Overall, the reasons that Frankenstein’s monster takes the back seat to the name of Frankenstein may be the cause of even more justifications against the doctor himself or possibly media portrayal of the monster himself.  Who is to know exactly what was the deciding factor?

'Its all a misunderstanding!'

When we hear the name Frankenstein, I'm sure most of us picture the square headed green lumbering monster instead of the wiry awkward young scientist who is in fact Frankenstein. Now in Shelly's original novel while she never states the name of the monster, she does however make many father and son like connections between Frankensteins monster and Frankenstein himself. For example Frankenstein gives life to his monster like how a father gives life to his children. It is even shown in the text that the monster himself identifies and takes ownership of the fact that he is the creation of Frankenstein, “I exclaimed in agony. 'Accursed creator! Why did you form a monster so hideous that even you turned from me in disgust?”(Mary Shelly, Frankenstein). In a way whether Dr. Frankenstein likes it or not, it seems Shelly intended the audience to view the monster as having some sort of lineage from Frankenstein. It would not be wrong to say that in a sense the monster is the son of Frankenstein and can therefore be legitimately referred to as Frankenstein. This idea may have helped further the now widespread use of the name Frankenstein when referring to the monster. Also the monster in the original novel was never described as a lumbering square headed green skinned beast. In fact Shelly describes the monster as having translucent yellowish skin pulled so taut over the body that it "barely disguised the workings of the arteries and muscles underneath"; flowing black hair, black lips, and glowing eyes. The monster is also not slow nor stupid as everything he learns and is capable of is all self taught. The monster may seem monstrous in the book but he still resembles a human, he is merely very hideous looking/deformed. The monster states in the text “I was benevolent and good; misery made me a fiend. Make me happy, and I shall again be virtuous.”(Mary Shelly, Frankenstein). As we can see he is quiet human in nature, he has free will, a conscience and is even self reflective. He is NOT slow or stupid. Perhaps the reason that he is presented in todays media is solely to dehumanize him. It is way easier to hate a monster than to hate a deformed/disabled human. The novel actually makes us feel bad for the monster. It makes us question who the real monster is, him or the 'humans'. In a way to justify the events of the book, the media turned the monster into a brainless not human looking creature. This way we the 'humans' can stay the good guys while the 'monster' is labeled the bad guy.

The Lonely Monster

There is always one monster in every monsters films or novels. They are different from others; they are born without siblings and grow without companions. Frankenstein's monster was born alone. The monster know nothing about interacting with others and because its monstrous that everyone was scared of it. The monster lost the only blind "friend" when he found out that it was a monster. It became completely lonely and loneliness can destroy anyone. There are so many examples to show that if a creature was isolated that the personality of the creature will change and it may grown to be monstrous.

When King Kong was taken to New York and lost his companions, he went crazy as well. He was desperate and didn't care about anything. In additional, in the movie Splice, they created a monster and named it Dren it is a hybrids. They used human DNA, and other creatures body to made Dren. From it was born till it escape, it was forced to stay in the laboratory and then an abandoned house. It was lonely and even spelled "tedious" to show that he/she wants to go out. Frustration and its aspiration of outside world made Dren killed its creator and escaped. In the movie Dren started as a female and then turned into male at the end to convey it’s monstrosity.

The movie Jurassic World also explained that what would happened if a creature was born alone and grow alone. The Velociraptors were born with siblings but the Indominus Rex was born alone. It did not have a self-cognition either. In this case it went crazy and trying to kill everybody. Without interactions with others, the monster always turned to be more evil, then there will be more people hate them more people scared of them and refuse to accept them, due to that the monsters will do something more extreme from desperation. It is a vicious spiral that can never stop.

The birth of the monster is just a fault. People made something that shouldn’t exist in the mean time hoping that the society would accept it while they don not even accept it. Monsters are not born evil but they are born different. Because they are different that make them being isolated and then the monstrous started to grow and turns them evil. Sometimes they are just lonely that needs a true friend. 

The Role of Race in Frankenstein

Frankenstein's monster is this hideous creature made up of body parts from multiple people.  He doesn't have a traditional race of his own, but this doesn't stop him from feeling the effects many minorities feel.  When he runs into people they are absolutely disgusted by what they see and want nothing to do with him.  For the most part he looks like a human being, but others view him as a lesser version.  He can have full conversations and interact with humans, something that no other species is able to do.   He is discriminated against by most people, primarily for the way he looks, which is something we talk about the most when discussing how some races in our society are treated.  Living your life knowing that people will think negatively about you because of the way you look is enough for anyone to to rebel. In the monster's case this involves murdering people, but you can't help but understand why he would take such drastic measures.  We have seen time and again throughout history where people are discriminated against for their looks and when the victims react, they use that as justification for their actions.  Unlike these cases we see, the monster has no one to turn to for support.  If Dr. Frankenstein would have followed through with the monster's wishes and made another monster for him to be with, maybe we would have seen him react differently.  This is obviously an extreme case of what minorities face in our society, but it makes the problem that much clearer for everyone to see.

The Race of Frankenstein's Monster

Between the three aspects of race, class, and gender, I believe that race is the most obvious to discuss in terms of monsters. Monsters themselves could almost be classified as their own race, at least in terms of the traditional perception of what a “monster” is. I feel that this traditional perception involves non-human like qualities, and this idea is encouraged through modern media and modern adaptations of monsters such as Frankenstein and Dracula. Even witches, as human as they are or historically have been, are portrayed today as either too-elderly-to-be-human or too-perfect-to-be-human. Frankenstein’s monster is a particularly interesting character to analyze in terms of race as he is a hodge podge of different people, and must therefore come from multiple heritages (yes, most of his parts probably came from the same area of land, but even within one area there are multiple ethnicities and heritages). How do you discuss the race of a being that has no one identifiable race? Do you choose the race that is most prominent, as we do today for ourselves? In addition, I believe that, sadly, a great deal of people associate race with their physical features and characteristics (this is sad because there is so much more to race than just physical appearance). A monster such as Frankenstein’s, with “yellowish, translucent skin, watery, glowing eyes, and black lips,” surely can’t be from any one race. Does he, therefore, even have a race or is he “raceless?” In addition to this, “race” is a classification for a group of people that share a heritage or background. With Frankenstein’s monster being the only one of his kind, how is he to be classified? Would his classification have been different if Frankenstein had not destroyed his partner? With all these questions about the race of Frankenstein’s monster, it is clear that he represents aspects of race.

The Crucible

One reading that has stood at the back of my mind during the various texts and monsters we have dissected in class is Arthur Miller's play The Crucible. Set in a Puritan Town in New England during the time when Witch Trials ruled society through fear and hatred of the different, the play is meant to be a not to subtle comment on McCarthyism's Red Scare. McCarthyism and the female antagonists of the play, utilize cultural fears during the time for their own good through fear mongering and unjust accusations of the innocent. Like Frankenstein's monster, the monsters created during the Crucible and the Red Scare are representations of societies' fears of otherness or deviancy from the norm. In the case of the Red Scare, the deviant other being Communism and it's threat to the very essence of Americana and Capitalism. In the case of The Crucible, the fear of deviancy from puritan religious and the succumbing to the devil and magic through witchcraft. 

Race also plays an important role in Frankenstein and The Crucible in terms of otherness. Once Frankenstein's Monster has been assimilated through European centralized education and history while observing the Delacey family, the only thing that separates him from society and the acceptance he yearns for is his physical appearance. This is made blatant after which Frankenstein is able to maintain and healthy conversation with blind Delacey and is not cast away from the house until the rest of the family returns and reacts to his physical appearance, causing them to flee their home in fear. This idea of otherness being so centrally observed around one's physical appearance continues in the Crucible. Tituba, who arguably, unbeknownst to her the ramifications, was an acting catalyst to the Witch Trial scare. She and a couple of girls from the village, went to the forest, a physical representation of established order, the town, versus the unknown and different the forest, where she and the girls sang and danced in the night. These customs are not considered dangerous or acts of treason with the devil in her home of Barbados, where magic, dance, and song helps one connect to the roots of their ancestors in Africa. However, according to the puritans, who themselves sought religious freedom in colonizing the United States persecute Tituba for seeking the same right. This is arguably due to her race and "otherness" according to strict puritan norms. Therefore, Tituba and Frankenstein are cast out from society, and at the end of both pieces their whereabouts and fate are left unknown to the audience. 

Time for a Rewrite?

In most societies, it has been easier to be punitive and binary when judging individuals. Racism, sexism, mistreatment of people with either birth defects or mental illness in older times (and still throughout the developing world) were atrocious and philosophy in regards to judging peoples’ worth and treatment were far more simplistic and punitive. In our more liberalized society today, it seems very natural that we would revisit monsters like Frankenstein’s monster and King Kong in the more nuanced, less adversarial perspective that the writers originally intended. That would have been very financially risky in a time where people wanted simple “good guys” who were like them and “bad guys” who weren’t. This is why the image of the Frankenstein monster became a mindless thing to shock and excite people, rather than the morally complicated creature trying to adapt to a society that fears him. With time, as our culture became more nuanced in how we viewed morality, as did depictions of many creatures while, at the same time, we were also beginning to be more understanding of outgroups such racial minorities and sexual minorities. 

Our media today is far less binary and adversarial than our old media was. Strangely, Van Helsing, out of all movies, actually has a representation of Frankenstein’s monster that is closer to Shelley’s in personality and sophistication, even referring to him as “Frankenstein’s monster” as oppose to “Frankenstein.” With representations like this, and even movies starring once-feared monsters, such as ogres in the case with Shrek. In the Underworld series, the hero of the story is a vampire – a monster that was once feared and probably would have only been marketable as a simplistic killing machine. There even appears to be a decline in “good guy, bad guy” shows that dominated in the 1970’s-early 1980’s. While we are seeing these shifts, we are also seeing the decline of homophobia and, perhaps more slowly, the decline of other punitive, binary social constructs, such as “slut-shaming,” that are designed to suppress individuals with unusual lifestyles, or lifestyles and/or traits that have been traditionally seen as deviant.


While the comparisons to minorities and lifestyles may be obvious, another good comparison could be to people who have had irresponsible parents that have raised them disadvantageously and abused them, causing later problems in their lives. One of Victor Frankenstein's responses to his monster when he returns to Victor is "Begone! I do not break my promise; never will I again create another like yourself, equal in deformity and wickedness!" (Shelley, 120). This was not just to spite the monster's request for a partner, but also an attack on his very existence and a means to drown out a plea of help for a person that Victor Frankenstein should be completely responsible for. Frankenstein's monster was placed into the world in a disadvantaged state and was created through the choices of Victor. Victor Frankenstein could have possibly had the ability to help his creation find some level of happiness and fulfillment; however, Victor spends much of his time demeaning and attempting to rid himself of a person who he created, despite being one of the few people in his creature's life. Abuse in the real world is something that transcends all statuses, and in the "nature vs. nurture" debate, people generally attributed the lack of meeting expectations to nature. When moral philosophy was less developed in our culture, assuming that nature was by far the most dominant factor made morality simpler. It has always been  easier to assume that someone cannot change and must be punished, that to exert the energy that might be necessary to help a disadvantaged person succeed in society.