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.
I agree that the portrayal of Frankenstein’s monster in the original movie adaptation is not very representative of the monster portrayed in Shelley’s book. It appeared as though the people behind the green-skinned, dim-witted monster desired to further reduce the innate humanity in the creature by making his monstrosity without meaning. In that way he becomes far less sympathetic than originally intended. I suspect this made turning the creature into the object of indignation much easier. In the first movie Frankenstein even welcomes the monster originally instead of running in fright from the get go. The development of the monster’s violent nature is then attributed to a criminal brain that was used to create it rather than a normal one. This idea of the monster’s ‘monstrosity’ being a product of its nature rather than society’s treatment is in direct opposition to the original novel. It is much easier to turn on a rabid dog than a pet you’ve gotten to know that was abused until it became a danger. But this almost makes me question if those who created the now iconic image actually understood the character of Frankenstein’s monster and what Shelley was trying to portray. Then again, maybe they knew exactly what they were doing and decided to try and change the image of the monster. I don’t know which one would be worse. Regardless, the image that most are familiar with at this point do not give justice to the original monster. And if this was done intentionally, then I think it contributed to the unfortunate misunderstanding of the monster’s true value.
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