On the heels of reading Bram Stoker's surprisingly delightful Dracula, I was looking forward to Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. The crude stitching of her story, however, shows every bit as clearly as the sewn up limbs of any monster. Hate to say it, but the hideous monster birth is the book itself.
Most vexing is the way Frankenstein incessantly casts his actions in too-obviously ironic moral light. He doth protest way too much and he does it like a big ninny. His morals shift convenient to his own, often immediate, purpose. The unmanly hysteric takes to bed for months on end, ignoring the fact of his creation wandering the world. Avoidance repeats when the coward later takes up the monster's charge to create a second being.
Our man of astoundingly poor self-awareness incessantly victimizes himself in the wake of events he alone has put in place. The whole book reads as a defense and it really grates on the nerves. Even the loss of so-called loved ones is more about their loss to him than their own demise. Ultimately, danger to himself or fear of getting caught, not any sense of justice, is what spurs the otherwise irresolute Frankenstein to action. He's a total dork and psychopath.
Frankenstein late in the book quite unselfconsciously aligns himself with unjustly hanged Justine (Get it?) in calling her "as innocent" as himself. In supreme arrogance, he aligns himself with the martyrs of old and eventually seeks to sanctify himself in alignment with the divine when he reports food placed in his path by spirits he invoked to is aid. It's predictably self-congratulatory how Frankenstein notes he himself did the invoking.
Frankenstein is quite obviously a wholly false Penitent. On his death bed he divines he isn't to blame for much of anything and proudly refuses to rank himself with any "herd of common projectors" who haven't created life. He even admits to nostalgic thrill at recalling all that led up to animating his creation. The best part followed the final page where I was relieved of Frankenstein's sophistry and whining. Most every page made me want to rip out my eyeballs and eat them.
Most vexing is the way Frankenstein incessantly casts his actions in too-obviously ironic moral light. He doth protest way too much and he does it like a big ninny. His morals shift convenient to his own, often immediate, purpose. The unmanly hysteric takes to bed for months on end, ignoring the fact of his creation wandering the world. Avoidance repeats when the coward later takes up the monster's charge to create a second being.
Our man of astoundingly poor self-awareness incessantly victimizes himself in the wake of events he alone has put in place. The whole book reads as a defense and it really grates on the nerves. Even the loss of so-called loved ones is more about their loss to him than their own demise. Ultimately, danger to himself or fear of getting caught, not any sense of justice, is what spurs the otherwise irresolute Frankenstein to action. He's a total dork and psychopath.
Frankenstein late in the book quite unselfconsciously aligns himself with unjustly hanged Justine (Get it?) in calling her "as innocent" as himself. In supreme arrogance, he aligns himself with the martyrs of old and eventually seeks to sanctify himself in alignment with the divine when he reports food placed in his path by spirits he invoked to is aid. It's predictably self-congratulatory how Frankenstein notes he himself did the invoking.
Frankenstein is quite obviously a wholly false Penitent. On his death bed he divines he isn't to blame for much of anything and proudly refuses to rank himself with any "herd of common projectors" who haven't created life. He even admits to nostalgic thrill at recalling all that led up to animating his creation. The best part followed the final page where I was relieved of Frankenstein's sophistry and whining. Most every page made me want to rip out my eyeballs and eat them.