Frankenstein - First Response +6points

 I read the preliminary information about Mary Shelly and how she had quite the tragic timeline throughout her life. One of these tragic events being that she tried to have multiple children and only 1 lived more than 3 years old. Which at the time, I’m assuming it was fairly common for your children to not live that long due to poor conditions. Regardless of that, it made me think about the whole idea and fascination to creating life that possessed Dr.Frankenstein. Frankenstein is basically a book about the creation of man. One could compare the birth of the creation to the attempt of Shelly trying to have her own children.  But that’s just a hypothesis.

 

Overall, the idea of creating life I think gave Dr.Frankenstein some sort of god complex in which he carelessly continued to disregard the idea that whatever his creation does is something he has to take care of himself. Dr. Frankenstein’s obsession with creating life out of dead matter inevitably backfires on him as he creates something that truly horrified him enough to turn away and not take care of the problem. 

I was surprised to how the creation's descriptors are very much like typical goth subculture but he had yellow eyes, black lipstick, long black hair and overall was composed of other's dead bodies. I never really thought of Frankenstein other then green with the neck bolts and I think this new image is more suiting and overall gives you a new appreciation to Frankenstein, for me personally. 

 He doesn’t give his creation a name which in a way already takes out any kind of identification that could lead to guidance and make his creation anything that isn’t a monster. He only refers to it as a creature, the first instance of that is shown on page 51 when Shelly wrote “It was already one in the morning; the rain pattered dismally against the panes, and my candle was nearly burnt out, when, by the glimmer of the half-extinguished light, I saw the dull yellow eye of the creature open; it breathed hard, and a convulsive motion agitated its limbs.” I think the idea of not naming it anything other than creature just takes a layer of Dr. Frankenstein’s responsibility towards what he created.

His creation ends up being abandoned and lacking moral instruction and ethics. Which this made me also think about Mary Shelly's mother, how she died after childbirth and in a way it's like being abandoned and having to find your own moral compass. The entire book overall is just a reflection of cause and effect. Dr. Frankenstein ended up being kind of like a deadbeat dad who denies responsibility for his children's mistakes. 

In conclusion, Shelly creates themes of creation, birth, loss, and abandonment.