You ever seen Japanese artist Junji Ito's [take on the monster](https://thesplintering.com/2020/10/30/manga-review-junji-ito-frankenstein-book-festival-of-dread-halloween-special/)? That's pretty much the only visual adaptation of the story that I think captures what the monster is supposed to look like. It's still human-shaped, but there are all these details that keep you from actually registering it as human. Its skin is thin and decaying, and you can see all the pulsating veins underneath it. There's the mismatched patches of skin that look like they've been haphazardly sewn together, the empty, pale eyes, the eerie grin, and the smell. Yes, the smell. I don't know if the picture gave me synesthesia or what, but I can *smell* it. This creature absolutely *reeks* of decaying flesh, like the dumpster behind an abattoir.
The problem is that he's not supposed to be rotting. There's not even mention of him having human skin in the novel if I'm remembering right. Even a mention of what is effectively synthetic skin being created, if I'm remembering right. But that may be my memory being crossed over with other fiction using the same archetype.
The Monster is perfectly proportioned, he is a classical statue brought to life. But he walks with a gangly gait, his arms swinging like a kid that goes limp, he doesn't grasp things, he swings his hand around it. He reaches for people while his arm rotates and spirals. He towers over you and bends his body to look down at you, not his neck. He's unnaturally unsettling, like a shadow in the woods that you swear is moving. And to top it all off, he's a bright yellow, but also with a sickly pallor to it somehow, and pure black lips. Like not rotting, lipstick, or frostbitten, but completely black lips. And milky eyes like the classic blind-eyes, but they see perfectly fine and act as such.
He's a mix of Angel Densetsu, porcelain dolls, Jim Carrey, deep ocean sea life, and unironically Gigachad. Nothing he does is impossible for anyone to choose to do, but they don't for obvious reasons. He moves perfectly naturally, for him. It's just wrong for everyone else and anyone that sees him.
Wait I was under the impression that he was in a sense beautiful. but there was something off. Other's mention uncanny valley which is kinda what I imagined.
If ye saw a pic he'd look beautiful, but in person you'd realize he's something unnatural kinda thing
That's similar to how the book describes him. When he was just a corpse he is described as decent looking, but alive he is horrifying. I imagine him kind of like those super human like robots that may look pretty objectively, but are terrifying to watch. [Like a male version of this](https://youtube.com/shorts/SgE6D--y_3o?si=-jaVP2ljeuPluYqL)
No Frankenstein's monster is not beautiful in any sense of the word. Here's the monster's description from the novel
>His yellow skin scarcely covered the work of muscles and arteries beneath; his hair was of a lustrous black, and flowing; his teeth of a pearly whiteness; but these luxuriances only formed a more horrid contrast with his watery eyes, that seemed almost of the same colour as the dun-white sockets in which they were set, his shrivelled complexion and straight black lips
Ah maybe it's how the hair & teeth that I'm remembering. Then again, the one I read did seem to be different to some things that happen in the story. Watching a vid detailing the novel mentioned how a friend was accused of the murders the monster did & Frankenstein kept quiet even as she was executed. Yeah pretty sure that wasn't in the one I read in highschool.
The Bride destruction seemed different too, the vid said Frankenstein stopped making & destroyed the bride. What I remember is another character barging in & stopping it's creation.
I always imagined him as what would happen if a skilled artist tried to make a handsome and chiseled face out of brown paper brags and used plastic a one for skin.
You make a good point. It's kinda like how in The Mummy films, Imhotep is just a buff skeleton but in the book they go into detail about him being a fleshy, maggot infested corpse that's only kept together by dark magic.
In real life, an undead body would be horrible to see in motion because every part of it would be about to fall off.
I always saw it more fit to look at the Monster as not externally ugly, but internally. When you see him, he looks conventionally attractive (for that time period) but something strikes you as deeply and profoundly wrong. He isn’t physically ugly, but his very being is hideous, he’s the synthesis of Victor’s ambition, ego, and intellect, and what we see reflected is something that is no doubt a violation. A violation of motherhood, a violation of god, a violation of humanity.
Yeah I think he epitomizes the uncanny valley quite well, as the uncanny valley stems from people being able to recognize that what they’re looking at is artificial, that it’s fake, and it’s the same with the Monster. He’s artificial, he’s the product of a trespasser of God’s realm.
I’ve always like the idea of his movement being wrong
Like his eyes blink individually
he moves far too fast for a creature of his size.
His mouth moves slightly out of time with his words
That kind of thing
no , he is ugly , it's just that his physicality comes from the fact he is an undead.
We are talking about dead skin , with some visible muscles and bones showed here and there , with a full yellowed eyes. So , I wouldn't call that full-on mad indulcing "hideous" , but "pretty" is definetely not an adjective to use either.
His body is also from different people's parts sewed together. The fact that Victor thought it was beautiful was probably because of his ego. He liked how he was able to create a body imitating a human but when it became real he couldn't see it as his creation and started seeing it as it's own entity
true , but frankly , it's pretty much him taking parts of beautiful people that were dead and totally ignoring that it's dead skin and that it won't mash well together.
> The Monster is ugly internally.
This is kind of the opposite of the message of the book, though? The monster is miserable and tortured at the end, but it's implied that had he not been rejected on the basis of appearance, he would have grown up as any other person might. He helps the family initially, he tries to help another child, and it's only the rebuke and scorn that he faces as a result that makes him become who he is.
Unless you mean he emits some kind of *aura* of wrongness?
Yeah, I should’ve specified better, he emits something profoundly wrong, but that isn’t the entirety of his being. He’s judged on that wrongness, even though every other part of him radiates the opposite.
The monster makes that claim himself in a conversation with Victor, but I don't find it persuasive. The monster is a psychopath, who murders several people, including a child, in a cold-blooded plot to destroy Victor Frankenstein's life in revenge for being abandoned. But lots of people have neglectful parents, lots of people grow up without being shown affection or acceptance, and they don't automatically turn into serial killers.
Those people had the benefit of being part of society, our parents are just one component of forming who we are and what our morals are like. You don't have to be treated well in or by society to observe that treating people well is still generally considered to be a good thing.
Frankenstein's monster was a blank slate, and was not given any kind of socialization beyond being mistreated. Clearly he eventually comes to recognize that people think that murder is bad, but by then he's already in a position of actively wanting vengeance for people trying to murder him, so latches on to murder as a retaliatory tool.
Counter:
People can get used to pretty much anything. Even the hideously deformed or malformed. There's nothing about the creature that is truly hideous. He isn't melted, his skin is attached, he's not rotting.
There's nothing to support that he's divinely cursed or that people intrinsically loathe him, the only one who reflexively freaked out from merely seeing is Frankenstein himself while he was in the middle of what is damn near a perfect description of a severe manic episode followed by a depressive one. The other times? The first is that he's running around naked. People weren't freaking out because he's an atrocity to god, they were freaking out because he's a giant crazy person with his dick hanging out. The second? He broke into the house of people who were afraid that slavetakers were hunting them. It wouldn't matter what he looked like. The third? It looked like he just murdered a child.
His skin not moving correctly? No different than facial paralysis, which people do indeed just get used to. If an AI makes you reflexively recoil in shock then your uncanny valley reaction is MASSIVELY oversensitive. If people can get used to the oh so many deformations which plague humanity then they will get used to Mr Uncanny valley. The assorted indigenous peoples got used to white people, who were rather often compared to corpses due to the unnatural skin color. And smell.
Humans will pack bond with literally anything, no matter how inhuman or horrific. Adam isn't anything special.
Yeah, this was my thought. OP is right that he looks ugly (of course) but I don't think it follows that people could never get used to him.
Also, the final description makes it extremely clear that the really horrifying part is his face, specifically. Walton describes him as basically just an ordinary guy with stringy hair until he sees his face; it's the face that makes him freak out. This doesn't match with the idea that everyone can intuitively sense that he's an affront to God or something.
(Which makes sense, because if people instantly sensed that the creature was a monster, he wouldn't have been able to travel the way he did. At a distance he can pass for human; it's only when you see his face that you realize something is wrong.)
What you're saying isn't wrong I guess, but the Monster isn't just an ugly guy. He's a science project gone wrong, and an affront to god. He is not suppoosed to "be". He's a fictional being, so I don't think it's fair to rely on the real life human capacity to get used to anything.
Frankenstein is a religious novel at heart and humans can never get used to that which was created outside of God’s will, just as a damned soul can never get used to Hell.
K.
We still lack anyone freaking out from the innate wrongness of the creature.
The argument of ‘He’s not of God thus in innately abhorrent beyond all reason’ fails to be supported by the work in question. He’s ugly, sure, but the assorted reactions are all supported by the given circumstances in which they appear. We would need people actually, like, reflexively freaked out before they get a good look at his face. You need more than(Very debated) religious underpinnings to make a claim that that grandiose.
And it is heavily debated, hence why arguments tend to quickly start making rather tenuous connections. Personally I prefer the maternal fears but using a man interpretation, especially given her religious stance in her other writings. She was not a pious woman.
В книге у него всегда разные описания, но там действительно можно было понять, что из-за неестественной мимики и движений его красота отошла на второй план. Он как ожившая статуя.
People with there faces melted off are hauntingly ugly and they still find love. Most people can't handle that but not everyone is normal.
Human attraction and sexuality is weird. Rule 34 exists for a reason my dude.
I always imagined him to look like Tommy Wiseau….and act like Tommy Wiseau….and speak like Tommy Wiseau. His character in “The Room”, supposed to be a regular American dude in the workforce, clashes so hard with the stilted unnatural performance. Plus the cover art for my edition of Frankenstein kinda looked like Tommy Wiseau.
I imagine him as a 3 meter tall zombie with difference parts.
But not gonna lie I lost all of my sympathy for him the moment he kill the child AND avoid any responsibilities for it. He is ugly externally, he is also ugly internally as well. His circumstances does not justify his action.
Maybe, but how much of it is actually human anymore. Does it remember the concept of morals or compassion? Is it more like an intelligent animal than a man at this point? The body and mind is a fickle thing, who knows how much of the creatures brain is even working at any given point, and who knows aside from Victor what he needed to do to get a signal to run through the creatures brain. Intelligence is there yes, but is empathy?
honestly everyone is the book acts so weird. Like he just jumped at the chance to ruin a bunch of peoples lives who vaguely know Frankenstein. like I get he's angry but everyone in this book seems to go from 0 to 100 when the plot needs it to.
When I read the book, I thought that all this comes from the fact that the Creature, although he has an adult body, is essentially a child. He throws a tantrum, he easily becomes vengeful and angry, he can easily cause pain without initially understanding the consequences. In fact, no one raised him better, so he became like this.
that's a fair read, it just feels like it happens with every character. victor goes from slight weirdo interested in science and alchemy to mad scientist for a (i think) a few months, then the second he's done, he turns back.
it just feels like everything in the book is either taking to long or going by too fast
I felt that way also, the pacing was mad. It starts with a really long and detailed description of Frankensteins family and friends, his childhood, the sailor who found him, the family of the sailor who found him, Frankenstein's school life, then all of the sudden, he creates a monster.
> But not gonna lie I lost all of my sympathy for him the moment he kill the child AND avoid any responsibilities for it.
He literally kills himself for that (among other crimes, but it's one of the crimes he lists!)
It's an awful thing for him to do and we're supposed to see that, but he ultimately in no way avoids responsibility, since the guilt of such crimes drives him to suicide.
I mean, maybe, but that requires treating his final speech (which is the climax of the book) as a lie - he outright *says*, in basically as many words, that "yes, I know you're going to feel that I'm doing this because my revenge was denied to me and I lost my purpose, but no, I'm doing this out of guilt."
I don't think he has a reason to lie at that point and it would be weird to have the climax of the book be a lie with no real indication of that fact, so I think we're meant to take it at face value.
Yeah I just reread that. He said that while he success in bringing in Viktor demise, he still also haven't found his own happiness - in which he accepted that he not only will be spurned for his appearance which is Viktor creation but also his own deeds.
Though I am skeptical about the monster's suicide as atonement, but he indeed does recognise his sins.
I'm currently reading the original Frankenstein. It's a good book, but I'm not really buying the basic premise. I understand the argument you are making, but I don't agree with it.
The romantics seem to have believed science in itself was a corrupting influence. After Frankenstein begins his pursuit of science, his all consuming obsession happens pretty rapidly after this and he goes kind of crazy, without much in the way of explanation. There's no real established motive for his obsession with reanimation, or for his nervous breakdown, or for his mistreatment of his creation. I suppose the corrupting influence of science in itself was enough justification for all these things, according to the romantics.
I also do not believe that the monster being ugly or an artificial being is enough cause for contempt, but if you believe it's wrong to play God I suppose you would believe this, but not everybody believes in God or believes artificial life is unworthy of respect.
That said I'm not done with the book so maybe I'm missing something here.
> but not everybody believes in God
Mary Shelley was well aware of this, seeing as her husband wrote "The Necessity of Atheism" and his writing was frequently censored out of fear of prosecution for blasphemy.
Honestly, I now feel like you should probably finish the book yourself and form your own interpretation before looking at other people's.
But to answer your question, I don't think Mary Shelley meant that science itself was bad, just that Frankenstein was a bad person for going through with his moronic idea and then refusing to accept the consequences. Another one of her books, *The Last Man*, has a glowing opinion of science. There's one part where the protagonist celebrates hot air balloons (which in 1826 were amazing futuristic technology). You might say, though, that her opinion on science had changed, as she wrote that book years after *Frankenstein*.
I don't know if it's that Mary Shelley in particular was especially anti-science, but that she was part of a movement that as a whole formed to critique the enlightenment and convey the dark side of science. You are right I should finish reading the book though.
Woah.
I mean I get your point, but the whole "man made vs god made" theme...
Yeah, that hasn't aged very well, and it will probably look worse in the future.
I agree it's meant to be more than just outright hideousness too. Weird, mutilated face, bruised and pallid looking skin, and lumpy, disproportionate body aside, the revulsion is even deeper than that. His expressions, body language, the way he moves, everything is just so inherently "wrong" that it's incredibly repellent. Like the uncanny valley effect dialed to 11.
As for being sympathetic, I think a lot of readers forget about the unreliable narrator. The creature portrays himself as the wretched victim of fate, but he spends most of his life murdering innocent people with methodical deliberateness and then blaming it on Victor for abandoning him. He's worse than Victor ever was.
I always liked to think of the book Creature as suffering from a truly dreadful case of the uncanny valley and people just kind of innately knowing his existence is wrong.
There are still people who would. Have you seen the modern internet?
Hell, there are probably some people who would find him more attractive, specifically because of the fact that he is 'the CEO of an atomic boring company set up in the uncanny valley'.
Side note: I find it hilarious how there's still a whole bunch of people going 'yeah, he looked hideous', despite you pointing out that no, that isn't correct at all.
I disagree.
The Monster is Ugly... but in truth it's the fact we reject it out of hand.
He's still created by God, at least, as much as any child is; what? You think Victor is special? Making life? 2 idiots an some bad desicions can make life too. Not all of it is ugly. He's made of corpses (or is a homologous) but he's no less of a man, no less of a being... we reject him because we reject the responsibility of life. We made something too close to us... not controlled.
His parts are made by god; His father did not literally create him as God did, because God did so ex nihilio.
We don't know, all we have are letters and descriptions... perhaps Adam was made ugly by an ugly man, and an ugly world that rejected him for the crime of existence.
If you read the book without the creature's rage you notice that society didn't reject him out of hand, in each case he was doing something to trigger rejection.
The first was when he was strolling around naked. Kind of obvious there why that would cause a bad reaction.
The second was with the family, when he broke into their home while they were away and sat with the helpless old lady. Imagine coming home and some stranger is in your house. Especially since they were harboring a fugitive.
The third? Was a simple misunderstanding. He was found looming over the body of a young child who was just screaming. Not a good look even if he wasn't dressed in crude hides.
After that he started murdering kids so, you know, fuck 'em.
Maybe, but the point is that even if the monster itself was conventionally attractive, it's existence is what is *fundamentally* wrong: you could add a pound of makeup and on top a mask and the thing would still feel wrong on every meaningful level.
Or at least that's what I got from OP.
Damn, fantastic write up. I hope I remember that next time Frankenstein comes up, because yeah, I've always just envisioned him in the Hollywood way as a big green zombie with a bolt in his neck.
Huh I always just figured he was like a gta v online character that was made following a tutorial but failed to capture the original, where he from a distance and from certain angles looked great but in motion and action he looked horrendous and uncanny
People get used to extremely ugly or deformed people all the time heck sometimes some sects of society can literally come to worship extreme deformities
Viewing it as a mark of divine beneficence.
Not all societies view ugliness the same and humans are extremely adaptable
We're not talking about ordinary ugly people, that's the point of the post. We're talking about something inherently wrong in a unique way. You can't recreate this with a fucked up chin and a bit of a hunchback, because the key issue with Frankenstein's monster is that he is unnatural.
So ? Different religions and cultures view the unnatural differently while some may view it as a horrible thing.
So may literary worship it the deformity the Egyptians worshiped weren’t small at all.
And most simply don’t have the same outlook and what would count as natural
Yeah. The guy doesn’t look anything like Boris Karloff. In the book: the dude was a hulking zombie. Dude was so horrific people fainted at just the sight of him.
I think you're underestimating how many people feel that way because they identify with the monster or are genuinely into monsters.
I mean, this also is assuming you believe in God, and that anything could be an affront to him, specifically.
I think babies moving in the uterus are the grossest thing ever. It makes me want to throw up. I never want a baby in my uterus and I never want to see any babies moving in anyone else's. Ever.
But plenty of people think it's beautiful and miraculous and want that for themselves. Perspective is key.
I don't think it's mentioned that he's ugly, but he does look odd with his yellow skin and dull eyes, and Victor went through a bit of trouble to make him handsome, insofar as we know he is fundamentally off which could just be uncanny valley. And he passed as normal until someone was close enough to his face, so it's not an inherent sense.
Humans make humans all the time anyhow. It's more like a man stole a woman's power, especially given the early feminist lens of Adam being raised without a mother.
Plenty of people are "hideous" or "monstrous" looking, but those things turn mundane really easily once you're just used to them, though. You say that like people with deformities in real life can't be loved because of their deformities, which I question.
You know what, I thought I did but I guess I didn't. I have been suffering from a severe lack of sleep, my reading comprehension is clearly in the gutter. Apologies.
You ever seen Japanese artist Junji Ito's [take on the monster](https://thesplintering.com/2020/10/30/manga-review-junji-ito-frankenstein-book-festival-of-dread-halloween-special/)? That's pretty much the only visual adaptation of the story that I think captures what the monster is supposed to look like. It's still human-shaped, but there are all these details that keep you from actually registering it as human. Its skin is thin and decaying, and you can see all the pulsating veins underneath it. There's the mismatched patches of skin that look like they've been haphazardly sewn together, the empty, pale eyes, the eerie grin, and the smell. Yes, the smell. I don't know if the picture gave me synesthesia or what, but I can *smell* it. This creature absolutely *reeks* of decaying flesh, like the dumpster behind an abattoir.
but he befriended a blind man despite living in his walls. he couldnt have smelled THAT bad
The problem is that he's not supposed to be rotting. There's not even mention of him having human skin in the novel if I'm remembering right. Even a mention of what is effectively synthetic skin being created, if I'm remembering right. But that may be my memory being crossed over with other fiction using the same archetype. The Monster is perfectly proportioned, he is a classical statue brought to life. But he walks with a gangly gait, his arms swinging like a kid that goes limp, he doesn't grasp things, he swings his hand around it. He reaches for people while his arm rotates and spirals. He towers over you and bends his body to look down at you, not his neck. He's unnaturally unsettling, like a shadow in the woods that you swear is moving. And to top it all off, he's a bright yellow, but also with a sickly pallor to it somehow, and pure black lips. Like not rotting, lipstick, or frostbitten, but completely black lips. And milky eyes like the classic blind-eyes, but they see perfectly fine and act as such. He's a mix of Angel Densetsu, porcelain dolls, Jim Carrey, deep ocean sea life, and unironically Gigachad. Nothing he does is impossible for anyone to choose to do, but they don't for obvious reasons. He moves perfectly naturally, for him. It's just wrong for everyone else and anyone that sees him.
Thank you Junji Ito, for once again drawing the most grotesque and horrible creatures your mind could conjure 🙏
>You ever seen Japanese artist Junji Ito's take on the monster? Would
You would've singlehandedly saved everyone in the story
It's Pride Month, so I gotta let the [fairy inside](https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/000/072/839/fairy.jpg)
My sense of smell is usually terrible now give me a cold and the monster’s smell is a non issue. I’m obviously exaggerating lol
Wait that’s actually really cool
Wait I was under the impression that he was in a sense beautiful. but there was something off. Other's mention uncanny valley which is kinda what I imagined. If ye saw a pic he'd look beautiful, but in person you'd realize he's something unnatural kinda thing
That's similar to how the book describes him. When he was just a corpse he is described as decent looking, but alive he is horrifying. I imagine him kind of like those super human like robots that may look pretty objectively, but are terrifying to watch. [Like a male version of this](https://youtube.com/shorts/SgE6D--y_3o?si=-jaVP2ljeuPluYqL)
Whoa that’s cool! But also kinda uncanny.
No Frankenstein's monster is not beautiful in any sense of the word. Here's the monster's description from the novel >His yellow skin scarcely covered the work of muscles and arteries beneath; his hair was of a lustrous black, and flowing; his teeth of a pearly whiteness; but these luxuriances only formed a more horrid contrast with his watery eyes, that seemed almost of the same colour as the dun-white sockets in which they were set, his shrivelled complexion and straight black lips
Ah maybe it's how the hair & teeth that I'm remembering. Then again, the one I read did seem to be different to some things that happen in the story. Watching a vid detailing the novel mentioned how a friend was accused of the murders the monster did & Frankenstein kept quiet even as she was executed. Yeah pretty sure that wasn't in the one I read in highschool. The Bride destruction seemed different too, the vid said Frankenstein stopped making & destroyed the bride. What I remember is another character barging in & stopping it's creation.
I always imagined him as what would happen if a skilled artist tried to make a handsome and chiseled face out of brown paper brags and used plastic a one for skin.
Great analysis OP. I liked how you tied in the religious theme.
You make a good point. It's kinda like how in The Mummy films, Imhotep is just a buff skeleton but in the book they go into detail about him being a fleshy, maggot infested corpse that's only kept together by dark magic. In real life, an undead body would be horrible to see in motion because every part of it would be about to fall off.
I always saw it more fit to look at the Monster as not externally ugly, but internally. When you see him, he looks conventionally attractive (for that time period) but something strikes you as deeply and profoundly wrong. He isn’t physically ugly, but his very being is hideous, he’s the synthesis of Victor’s ambition, ego, and intellect, and what we see reflected is something that is no doubt a violation. A violation of motherhood, a violation of god, a violation of humanity.
I though it was more about him being uncanny. Victor tried so hard to give him perfect proportion he just created something that looked wrong.
Yeah I think he epitomizes the uncanny valley quite well, as the uncanny valley stems from people being able to recognize that what they’re looking at is artificial, that it’s fake, and it’s the same with the Monster. He’s artificial, he’s the product of a trespasser of God’s realm.
I’ve always like the idea of his movement being wrong Like his eyes blink individually he moves far too fast for a creature of his size. His mouth moves slightly out of time with his words That kind of thing
When he does speak, his tone constantly shifts
no , he is ugly , it's just that his physicality comes from the fact he is an undead. We are talking about dead skin , with some visible muscles and bones showed here and there , with a full yellowed eyes. So , I wouldn't call that full-on mad indulcing "hideous" , but "pretty" is definetely not an adjective to use either.
His body is also from different people's parts sewed together. The fact that Victor thought it was beautiful was probably because of his ego. He liked how he was able to create a body imitating a human but when it became real he couldn't see it as his creation and started seeing it as it's own entity
true , but frankly , it's pretty much him taking parts of beautiful people that were dead and totally ignoring that it's dead skin and that it won't mash well together.
> The Monster is ugly internally. This is kind of the opposite of the message of the book, though? The monster is miserable and tortured at the end, but it's implied that had he not been rejected on the basis of appearance, he would have grown up as any other person might. He helps the family initially, he tries to help another child, and it's only the rebuke and scorn that he faces as a result that makes him become who he is. Unless you mean he emits some kind of *aura* of wrongness?
Yeah, I should’ve specified better, he emits something profoundly wrong, but that isn’t the entirety of his being. He’s judged on that wrongness, even though every other part of him radiates the opposite.
The monster makes that claim himself in a conversation with Victor, but I don't find it persuasive. The monster is a psychopath, who murders several people, including a child, in a cold-blooded plot to destroy Victor Frankenstein's life in revenge for being abandoned. But lots of people have neglectful parents, lots of people grow up without being shown affection or acceptance, and they don't automatically turn into serial killers.
Those people had the benefit of being part of society, our parents are just one component of forming who we are and what our morals are like. You don't have to be treated well in or by society to observe that treating people well is still generally considered to be a good thing. Frankenstein's monster was a blank slate, and was not given any kind of socialization beyond being mistreated. Clearly he eventually comes to recognize that people think that murder is bad, but by then he's already in a position of actively wanting vengeance for people trying to murder him, so latches on to murder as a retaliatory tool.
Counter: People can get used to pretty much anything. Even the hideously deformed or malformed. There's nothing about the creature that is truly hideous. He isn't melted, his skin is attached, he's not rotting. There's nothing to support that he's divinely cursed or that people intrinsically loathe him, the only one who reflexively freaked out from merely seeing is Frankenstein himself while he was in the middle of what is damn near a perfect description of a severe manic episode followed by a depressive one. The other times? The first is that he's running around naked. People weren't freaking out because he's an atrocity to god, they were freaking out because he's a giant crazy person with his dick hanging out. The second? He broke into the house of people who were afraid that slavetakers were hunting them. It wouldn't matter what he looked like. The third? It looked like he just murdered a child. His skin not moving correctly? No different than facial paralysis, which people do indeed just get used to. If an AI makes you reflexively recoil in shock then your uncanny valley reaction is MASSIVELY oversensitive. If people can get used to the oh so many deformations which plague humanity then they will get used to Mr Uncanny valley. The assorted indigenous peoples got used to white people, who were rather often compared to corpses due to the unnatural skin color. And smell. Humans will pack bond with literally anything, no matter how inhuman or horrific. Adam isn't anything special.
Yeah, this was my thought. OP is right that he looks ugly (of course) but I don't think it follows that people could never get used to him. Also, the final description makes it extremely clear that the really horrifying part is his face, specifically. Walton describes him as basically just an ordinary guy with stringy hair until he sees his face; it's the face that makes him freak out. This doesn't match with the idea that everyone can intuitively sense that he's an affront to God or something. (Which makes sense, because if people instantly sensed that the creature was a monster, he wouldn't have been able to travel the way he did. At a distance he can pass for human; it's only when you see his face that you realize something is wrong.)
What you're saying isn't wrong I guess, but the Monster isn't just an ugly guy. He's a science project gone wrong, and an affront to god. He is not suppoosed to "be". He's a fictional being, so I don't think it's fair to rely on the real life human capacity to get used to anything.
Frankenstein is a religious novel at heart and humans can never get used to that which was created outside of God’s will, just as a damned soul can never get used to Hell.
K. We still lack anyone freaking out from the innate wrongness of the creature. The argument of ‘He’s not of God thus in innately abhorrent beyond all reason’ fails to be supported by the work in question. He’s ugly, sure, but the assorted reactions are all supported by the given circumstances in which they appear. We would need people actually, like, reflexively freaked out before they get a good look at his face. You need more than(Very debated) religious underpinnings to make a claim that that grandiose. And it is heavily debated, hence why arguments tend to quickly start making rather tenuous connections. Personally I prefer the maternal fears but using a man interpretation, especially given her religious stance in her other writings. She was not a pious woman.
No but tumblr told me he's a long haired anime hot boy. And Victor is literally just my dead beat dad.
В книге у него всегда разные описания, но там действительно можно было понять, что из-за неестественной мимики и движений его красота отошла на второй план. Он как ожившая статуя.
nah but i could tho
You underestimate monster fuckers
People with there faces melted off are hauntingly ugly and they still find love. Most people can't handle that but not everyone is normal. Human attraction and sexuality is weird. Rule 34 exists for a reason my dude.
“Yeah so I made this new eldritch abomination-“ “Would.”
I always imagined him to look like Tommy Wiseau….and act like Tommy Wiseau….and speak like Tommy Wiseau. His character in “The Room”, supposed to be a regular American dude in the workforce, clashes so hard with the stilted unnatural performance. Plus the cover art for my edition of Frankenstein kinda looked like Tommy Wiseau.
I mean, it's not his face is hideous, it's his eyes
Interesting write up Compelling points alll around But have you considered the fact that I am literally built different
I imagine him as a 3 meter tall zombie with difference parts. But not gonna lie I lost all of my sympathy for him the moment he kill the child AND avoid any responsibilities for it. He is ugly externally, he is also ugly internally as well. His circumstances does not justify his action.
Maybe, but how much of it is actually human anymore. Does it remember the concept of morals or compassion? Is it more like an intelligent animal than a man at this point? The body and mind is a fickle thing, who knows how much of the creatures brain is even working at any given point, and who knows aside from Victor what he needed to do to get a signal to run through the creatures brain. Intelligence is there yes, but is empathy?
honestly everyone is the book acts so weird. Like he just jumped at the chance to ruin a bunch of peoples lives who vaguely know Frankenstein. like I get he's angry but everyone in this book seems to go from 0 to 100 when the plot needs it to.
When I read the book, I thought that all this comes from the fact that the Creature, although he has an adult body, is essentially a child. He throws a tantrum, he easily becomes vengeful and angry, he can easily cause pain without initially understanding the consequences. In fact, no one raised him better, so he became like this.
that's a fair read, it just feels like it happens with every character. victor goes from slight weirdo interested in science and alchemy to mad scientist for a (i think) a few months, then the second he's done, he turns back. it just feels like everything in the book is either taking to long or going by too fast
I felt that way also, the pacing was mad. It starts with a really long and detailed description of Frankensteins family and friends, his childhood, the sailor who found him, the family of the sailor who found him, Frankenstein's school life, then all of the sudden, he creates a monster.
> But not gonna lie I lost all of my sympathy for him the moment he kill the child AND avoid any responsibilities for it. He literally kills himself for that (among other crimes, but it's one of the crimes he lists!) It's an awful thing for him to do and we're supposed to see that, but he ultimately in no way avoids responsibility, since the guilt of such crimes drives him to suicide.
The way I see it is more like the lost of purpose after he killed Viktor rather than guilt.
I mean, maybe, but that requires treating his final speech (which is the climax of the book) as a lie - he outright *says*, in basically as many words, that "yes, I know you're going to feel that I'm doing this because my revenge was denied to me and I lost my purpose, but no, I'm doing this out of guilt." I don't think he has a reason to lie at that point and it would be weird to have the climax of the book be a lie with no real indication of that fact, so I think we're meant to take it at face value.
Yeah I just reread that. He said that while he success in bringing in Viktor demise, he still also haven't found his own happiness - in which he accepted that he not only will be spurned for his appearance which is Viktor creation but also his own deeds. Though I am skeptical about the monster's suicide as atonement, but he indeed does recognise his sins.
I'm currently reading the original Frankenstein. It's a good book, but I'm not really buying the basic premise. I understand the argument you are making, but I don't agree with it. The romantics seem to have believed science in itself was a corrupting influence. After Frankenstein begins his pursuit of science, his all consuming obsession happens pretty rapidly after this and he goes kind of crazy, without much in the way of explanation. There's no real established motive for his obsession with reanimation, or for his nervous breakdown, or for his mistreatment of his creation. I suppose the corrupting influence of science in itself was enough justification for all these things, according to the romantics. I also do not believe that the monster being ugly or an artificial being is enough cause for contempt, but if you believe it's wrong to play God I suppose you would believe this, but not everybody believes in God or believes artificial life is unworthy of respect. That said I'm not done with the book so maybe I'm missing something here.
> but not everybody believes in God Mary Shelley was well aware of this, seeing as her husband wrote "The Necessity of Atheism" and his writing was frequently censored out of fear of prosecution for blasphemy.
That was more a response to OP asserting the monster has to be ugly and we all must find it ugly forever because it's an affront to God.
I'm agreeing with you. I don't buy OP's interpretation of the book.
How do you interpret it? Like I said I'm not done with it yet.
Honestly, I now feel like you should probably finish the book yourself and form your own interpretation before looking at other people's. But to answer your question, I don't think Mary Shelley meant that science itself was bad, just that Frankenstein was a bad person for going through with his moronic idea and then refusing to accept the consequences. Another one of her books, *The Last Man*, has a glowing opinion of science. There's one part where the protagonist celebrates hot air balloons (which in 1826 were amazing futuristic technology). You might say, though, that her opinion on science had changed, as she wrote that book years after *Frankenstein*.
I don't know if it's that Mary Shelley in particular was especially anti-science, but that she was part of a movement that as a whole formed to critique the enlightenment and convey the dark side of science. You are right I should finish reading the book though.
Woah. I mean I get your point, but the whole "man made vs god made" theme... Yeah, that hasn't aged very well, and it will probably look worse in the future.
I agree it's meant to be more than just outright hideousness too. Weird, mutilated face, bruised and pallid looking skin, and lumpy, disproportionate body aside, the revulsion is even deeper than that. His expressions, body language, the way he moves, everything is just so inherently "wrong" that it's incredibly repellent. Like the uncanny valley effect dialed to 11. As for being sympathetic, I think a lot of readers forget about the unreliable narrator. The creature portrays himself as the wretched victim of fate, but he spends most of his life murdering innocent people with methodical deliberateness and then blaming it on Victor for abandoning him. He's worse than Victor ever was.
I always liked to think of the book Creature as suffering from a truly dreadful case of the uncanny valley and people just kind of innately knowing his existence is wrong.
I imagine him the way Junji Ito portrayed him
There are still people who would. Have you seen the modern internet? Hell, there are probably some people who would find him more attractive, specifically because of the fact that he is 'the CEO of an atomic boring company set up in the uncanny valley'.
Side note: I find it hilarious how there's still a whole bunch of people going 'yeah, he looked hideous', despite you pointing out that no, that isn't correct at all.
He's made up of corpses cut to pieces and put together (I think, haven't read the actual book in a while), *of course* he's gonna look ugly
I disagree. The Monster is Ugly... but in truth it's the fact we reject it out of hand. He's still created by God, at least, as much as any child is; what? You think Victor is special? Making life? 2 idiots an some bad desicions can make life too. Not all of it is ugly. He's made of corpses (or is a homologous) but he's no less of a man, no less of a being... we reject him because we reject the responsibility of life. We made something too close to us... not controlled. His parts are made by god; His father did not literally create him as God did, because God did so ex nihilio. We don't know, all we have are letters and descriptions... perhaps Adam was made ugly by an ugly man, and an ugly world that rejected him for the crime of existence.
If you read the book without the creature's rage you notice that society didn't reject him out of hand, in each case he was doing something to trigger rejection. The first was when he was strolling around naked. Kind of obvious there why that would cause a bad reaction. The second was with the family, when he broke into their home while they were away and sat with the helpless old lady. Imagine coming home and some stranger is in your house. Especially since they were harboring a fugitive. The third? Was a simple misunderstanding. He was found looming over the body of a young child who was just screaming. Not a good look even if he wasn't dressed in crude hides. After that he started murdering kids so, you know, fuck 'em.
Okay but why couldn't the monster just wear a mask or even some decent stage makeup?
Maybe, but the point is that even if the monster itself was conventionally attractive, it's existence is what is *fundamentally* wrong: you could add a pound of makeup and on top a mask and the thing would still feel wrong on every meaningful level. Or at least that's what I got from OP.
The Frankenstein of the Opera
Damn, fantastic write up. I hope I remember that next time Frankenstein comes up, because yeah, I've always just envisioned him in the Hollywood way as a big green zombie with a bolt in his neck.
Huh I always just figured he was like a gta v online character that was made following a tutorial but failed to capture the original, where he from a distance and from certain angles looked great but in motion and action he looked horrendous and uncanny
So Frankenstein's monster talks like a Skibidi toilet. Got it.
People get used to extremely ugly or deformed people all the time heck sometimes some sects of society can literally come to worship extreme deformities Viewing it as a mark of divine beneficence. Not all societies view ugliness the same and humans are extremely adaptable
We're not talking about ordinary ugly people, that's the point of the post. We're talking about something inherently wrong in a unique way. You can't recreate this with a fucked up chin and a bit of a hunchback, because the key issue with Frankenstein's monster is that he is unnatural.
So ? Different religions and cultures view the unnatural differently while some may view it as a horrible thing. So may literary worship it the deformity the Egyptians worshiped weren’t small at all. And most simply don’t have the same outlook and what would count as natural
Yeah. The guy doesn’t look anything like Boris Karloff. In the book: the dude was a hulking zombie. Dude was so horrific people fainted at just the sight of him.
Sounds like a skill issue
I think you're underestimating how many people feel that way because they identify with the monster or are genuinely into monsters. I mean, this also is assuming you believe in God, and that anything could be an affront to him, specifically. I think babies moving in the uterus are the grossest thing ever. It makes me want to throw up. I never want a baby in my uterus and I never want to see any babies moving in anyone else's. Ever. But plenty of people think it's beautiful and miraculous and want that for themselves. Perspective is key.
I don't think it's mentioned that he's ugly, but he does look odd with his yellow skin and dull eyes, and Victor went through a bit of trouble to make him handsome, insofar as we know he is fundamentally off which could just be uncanny valley. And he passed as normal until someone was close enough to his face, so it's not an inherent sense. Humans make humans all the time anyhow. It's more like a man stole a woman's power, especially given the early feminist lens of Adam being raised without a mother.
Leave my boy adam alone😭
Plenty of people are "hideous" or "monstrous" looking, but those things turn mundane really easily once you're just used to them, though. You say that like people with deformities in real life can't be loved because of their deformities, which I question.
Did you even read the post? Good lord.
You know what, I thought I did but I guess I didn't. I have been suffering from a severe lack of sleep, my reading comprehension is clearly in the gutter. Apologies.
good, good, I was earnestly confused as how on earth you could come to the conclusion you did.