Fourteen: On my list of all time favorite novels. The writing, the story, the characters, the emotion, the imagery, the power…all off the charts. If you are a fan of classic literature and/or are utterly devoid of a sense of humor this review may not be for you. Well, Mary Shelley was a teen when she wrote this. Color me impressed. At 19 I was just looking for my next college boyfriend, not penning the great English classic. Kudos to Mary for that.

It documents a fictional correspondence between Captain Robert Walton and his sister, Margaret Walton Saville. A large proportion of one of my PhD chapters is about this novel. I'm discussing the idea of the vegetable diet along with purity and becoming our natural selves. And I'm also considering notions of animal rights, of the idea that man is very much an animal too and he has lost this sense of original self. Frankenstein at its very core is a novel about duality, of our capability to be both good and evil and to be both human and animal. Sometimes literature stands for little. The Tambora volcano eruption in 1815 completely changed Europe's climate, particularly between 1816 and 1817. It led to almost glacial periods in the Alps. Around this time, friends Shelley and Byron traveled around Switzerland on vacation. The lousy weather obliges them to often remain secluded in their chalet, with, like a favorite pastime, to invent extraordinary stories. During one of these evenings, it would be born, from the imagination of Mary Shelley, the character of Frankenstein and his creature - feeding on romantic, gothic, and fantastic literature, with the scientific spirit in vogue at the time of the early 19th century. It remained to polish the plot with the help of Percy Shelley. He then relayed by cinema and the high physics of Boris Karloff. And this is how a myth is born!Quise razonar contigo, pero has demostrado que no quieres. Recuerda que soy yo quien tiene el poder. Te consideras desgraciado, pero piensa que sólo yo puedo hacerte tan desdichado que la luz del día te resultará odiosa. Tú eres mi creador, pero yo soy tu dueño. ¡Obedece! Ten cuidado porque a nada temo, y eso me convierte en poderoso.” In 1813 Mary met Percy Bysshe Shelley. He was only twenty-one but was already unhappily married. He was destined to be one of the geniuses of English poetry. The two fell in love and eloped, despite Mary's age. Her father, William Godwin, disowned her, but still she and Shelley were married in 1816. They settled in Italy but tragedy seemed to follow them. Only one of their four children lived very long and then, in 1822, when he was just thirty, Shelley was drowned. Mary lived for another thirty years but she lost the promise that she had shown in the company of her brilliant husband and his friends, such as the poet Lord Byron. The single book that we remember her for belonged to her happy time in Italy. I don't think I've ever had the pleasure of reading about a character this spineless before. What a pussy! He didn't talk so much as he whined. It does not – should not – spoil anything to say that Frankenstein is successful in his endeavors, at least up to a point.

Mary quotes her beloved Percy Bysshe Shelley, unattributively, when Dr Frankenstein first spots his creature up on the Mer de Glace. She uses the final two stanzas from ‘Mutability’. For me though it's the beautiful first stanza that better expresses the ferocious intensity of Mary and her circle of friends and lovers, surrounded as they all seemed to be by imminent, premature death: Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus is a novel written by English author Mary Shelley (1797–1851) that tells the story of Victor Frankenstein, a young scientist who creates a grotesque, sapient creature in an unorthodox scientific experiment. As an aside, Shelley’s life, and her relationship with the doomed Percy, is worth exploring. There is free love, unfounded suggestions that Percy penned Frankenstein, and tragedy aplenty. Mary Shelley’s book is considered one of the earliest examples of the Science Fiction genre. However, there is not much science or technology to speak of in Frankenstein, apart from a few mentions of Paracelsus and a couple of other alchemists and astrologers. The minor references to electricity, magnetism and galvanism are in the spirit of the times. Still, Michael Faraday, who would soon bring significant breakthroughs in these fields, was about the same age as the precocious author of Frankenstein. Still, the presence of electromagnetism is not only a reference to the myth of Prometheus and the stolen fire. If anything, it expresses a fascination with landscapes: now sunny, beautiful and pleasant; now stormy, sublime and menacing, with ghastly thunderbolts ripping the clouds apart. Mary Shelley had a couple of predecessors — Coleridge is quoted a few times in her novel —, but that sort of imagery was, by and large, a novelty at the time. It might be interesting to note that while Mary Shelley was writing Frankenstein, Caspar David Friedrich was painting his famous Wanderer above the Sea of Fog (see below). This obsession with ominous landscapes would soon become a trope within the romantic and gothic literary tradition (cf. the often ridiculed Bulwer-Lytton’s “dark and stormy night”).proprio in questo arco di tempo, segnato da morte e suicidio (tutte morti premature, se esiste un tipo di morte che non lo sia), che Mary Shelley partorisce il suo romanzo più famoso, Frankenstein, or, the modern Prometheus, tra il 1816 e il 1817, tra i diciannove e i venti anni (fu pubblicato nel 1818). Now the question here proposed by Shelley is, who is the ‘true’ monster? The man who reached for the profane and abandoned it into a life of torment turning toward evil, or the misunderstood being thrust into the world already considered an abomination and becoming ‘ malicious because I am miserable.’ Its ethical quandaries like this that make this a fantastic classroom choice or one to toss and turn with for days. The National Theater had an excellent stage adaptation where the two leads, Benedict Cumberbatch and Jonny Lee Miller, alternated roles as Frankenstein and Frankenstein’s monster to further interrogate this question. Though perhaps the creation says it best: ‘ Listen to me, Frankenstein. You accuse me of murder; and yet you would, with a satisfied conscience, destroy your own creature. Oh, praise the eternal justice of man!’ Were we supposed to be outraged at the monster's killing spree? By the books end, I was merely miffed that the creature murdered the wrong Frankenstein sibling. He would have saved himself a good deal of traveling (and saved me a good deal of suffering) had he snuffed out his maker before he could high-tail it out of the birthing room.

Cuando uno cree que es terrible lo que lee acerca de lo que sufre Víctor Frankenstein, se queda sin palabras al enterarse de las miserias e injusticias que la criatura debe sobrellevar para no sucumbir. I did enjoy it again this time and it stands up to the 5 star review and designation of classic. There were a few slow parts - mainly when Dr. Frankenstein would stop the narrative to wax poetical about something - but, not enough t take a way from my overall enjoyment. The book offers many interesting avenues of philosophical exploration if one wishes to ponder such things. For example, allusions to religion and Genesis, possible criticisms of using science to "play God", and the relationship between creator and creation. All of these things interest me, yes, but it is the painfully human part of this book that has always so deeply affected me. Indeed, the real monster of this novel is Victor Frankenstein, and not his monstrous creation. The creature is a monster on the outside but Victor is on the inside, which is a form much worse. By abandoning the creature he has taught him to become what his appearance is. The first human experience he receives is rejection based upon his physicality. His own creator recoils in disgust from him. He cannot be blamed for his actions if all he has been taught is negative emotion, he will only respond in one way. He is innocent and childlike but also a savage brute. These are two things that should never be put together. Woe to Victor Frankenstein’s family.

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La genesi è aneddoto piuttosto noto: Mary è convinta da sua sorella Claire (Clairmont: stessa madre ma padre differente), che all’epoca era l’amate di Lord Byron, a seguirla a Ginevra dove affittano Villa Diodati. La comitiva è composta da Mary e Shelley, Claire e Byron, il medico e scrittore John Polidori. Tempo piovoso, fu l’anno definito “senza estate”, gli amici leggono molto, soprattutto storie tedesche di fantasmi e il Paradiso Perduto di John Milton. Alla fine (solo tre giorni), Mary produce il Frankenstein, Byron frammenti di un romanzo, e Polidori Il Vampiro, il primo vampiro moderno. This is definitely one of my favorite books I was required to read in High School. Also, it is my favorite of the classic horror novels. It is perfectly written, suspenseful, and is a bit more thought provoking than scary. One of the best ways I can compare it to other classic horror novels is to Dracula - which I read recently. Dracula has so much repetitive filler that you do not find in Frankenstein, which is the main reason I find Frankenstein to be a more enjoyable book. I'm sure that the fans of this book will say that I didn't understand the deeper, symbolic nuances of this book, and I'm sure that they are right. At this point in my life, all I know is what I like and don't like in a book, and as far as I'm concerned, this book is unadulterated, mind-numbing crap. But that's just me. Your mileage will vary (as I sincerely hope it does). As for my own mileage, it can best be compared to driving a Ford Pinto in the Indy 500... Since then, what was meant as an entertaining story, rose to the dimension of a myth. So much so that the original novel itself has been covered up by layer upon layer of external imagery, which has very little to do with it — in particular, the heavily made-up face of Boris Karloff in the 1931 unfaithful film adaptation of this book. Nowadays, there are all sorts of adaptations (e.g. Kenneth Branagh’s movie, with De Niro, more on that below), parodies (Mel Brook’s Young Frankenstein), and probably even spooky porn versions. Increíblemente y como si fuera una trágica maniobra del destino, ese encuentro tendría un final funesto: en 1821 John Polidori se suicidaría pero le sobrevivirá su inmortal cuento y Percy Bysshe Shelley moriría ahogado a orillas del lago Leman, dos meses después y de todo ese dolor surgiría esta obra inmortal llamada “Frankenstein, o el moderno Prometeo” que Mary Shelley escribiría con tan sólo dieciocho años.”

Twelve: The novel is structured as an epistolary nesting doll using the frame story of Captain Walton corresponding with his sister about his expedition to the North Pole. While at the top of the world, Walton finds Victor Frankenstein stranded. This sets up the dovetail into Walton relaying Victor’s story which takes up the bulk of the novel and includes within it the incredibly poignant story of the “monster” in the creature’s own words. It is superbly executed and I thought the framing device was very effective. Though he also notes that ‘ yet even that enemy of God and man had friends and associates in his desolation; I am alone’ Milton pops up everywhere in his sections, such as the monsters statement that ‘ evil thenceforth became my good,’ which paraphrases Milton’s line ‘ Evil be thou my good.’ In an essay on the novel, Joyce Carol Oates argues that the monster’s surprise at his reflection in the water is not a reference to Narcissus as is typically claimed, but instead a reference to Eve from Paradise Lost: ‘ Of sympathy and love; there I had fixt / Mine eyes till now, and pin’d with vain desire.’ This, she argues, makes the monster a sort of reverse holy trinity of creation instead of creator, speaking from Milton’s Adam, Eve and Satan as opposed to the Father, Son and Holy Ghost. There is another interesting reversal that Shelley plays with, something William Veeder calls the ‘negative Oedipus.’ The monster kills Elizabeth to get to his ‘father’, Frankenstein, while the death of the doctor’s mother is his motivation to play Holy Father. At all times Shelley constructs a duality of parenthood and horror. This being, created from different parts of corpses, seeks love and finds hatred, so he instead decides to embrace it. Fuelled by his own rage at the unfairness of the world, he gradually turns towards evil. Lustrous eyes?! No ( straight) sailor ever, in the history of the world, EVER referred to another dude's eyes as lustrous.

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Una obra maestra clásica que engendró incontables adaptaciones y recreaciones; en libros, películas, teatro, y que no. De ritmo rápido, corta y fácil de leer. Una lectura obligada de la vida. Altamente Recomendable. First off, it’s very funny to imagine old-timey 1800s people being scared by this. It’s in the same vein as thinking of that urban legend about the people who watched the first movie screaming when the train races toward them. “AAAAAH! I AM IN A THEATER, BUT I’M ABOUT TO GET HIT BY A TRAIN!!! HERE IT COMES! TELL MY WIFE I LOVE HER!” Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley was born in England on August 30, 1797. Her parents were two celebrated liberal thinkers, William Godwin, a social philosopher, and Mary Wollstonecraft, a women's rights advocate. Eleven days after Mary's birth, her mother died of puerperal fever. Four motherless years later, Godwin married Mary Jane Clairmont, bringing her and her two children into the same household with Mary and her half-sister, Fanny. Mary's idolization of her father, his detached and rational treatment of their bond, and her step-mother's preference for her own children created a tense and awkward home. Mary's education and free-thinking were encouraged, so it should not surprise us today that at the age of sixteen she ran off with the brilliant, nineteen-year old and unhappily married Percy Bysshe Shelley. Shelley became her ideal, but their life together was a difficult one. Traumas plagued them: Shelley's wife and Mary's half-sister both committed suicide; Mary and Shelley wed shortly after he was widowed but social disapproval forced them from England; three of their children died in infancy or childhood; and while Shelley was an aristocrat and a genius, he was also moody and had little money. Mary conceived of her magnum opus, Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus, when she was only nineteen when Lord Byron suggested they tell ghost stories at a house party. The resulting book took over two years to write and can be seen as the brilliant creation of a powerful but tormented mind. The story of Frankenstein has endured nearly two centuries and countless variations because of its timeless exploration of the tension between our quest for knowledge and our thirst for good. Shelley drowned when Mary was only 24, leaving her with an infant and debts. She died from a brain tumor on February 1, 1851 at the age of 54. Six: The “non-explanation” for the process that Victor uses to create the monster is thing of genius. No other approach could have possibly conveyed the majesty and significance of the achievement, because we would have known it was bullshit. Shelley did it perfectly…which leads me nicely into…