Well, here we are, ten days till Christmas and what am I recapping on the blog today? Some cozy holiday story á la The Best Christmas Pageant Ever? No. Today we're talking about what is possibly the most classic horror story of all time. The story of Doctor Victor Frankenstein and his creature.
"It was on a dreary night of November that I beheld the accomplishment of my toils..."
When I heard last year that Guillermo del Toro was making a new adaptation of Frankenstein to be released in 2025, I knew it was time to finally read my copy of this classic and so I added it to my book list and planned to read it in October or November around the time the movie was slated to be released. Despite the enduring fame of this 200 year old ghost story, I knew relatively little beyond the fact that "Frankenstein" is the name of the doctor, not the monster. *insert massive eye-rolling about here* My lit teacher friends have all told me that this is one of those accessible classics that even high schoolers love and that I'd breeze through it, easy peasy.
Well, yes and no. First of all, Frankenstein is a bit convoluted in that it's a story, inside of a story, inside yet another story. The preface begins as a series of letters from a certain Captain Walton who is on an expedition to the North Pole. As it happens, the captain met with some strange circumstances in which he picked up a lone man called Victor Frankenstein who determines to tell Walton his history. As a young man, Frankenstein was fascinated with alchemy and, through a series of events, discovered he could create life. After piecing together a bodily form from cadavers, he actually does succeed in animating his creation and then immediately regrets it and runs away from it. I'm not going to get too into details here but after a lot of time passes, his creation finds Frankenstein and determines to tell him his own story and make a request of him.
See what I mean? Convoluted. Which makes sense because Mary Shelley was a teenager herself when she wrote it. The teen angst is palpable in this novel. It's a brilliant story though and I get why the appeal of it has endured. The feelings that Frankenstein's creature (I will not call him a monster, I loved him too much) has to grapple with concerning his loneliness and where he belongs are all too relatable, and the consequences Frankenstein has to face as the result of playing God raise so many questions we're still asking ourselves today.
But my expectations for this book were out of line with my experience when I finally picked it up to read it. The mind-numbing descriptions of the natural world were too much even for me and took me out of the story. Victor Frankenstein is one of the most insufferable characters I've encountered in a very long time. And the creature's story was by far my very favorite part of the book, but unfortunately it was also the most brief. (Or if it wasn't, it definitely felt that way.) After reading it and having a little time to think about it, I think it's a novel that bears re-reading with my expectations adjusted accordingly.
As for the brand new film adaptation that came out November 7th on Netflix, I took a break from my annual slate of favorite Christmas movies yesterday to watch it. And I have a lot of feelings about it. The movie itself is absolutely beautiful. A sweeping epic if I've ever seen one. The love Guillermo del Toro has for the novel is apparent, even though he drastically changed the story in his screenplay. At first, I did not appreciate the liberties taken with the source material but as the film unfolded, del Toro's choices started to make a lot of sense to me. I'm still not sure how I feel about the twist ending, but on the whole, del Toro's Frankenstein is a film I'd watch again. Oscar Isaac and Jacob Elordi managed to bring the essence of Mary Shelley's original characters to vivid life on the screen and I felt the same way about the portrayal of their Frankenstein and his creature on film as I did when I was reading the novel. I don't say this about a lot of movies, but del Toro's Frankenstein is art.
All things considered, I think Frankenstein is a fantastic story and definitely worth reading, but it's a slow burn so proceed accordingly.
And if you've read it and you sympathize with Frankenstein and think his creature is a monster, let's talk about that because I'd love to hear your perspective.
