Before a few months ago, the Frankenstein in my head was like this picture. Mean looking...but almost handsome. Tall. Often green. With metal rods coming out of his neck.Now I think that is just plain weird. Where did this picture come from? Because it is simply nothing like the book. The character in my mind is dumb, the one in the book is smart. The character in my mind walks stiff and slow, the one in the book has super human agility and speed. In my mind he is a monster, in the book he is just lonely.
I fell in love with Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. The story is great, but I think the real reason I love it is because it was so surprising to me. The story was truly nothing like I thought it would be. And that was fun.
Instead of being a horror story, Frankenstein is a journey through the human social world. It is about a creature learning what life is. What is hunger. What is speech. What are relationships. What is loneliness. What is acceptance. It is almost like a story of an alien coming to Earth and learning our customs and social practices are. You get to see our way of life through new eyes, and it's very powerful.
This novel is a perfect example of why I want to read these classics. I've heard of the story and I thought I knew the premise. But then I read it and learned why it became a classic in the first place.
A list of what's to come, and what has already been explored.
My Written Artwork Journey Explained
- Animal Farm - George Orwell
- The Great Gatsby - F. Scott Fitzgerald
- Emma - Jane Austen
- Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
- Cat on a Hot Tin Roof - Tennessee Williams
- Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
- Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde - Robert Louis Stevenson
- Frankenstein - Mary Shelley
- The Canterbury Tales - Geoffrey Chaucer
- Les Miserables - Victor Hugo
- Nineteen Eighty-four - George Orwell
- Death of a Salesman - Arthur Miller
- Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
- The Scarlet Letter - Nathaniel Hawthorne
- The Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
- Treasure Island - Robert Louis Stevenson
- Pickwick Papers - Charles Dickens
- Catch-22 - Joseph Heller
- The Catcher in the Rye - J.D. Salinger
- Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
- Invisible Man - Ralph Ellison
- Lord of the Flies - William Golding
- Slaughterhouse-Five - Kurt Vonnegut
- The sun Also Rises - Ernest Hemingway
- Their Eyes Were Watching God - Zora Neale Hurston
- Things Fall Apart - Chinua Achebe
- Love in the Time of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
- War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
- Little Woman - Louisa Ma Alcott
- Crime and Punishment - Fedor Dostoyevsky
- Watership Down - Richard Adams
- Doctor Zhivago - Boris Pasternak
- The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn - Mark Twain
- Alls Quiet on the Western Front - Erich Maria Remarque
- Sherlock Holmes - Arthur Conan Doyle
- Moby Dick - Herman Melville
- The Red Badge of Courage - Stephen Crane
- Robinson Crusoe - Daniel Defoe
- Tales - Edgar Allan Poe
- Diary of a Madman and Other Stories - Nikolai Gogol
- Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
- A Farewell To Arms - Ernest Hemingway
- Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
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Now you made me want to read it..... :)
ReplyDeleteYay! It worked then :)
ReplyDeleteI would never have known.... so where did the the other character come from?? And how do you decide which book to tackle next?
ReplyDeleteI generally pick the books that are easy to find in the library. It's not very scientific. Sometimes I try to get a lighter book (such as Little Women) and a heavier one (such as 1984) at the same time. Helps break it up.
ReplyDeletei haven't read it but my mom did long ago and said something similar about the difference in the actual character and the hollywood monster version. you just put it so well though! my book pile is growing large of late but this one might just have to be added to it now!
ReplyDeleteHi, Bethany. I read 'Frankenstein' when I was studying the history of the novel, and like you I really enjoyed it. As you say, it is less about 'horror' and more about psychology. It is a tragedy about scientific curiosity going too far; literally 'creating a monster' (and Shelley's novel is, of course, where that metaphor comes from) and not being able to stop it. I ended up feeling as sorry for the monster as I did for Frankenstein himself.
ReplyDeleteYou made me remember why I loved the book! Its all about humans and where science goes and the curiousity that we can't help but follow...sometimes too far. Thanks for sharing! I loved 'Wuthering Heights' as well.
ReplyDeleteI am adding this one to my list now! I thought it was like you described too!
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