What are you reading in 2025?

[Ruin Explorer]

What struck me most about this story was how much the "insightful" understanding of the tale—another artifact of its being a common point of contemporary culture—is itself a shallow take. This idea, which is held to be clever, is that seeing Victor Frankenstein as a tragic figure and his monster as the villain is a shallow take, and that the monster is in fact the far more sympathetic character, with Dr. Frankenstein being the more callous of the two.

I'm sorry, but those people are right, I would suggest, and your take is, as you say they think, is indeed the more superficial one, given the actual facts of the book.

You largely absolve von Frankenstein of blame for own repeated, hideous actions for no apparent reason. Von Frankenstein - an adult human of good intelligence and education, with a moral compass he completely ignores - repeatedly does truly terrible things whilst variously excusing himself of blame and responsibility (to point where becomes quite irritating to many readers). He commits various crimes to create the creature, and the moment he succeeds, he abandons it out of fear of what he has done. There's no excuse for that or many of his later actions. He doesn't have PTSD and I find it very strange you suggest he does - that's not how PTSD works. He just "freaks out" - he's not being battered by trauma from his past (which is what PTSD is). He has no excuse but his own cowardice, and your suggestion the monster should have a D&D "fear aura" is seriously undermined by the rest of the book. There's no implication whatsoever that the monster is magically fear-inducing, just that von Frankenstein can't deal with his own bad decisions.

Most importantly, the monster isn't an adult, and that's the key you're leaving out here. That and your excusing of von Frankenstein are why you are finding yourself at odds with the vast majority of people reading the book.

The monster is essentially itself a small child. It has adult levels of reasoning/cunning, but very clearly does not have adult control of its emotions, nor adult knowledge of and practice of morality/ethics/etc. And why? Because von Frankenstein abandoned it, left it to fend for itself. Also possibly Milton confused it lol (damn that Milton!).

I suspect that Victor Frankenstein would have been more amenable to that if the monster hadn't already murdered his kid brother and caused a friend who was practically family to be executed.

Would he have been though?

The Victor von Frankenstein we see is an incredibly arrogant and self-pitying man. Self-pity is basically his dominant emotion. He tries to act like it isn't, but his actions and behaviour show otherwise. If he ever was seriously considering making another monster, it was really to feed his own ego - because whatever his protestations, that's all von Frankenstein really seems to care about in end - himself, his ego, his feelings. The best excuse we can give him is perhaps he's just mentally unstable? He certainly has more breakdowns and freak-outs and amnesia than you'd expect from someone not dealing with very serious mental health issues. In which case you could perhaps consider it a double-tragedy, I guess. I think most people think he's just a twerp who keeps letting himself off, though.

(For some reason I thought the phrase "Steampunk Nathan Barley" here which is perhaps unkind to von Frankenstein but still, there's something there imho!)

TLDR - The monster is itself a child who has had no moral guidance and who has no innate moral compass, who only exists thanks to von Frankenstein's ego, and is a child in terrible pain (which the monster explains with great clarity, no less). Failing to recognise this has indeed lead you to what is in your own words the "shallow" and less "clever" understanding of the book (not words I would have chosen - I would have said "straightforward" or "simplistic" or "unreflected" - you chose more judgemental language).

 

[Bedrockgames]

I'm sorry, but those people are right, I would suggest, and your take is, as you say they think, is indeed the more superficial one, given the actual facts of the book.

You largely absolve von Frankenstein of blame for own repeated, hideous actions for no apparent reason. Von Frankenstein - an adult human of good intelligence and education, with a moral compass he completely ignores - repeatedly does truly terrible things whilst variously excusing himself of blame and responsibility (to point where becomes quite irritating to many readers). He commits various crimes to create the creature, and the moment he succeeds, he abandons it out of fear of what he has done. There's no excuse for that or many of his later actions. He doesn't have PTSD and I find it very strange you suggest he does - that's not how PTSD works. He just "freaks out" - he's not being battered by trauma from his past (which is what PTSD is). He has no excuse but his own cowardice, and your suggestion the monster should have a D&D "fear aura" is seriously undermined by the rest of the book. There's no implication whatsoever that the monster is magically fear-inducing, just that von Frankenstein can't deal with his own bad decisions.

Most importantly, the monster isn't an adult, and that's the key you're leaving out here. That and your excusing of von Frankenstein are why you are finding yourself at odds with the vast majority of people reading the book.

The monster is essentially itself a small child. It has adult levels of reasoning/cunning, but very clearly does not have adult control of its emotions, nor adult knowledge of and practice of morality/ethics/etc. And why? Because von Frankenstein abandoned it, left it to fend for itself. Also possibly Milton confused it lol (damn that Milton!).


Would he have been though?

The Victor von Frankenstein we see is an incredibly arrogant and self-pitying man. Self-pity is basically his dominant emotion. He tries to act like it isn't, but his actions and behaviour show otherwise. If he ever was seriously considering making another monster, it was really to feed his own ego - because whatever his protestations, that's all von Frankenstein really seems to care about in end - himself, his ego, his feelings. The best excuse we can give him is perhaps he's just mentally unstable? He certainly has more breakdowns and freak-outs and amnesia than you'd expect from someone not dealing with very serious mental health issues. In which case you could perhaps consider it a double-tragedy, I guess. I think most people think he's just a twerp who keeps letting himself off, though.

(For some reason I thought the phrase "Steampunk Nathan Barley" here which is perhaps unkind to von Frankenstein but still, there's something there imho!)

TLDR - The monster is itself a child who has had no moral guidance and who has no innate moral compass, who only exists thanks to von Frankenstein's ego, and is a child in terrible pain (which the monster explains with great clarity, no less). Failing to recognise this has indeed lead you to what is in your own words the "shallow" and less "clever" understanding of the book (not words I would have chosen - I would have said "straightforward" or "simplistic" or "unreflected" - you chose more judgemental language).

I think Frankenstein is a villain but so is the creature. I agree he probably wouldn’t be but for Frankenstein’s actions but by the time he commits the murders he has grown and I don’t think calling him a child applies anymore. He is wrathful enough and calculated enough and clearly understands the pain he is inflicting by killing these people. He is making an informed choice to retaliate by killing. And he uses murder to coerce Frankenstein into making him a companion. Frankenstein is culpable but so is his creation

 

[Ruin Explorer]

I don’t think calling him a child applies anymore

But many, perhaps most people disagree - hence the fairly conventional interpretation that the monster is, at worst, the lesser of two evils. It really just comes down to that.

Whether the book agrees or disagrees is unclear, and I'm not sure anyone managed to get it out of Mary Shelly.

Frankenstein is culpable but so is his creation

I don't see it and I think it's very common to not see that.

Because one of them is a cunning child who has had no moral education (except possibly Milton, good lord), and no upbringing, love, or kindness in the world at all. At worst the monster is a broken machine, cursed by the failings of his creator. High IQ doesn't give you morality if you're cast adrift in the world. The fact that the monster kills to try and motivate and mess with von Frankenstein, in this context, is proof that it is immature - this is exactly the sort of thing an angry three-year-old might do, had it the power and cunning to do so. If anything given what has happened to him he behaves a little better than one might expect (and I think this is sometimes held against him, even).

Whereas the other one is a rich, well-educated, extremely intelligent adult man who had what we can only suspect was a good upbringing, but who is nothing but self-pitying and self-regarding. Even when people die, von Frankenstein seems to care more about how that makes him feel than what actually happened! He's genuinely a shockingly awful man.

 

[Bedrockgames]

But many, perhaps most people disagree - hence the fairly conventional interpretation that the monster is, at worst, the lesser of two evils. It really just comes down to that.

Whether the book agrees or disagrees is unclear, and I'm not sure anyone managed to get it out of Mary Shelly.

I don't see it and I think it's very common to not see that.

Because one of them is a cunning child who has had no moral education (except possibly Milton, good lord), and no upbringing, love, or kindness in the world at all. At worst the monster is a broken machine, cursed by the failings of his creator. High IQ doesn't give you morality if you're cast adrift in the world. The fact that the monster kills to try and motivate and mess with von Frankenstein, in this context, is proof that it is immature - this is exactly the sort of thing an angry three-year-old might do, had it the power and cunning to do so. If anything given what has happened to him he behaves a little better than one might expect (and I think this is sometimes held against him, even).

Whereas the other one is a rich, well-educated, extremely intelligent adult man who had what we can only suspect was a good upbringing, but who is nothing but self-pitying and self-regarding. Even when people die, von Frankenstein seems to care more about how that makes him feel than what actually happened! He's genuinely a shockingly awful man.

I am not defending Frankenstein. But I have a different interpretation (and I don't think it is that unusual of an interpretation). He is morally culpable like I said. I am just saying, I think by the time the Creature reads Milton, he is no longer a child and has moral understanding. So I think both can be called villains. They are very complicated characters. But I don't think the complexity makes either less evil. The creatures actions are certainly understandable. That is what makes him so sympathetic. We feel the Creatures pain and loneliness. But I don't think Shelley was excusing the Creatures actions. Just for the benefit for people who haven't read the book, at this stage, he murdered a a child, Frankenstein's little brother William. Then he lets Justine, the family servant, take the blame and she is executed (and the Creature knows this, and he is smart enough to frame her). This he does to persuade Frankenstein to make him a companion. After he destroys this second creature and refuses to continue, the creature kills his friend Henry. Then he murders Elizabeth (Frankenstein's bride; in some editions she is also his cousin). The creature demonstrates, not just intelligence but understanding as he does these things. He knows how all this will make Frankenstein feel. He has enough empathy to understand the consequences of his actions.

I am not so sure that him committing murder to motivate Frankenstein is evidence he is still a child. I am not dismissing this an an argument. If that is your interpretation of the book, I think this is a fair point to raise (it is subjective and I don't think your interpretation is out of line). But the more I read the book, the less I am able to excuse the Creature's behavior.

 

[KYRON45]

Django Wexler: Ashes of the Sun.
Robert A. Turk: The Completely Inappropriate Tales of Gandersnatch the Goblin.
Chuck Wendig: The Book of Accidents.
Patrick Rothfuss: The Narrow Road Between Desires.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

I am not defending Frankenstein. But I have a different interpretation (and I don't think it is that unusual of an interpretation). He is morally culpable like I said. I am just saying, I think by the time the Creature reads Milton, he is no longer a child and has moral understanding. So I think both can be called villains. They are very complicated characters. But I don't think the complexity makes either less evil. The creatures actions are certainly understandable. That is what makes him so sympathetic. We feel the Creatures pain and loneliness. But I don't think Shelley was excusing the Creatures actions. Just for the benefit for people who haven't read the book, at this stage, he murdered a a child, Frankenstein's little brother William. Then he lets Justine, the family servant, take the blame and she is executed (and the Creature knows this, and he is smart enough to frame her). This he does to persuade Frankenstein to make him a companion. After he destroys this second creature and refuses to continue, the creature kills his friend Henry. Then he murders Elizabeth (Frankenstein's bride; in some editions she is also his cousin). The creature demonstrates, not just intelligence but understanding as he does these things. He knows how all this will make Frankenstein feel. He has enough empathy to understand the consequences of his actions.

I am not so sure that him committing murder to motivate Frankenstein is evidence he is still a child. I am not dismissing this an an argument. If that is your interpretation of the book, I think this is a fair point to raise (it is subjective and I don't think your interpretation is out of line). But the more I read the book, the less I am able to excuse the Creature's behavior.

I think there are broadly four interpretations of book, really, through history:

1) Von Frankenstein is an understandable tragic figure and the monster is evil, for which von Frankenstein is somewhat but mostly not culpable. This was the common book-only interpretation up until the 1950s I think.

2) Von Frankenstein is an awful, awful man, but the monster is also evil because it does "evil" things. This is a fairly conventional opinion, but I think is increasingly less common (in part because people understand children better).

3) Von Frankenstein is an awful, awful man, and the monster is not really evil despite doing horrible things, because it essentially has no reason not to do them, being a child, and morality/decency is something learned, not something intrinsic.

4) Nobody is to blame, it's a tragedy for everyone! Von Frankenstein was driven to madness by sadness, and so was the monster, essentially. (This is still uncommon but I have seen it).

Only the first one is like, even arguably "incorrect". The rest are all viable opinions, which says something for the book.

 

[Bedrockgames]

I think there are broadly four interpretations of book, really, through history:

1) Von Frankenstein is an understandable tragic figure and the monster is evil, for which von Frankenstein is somewhat but mostly not culpable. This was the common book-only interpretation up until the 1950s I think.

2) Von Frankenstein is an awful, awful man, but the monster is also evil because it does "evil" things. This is a fairly conventional opinion, but I think is increasingly less common (in part because people understand children better).

3) Von Frankenstein is an awful, awful man, and the monster is not really evil despite doing horrible things, because it essentially has no reason not to do them, being a child, and morality/decency is something learned, not something intrinsic.

4) Nobody is to blame, it's a tragedy for everyone! Von Frankenstein was driven to madness by sadness, and so was the monster, essentially. (This is still uncommon but I have seen it).

Only the first one is like, even arguably "incorrect". The rest are all viable opinions, which says something for the book.

I would say I see both as tragic and evil

 

[Bedrockgames]

Someone else might be able to weigh in, because I dont' have the 1831 edition but my understanding is edition can also make a big difference in how people interpret it. Again, it was a year ago when I was looking it up, but what I kept seeing in lectures and articles was this idea that in the 1831 edition, which used to be the more common one for schools to use, the role of fate is larger than personal responsibility for Frankenstein (no idea if this is just an idea people have repeated that is incorrect though)

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

I just finished reading a 2015 reprint of the 1831 edition (i.e. the revised version of the original 1818 story) of Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley.

I picked this one up largely because the story is one that I knew through cultural osmosis, picking up the story through its innumerable references in contemporary culture without ever actually having read the original work, and so sought to remedy that. In that regard, I didn't realize that the 1831 edition wasn't the first published version of the story, but some checking revealed that it's the iteration which has become the one we all know, which is good enough for me.

What struck me most about this story was how much the "insightful" understanding of the tale—another artifact of its being a common point of contemporary culture—is itself a shallow take. This idea, which is held to be clever, is that seeing Victor Frankenstein as a tragic figure and his monster as the villain is a shallow take, and that the monster is in fact the far more sympathetic character, with Dr. Frankenstein being the more callous of the two.

Having read the book, I find myself in disagreement with this take. While the monster is certainly a tragic villain, he's still very much the villain of the tale, and far more evil than whatever can be said of his creator. While Victor Frankenstein can be justly castigated for failing to live up to his duty of care toward the being he created (and in all honesty, that's the weakest part of the story; that although he strove for two years, letting his health decline and his social obligations languish, in the instant that Victor Frankenstein beheld the living thing that he'd created he was so stricken with horror that he had to flee to his room, and when he awoke and saw his creation standing over him, fled his house entirely, being overcome with what was essentially PTSD so bad it required his friend Henry Clerval to spend roughly another two years taking care of him...if this were D&D, I'd say that the monster had to have some sort of fear aura to evoke that level of revulsion), the monster's vengeance against Frankenstein is entirely out of proportion to what can essentially be called parental neglect.

Consider that, when the monster seeks out Frankenstein two years after being created and abandoned, the first thing he does is strangle Victor's younger brother (who, from what I can tell from the text, is somewhere around seven years old) to death, and then frame a close family friend for the crime, causing her to be hanged. Only after that does the monster approach Frankenstein and ask him to build a mate for him, telling of the miserable loneliness and rejection that he's encountered due to his hideous countenance.

I suspect that Victor Frankenstein would have been more amenable to that if the monster hadn't already murdered his kid brother and caused a friend who was practically family to be executed. Certainly, that the monster's initial reacquaintance with Victor was made only after killing two people, one of whom was a child, is enough to make me cast him as the villain of the story. No matter how miserable your life is, killing people (especially people who've never even met you, let alone done you no harm) is inexcusable.

And of course, the monster's subsequent path of revenge when Victor (after initially agreeing to build the monster a companion) declines to make another monster is likewise littered with innocent people, as he kills everyone Victor cares about, not to change his mind, but simply to hurt the person whom he blames for his woes. Even the monster, by the end of the book, agrees that he's the villain of the story, and in this regard I can't disagree.

It's a powerful tale, and Gothic in the truest sense of the word, and I'm quite happy to say that I don't regret having gone back to the source material on this one.

Frankenstein is a complex tale, and one that continues to cast a spell on readers. I revisit it and Dracula every once in a while and find that both stories retain their impact, continue to evolve as I do, continue to horrify.

 

[Alzrius]

I'm sorry

You're right to apologize for this post you made.

You largely absolve von Frankenstein of blame for own repeated, hideous actions for no apparent reason.

Have you read the novel? Because what you're describing doesn't match with what's in the tale.

Von Frankenstein - an adult human of good intelligence and education, with a moral compass he completely ignores - repeatedly does truly terrible things whilst variously excusing himself of blame and responsibility (to point where becomes quite irritating to many readers).

That you call him "Von" Frankenstein is part of why I don't think you know the story as well as you seem to think you do. Quite frankly, the idea that he "repeatedly does truly terrible things" isn't present in the tale. At best it's alluded to, with him making veiled remarks about the nature of his work, but there's no suggestion that he actually hurts anyone; at worst he's vandalizing corpses. Compare this to the monster repeatedly murdering people, including children, simply to make Victor miserable.

He commits various crimes to create the creature, and the moment he succeeds, he abandons it out of fear of what he has done. There's no excuse for that or many of his later actions. He doesn't have PTSD and I find it very strange you suggest he does - that's not how PTSD works. He just "freaks out" - he's not being battered by trauma from his past (which is what PTSD is).

Again, this makes it seem like you haven't read the story. He is, indeed, afflicted by trauma from his past, specifically the trauma of seeing his creation brought to life and the work he did to make that happen. We're told at length about how, during the period where Henry Clerval is taking care of him, Victor shows him around the college in Ingolstadt where he (Victor) was working; every time the subject of the sciences came up, particularly with regard to Victor's work on it, he'd struggle with having a nervous breakdown due to being reminded of his efforts to make his creation. This is just one of several such instances where Victor experiences mid- to long-term mental breakdowns due to what happened (he spends two months without lucidity after Clerval is murdered by the monster, for instance).

He has no excuse but his own cowardice, and your suggestion the monster should have a D&D "fear aura" is seriously undermined by the rest of the book.

No, it's not. The book repeatedly demonstrates how the monster is so fearsome to look at that no one can seem to maintain their reasoning when they see his face. Even at the end of the book, when Walton catches sight of the monster (having already been told the entire story), he describes his reaction viscerally, and how it's with difficulty that he manages to call out to the monster not to leave, as per Victor's final request (i.e. he made his saving throw).

There's no implication whatsoever that the monster is magically fear-inducing, just that von Frankenstein can't deal with his own bad decisions.

This likewise makes me think you misread my post, since I didn't say the monster had a fear aura, just that it was described in a way that seems reminiscent of it.

Most importantly, the monster isn't an adult, and that's the key you're leaving out here. That and your excusing of von Frankenstein are why you are finding yourself at odds with the vast majority of people reading the book.

Yeah, no. This is wrong. By the time the monster begins killing people, he's very clearly developed a fully-functioning understanding of himself and the world. While two years spent observing a single poor family from hiding, and a few absconded books, wouldn't be nearly enough for you or me, the text repeatedly states how the monster's faculties (physical and mental) are beyond that of ordinary men. He likewise states that he knows fully well what he's doing, and that it's with the specific purpose of injuring Victor Frankenstein (again, no "Von" there).

The monster is essentially itself a small child. It has adult levels of reasoning/cunning, but very clearly does not have adult control of its emotions, nor adult knowledge of and practice of morality/ethics/etc. And why? Because von Frankenstein abandoned it, left it to fend for itself. Also possibly Milton confused it lol (damn that Milton!).

This, at least, is a credible argument, although still not a very good one. The text portrays the monster's emotional control as being on the same level as everyone else that it meets, in that the passions which it claims to be a slave to are no more controllable than anyone else in the story, be it Victor Frankenstein himself, Felix (whose family the monster spies upon to learn more about humans), Clerval (who is repeatedly stated to be a person with a zest for life), and virtually everyone else with a major role in the story.

The monster is tragic because his hideous countenance means he's perpetually isolated from humanity; saying that he's undone because he can't control himself actually runs counter to the understanding of the text, because it removes the monster's own agency. The monster is certainly a tragic figure, as I said before, but that makes him no less an evil one.

Would he have been though?

Yes, and we know this because the story tells us this. Victor Frankenstein admits to being moved by the monster's pleas about needing a companion, and even agrees to make one for him. It's only midway through this task that he (Victor) reconsiders, thinking back on the evil the monster has already committed, and becomes concerned that he's unleashing the progenitors of a race of daemons who will bedevil all mankind. Had the monster not killed his brother and family friend, it's hard to see Victor coming to that same conclusion.

The Victor von Frankenstein we see is an incredibly arrogant and self-pitying man. Self-pity is basically his dominant emotion. He tries to act like it isn't, but his actions and behaviour show otherwise.

And again, I don't see anything in the text that suggests this at all. He's arrogant, to be sure, and near the end of the story advises Walton not to succumb to ambition, but self-pitying? His life is destroyed by a monster whose actions are far, FAR out of proportion to whatever charges could be leveled against Frankenstein. The monster tells him directly that he'll destroy his (Victor's) life if he doesn't build him a mate, and that's after he kills two people. To call Victor's anguish "self-pity" is a complete misreading of the story.

If he ever was seriously considering making another monster, it was really to feed his own ego - because whatever his protestations, that's all von Frankenstein really seems to care about in end - himself, his ego, his feelings.

No, that's completely false. He considers building another monster because the first one begs him to, and swears that the two of them (the monster and his bride) will disappear to a place with no humans, and never interact with humanity again. Ego never comes into it; there's not even a hint of a suggestion of that.

The best excuse we can give him is perhaps he's just mentally unstable? He certainly has more breakdowns and freak-outs and amnesia than you'd expect from someone not dealing with very serious mental health issues. In which case you could perhaps consider it a double-tragedy, I guess. I think most people think he's just a twerp who keeps letting himself off, though.

And most people are wrong, in that regard, which was the point. It's why it's important to read the original story instead of going off of the bastardized versions like you've dne here.

(For some reason I thought the phrase "Steampunk Nathan Barley" here which is perhaps unkind to von Frankenstein but still, there's something there imho!)

There's really not.

TLDR - The monster is itself a child who has had no moral guidance and who has no innate moral compass, who only exists thanks to von Frankenstein's ego, and is a child in terrible pain (which the monster explains with great clarity, no less). Failing to recognise this has indeed lead you to what is in your own words the "shallow" and less "clever" understanding of the book (not words I would have chosen - I would have said "straightforward" or "simplistic" or "unreflected" - you chose more judgemental language).

To be clear, this is a wildly inaccurate reading of the story, at least as far as the 1831 version goes. The monster comes to understand morality quite well before committing his crimes, and knows full well what he's doing is wrong and choosing to do it anyway. While certainly a pitiable character, it is indeed a shallow and less-clever understanding of the book to suggest that the monster is a child who has no moral compass. But then, a lot of people get that wrong, as you have here.