Frankenstein: between science, revenge, and cultural impact

The Beginning of the Story

The plot begins with Dr Frankenstein that is found dying by the captain of a ship. The doctor, with a flashback, tells him his story. He is a brilliant scientist that, in Ginevra, want to give a new life to a dead body. He, maybe with an electric shock, brings to life a creature. The doctor is frightened by the creature and he runs away. The monster, at the beginning, wants make friends but people, frightened by his appearance reject him. So He began to become a murderess. He wants take his revenge on his creator because He considers him guilty of his sufferings. So He kills his son, his brother, his best friend and his wife.

The Journey to the North Pole

At the end doctor Frankenstein sails on a ship to the North Pole to kill the creature although the doctor is mortally wounded as the beginning of the novel shows.

Frankenstein is a gothic novel that entered in collective visionary. Its plot became very famous time after time and many films were made from it not only serious ones but also comedies like Frankenstein was a Gothic novel but it aimes to scientific divulgation. The novel proposes the scientific theory of Galvani, an Italian scientist. He discovered that an electric sparkle provoked the movement of a dead tissue. Frankenstein is seen as an outcast because he lived in solitude and he was refused by society.

Social Justice and Discrimination

The creature of Frankenstein becomes This novel deals with the problems of social justice. In fact at the beginning the creature didn't commit any crime but He was discriminated because He was very ugly. Mary Shelly was concerned with the relationship between science and moral. She sympathizes for the monster but She is very worried about its behavior. At the same time Mary Shelly, in her romance, wanted to side with the middle class, according to the French revolution, but she couldn't do this.

First-Person Narrative

Frankenstein is written in first person by three different non-omniscient narrators. The first part of the novel is in epistolary form because Walton writes to his sister how he has saved Dr Frankenstein. The Dr. Frankenstein himself tells the story of his life so this is an autobiographical account. In the novel there is a part in which the creature explains the reason of his behavior. The narration is concluded by Walton again, always in epistolary form.

The Birth of the Creature

This passage of Frankenstein deals with the birth of the creature. The scientist manages to give life to a dead body with an electric shock. The result is monstrous. The yellow skin, black hairs, white teethes are in contrast with empty eyes and black lips. The scientist, frightened, runs away from the laboratory, leaving alone the living creature.

Mary, Percy Shelly's wife, was the daughter of philosopher She met the P.B. Shelley and began to travel in Europe until she settled in Ginevra, when she wrote the romance. The romance was written for a competition of ghost stories. She won the competition but she published her romance anonymously because she was a female. After settling in Italy she lost her husband who drowned in the see in Liguria. After his death Mary, destroyed by her love, she opened his body and she kept his heart in a box for the rest of her life. Although this anecdote may be false, it underline the bond of these young intellectuals.