Thread: Frankenstein, has anyone here read it?

I just finished it myself. I bought it years ago for a few dollars. I figured it was a classic and I couldn't go wrong for 4 bucks. I never got around to reading it till a few days ago.

Wow, just wow. Not even going to the modern relevance of genetic engineering, the book touches on the so many aspects of the human condition. Our capacity for great good, and great evil. That the desire to do one without wisdom can lead to the other. The dichotomy between man's ideal life, and that actually lived.

The most moving aspect of the book for me was the eloquent monster. Having been raised to think of Frankenstein as a bolt necked half brained brute I was shocked at the humanity of the beast in the actual book. His love of virtue and goodness. His sad downfall brought about by complete rejection based on his outward appearance despite his good heart, until he resents all that lives in joy.

For those who have not read the book, and still have the bolt necked moron as the image of Frankenstein's beast I give you some of the beast's last words before leaving humanity to die alone in the frozen arctic.

No sympathy may I ever find. When I first sought it, it was the love of virtue, the feelings of happiness and affection with which my whole being overflowed, that I wished to be participated. But now, that virtue has become to me a shadow, and that happiness and affection are turned into bitter and loathing despair, in what should I seek for sympathy? I am content to suffer alone, while my sufferings shall endure: when I die, I am well satisfied that abhorrence and opprobrium should load my memory. Once my fancy was soothed with dreams of virtue, of fame, and of enjoyment. Once I falsely hoped to meet with beings, who, pardoning my outward form, would love me for the excellent qualities which I was capable of bringing forth. I was nourished with high thoughts of honour and devotion. But now vice has degraded me beneath the meanest animal. No crime, no mischief, no malignity, no misery, can be found comparable to mine. When I call over the frightful catalogue of my deeds, I cannot believe that I am he whose thoughts were once filled with sublime and transcendent visions of the beauty and the majesty of goodness. But it is even so; the fallen angel becomes a malignant devil. Yet even that enemy of God and man had friends and associates in his desolation; I am quite alone.