Hello!
It’s time for “Writer Wednesday” when I discuss another author and his or her book. For October’s posts, I will be discussing some seasonal classics.
In his quest for life, Frankenstein loses all versions of it. Frankenstein trespasses where man is not permitted. By eating from the tree of temptation to create a man, Frankenstein is cast out of his Alpine Eden and condemned to a hell of continued loss and death.
Life, in its innocence, is lost through Henry’s death. Life, as symbolic of truth and justice, is lost through Justine’s death. Life, as comfort and hope for the future, is lost through Elizabeth. Forced to abandon his country, Frankenstein endures even the death of his nation. By the end of the book, Frankenstein is so distanced from his life and himself that the story is conveyed through another’s journal. Having poured his life and all that is good with it into his monstrous creation, Frankenstein is left as a shell. In order for Franken
Boris Karloff as Frankenstein |
stein to surge to life again, his icy heart must be thawed and this can only be accomplished when the monster mounts his funeral pyle as he announces he will do when chased to the Arctic (Frankenstein’s icy heart).
With her parting words, Justine bids Frankenstein, “Live, and be happy, and make others so.” It is already too late for Frankenstein, though, and her words go unheeded. It is precisely because Frankenstein has looked to death to create life that all vitality is destroyed in his world. This is the corruption of attempting to be God and why Frankenstein is banished – banished even from his own life. In the words of the monster: “Like Adam, I was apparently united by no link to any other being in existence… He came forth from God a perfect creature… I was wretched, helpless, and alone.”[Chapter 15]
In Frankenstein’s creation of an Adam-like creature, whose life surged from death, he is drained of his own life and is left out of Eden and distanced from life.
My best to you all,
Megan