Hip Adams and sensual Eves, zombies who fall in love and flirt old-fashioned, evil creatures bearing the innocent souls – all of these are modern reinterpretations that seduce and draw us to know the unknown, with the same serenity and pure curiosity, again and again and again.
From the video games, Lord of the Rings, mocked- up horror movies, to what they were and what they are, our creatures, be they heroes or antiheroes, here they are, deposed against modernism.
OK, Frankenstein’s monster is the most bitter of all paupers series of creatures because, first, it’s barely a monster and secondly, his identity is mistaken.
He is not from Antiquity, bu this story is really interesting and its fabulousness is maintained at high levels even today. The creature is the result of a failed experiment of the proud alchemist Victor Frankenstein in his search to reach the God level. In an unorthodox and stodgy, modern knowledge of this doctor created a monstruosity with a big heart, a monstruosity that is able to turn against its creator. So this is kind of an Adam for Victor’s labor – two characters of Mary Shelley’s fantastic writing. Mary Shelley is considered a pioneer of the science fiction literature.
Frankenstein‘s monster is the fallen angel, the fruit of the intelligent mind of Dr. Frankenstein, tempted, like his brothers, to know the world through science, but becomes a prey to the obsession of the revelations that come from the laboratory. So he ends up giving life to dead tissue, sewing fragments of a hideous being of 2.40 meters height, with yellow eyes and transparent skin, through which you can see veins and muscle fibers. The plot: When the creature is found at the crime scene of the doctor’s brother, William, and Victor runs away from the situation, the creature retracts into the mountains, where it lurks after a family. It learns to read and talk. It also realizes, while its grotesque face is reflected in the water, how ugly it is to this world. Eager for human contact and understanding, he approached the family he was lurking after. The family got scared and runs out of the woods. Being alone, the monster asks Victor when he finds him and begs to listen, asking him to create an Eve. By doing this it claims its right to happiness. With fear, the alchemist accepts, but realizes that their children would be a dangerous generation to fit in. Driven by this thought, he destroys its newly created female companion and the monster frames his murder. From here, look for the story, it’s cool. Although in the 1931 film adaptation of Boris Karloff Frankenstein’s monster appears to accidentally drown a little girl after she tried to befriend it, in fact it is the opposite: it saves the girl. Of course, this does not prevent people from the literary story to chase the creature away, being frightened by its appearance.
Speaking of stereotypes and superficiality… As its name ambiguity – most of the people call it Frankenstein, but that is wrong- it seems that the monster did not receive an ID just to show the rejection he was born in, being abnormal in this normal life. Instead, it was called as ‘hideous creature”, “demon”, “hideous progeny”, ” devil “and others. At a meta-textual level, the creature is the creator’s soul who reached to the god’s power and played with life and death.
The name of Victor seems to be inspired by the poem of John Milton, Paradise Lost, where Victor was considered God. Even the monster reads verses from the poem, empathizing with the devil. Radu Florescu, a famous and regretted professor and historian who has written numerous books revealing the history of Dracula and Frankenstein, contests the originality of Shelley’s story and claims that the writer was inspired by the story of the well-known alchemist Konrad Dippel from Frankenstein castle near Darmstadt, Germany. It was said that he had been practicing on human bodies, hence the conclusion of the historian that Shelley used the real story for her literary success.
The existence of the creature in the literary context of Shelley is preceded by a special event that happened 15 years ago. In the Diodati Villa, near Lake Geneva, in 1816, Lord Byron, Percy Shelley, John Polidori – Dr.Byron and Mary Godwin gathered to talk, sharing stories about ghosts. There were born two of the most famous monsters: that of Victor Frankenstein’s and the Vampire. Mary Shelley was to become an unnamed mentor to a generation of controversial and courageous writers. That night, the conversation became a mysterious source of inspiration and Frankenstein’s monster became the metaphor of birth of a literary aspiration.
Today, in the Castle Frankenstein in Odenwald, Germany, there is a fountain of youth, where women think that its water rejuvenates them–and it is still said that it’s not recommended to bother the rituals that still happen in the area. Also in the forest near there is a conglomerate of magnetic rocks where you could practice German witchcraft.
The monster that Shelley describes in her writings is a monster but a monster with a human soul: it is very intelligent, emotive and sensitive, being the prey of the despair of being alone in the world-feelings perfectly familiar to every man. The whole existence of this “fallen angel” influenced modern pop culture. Off topic: In addition to Radu Florescu’s idea that the monster’s story was inspired by the history of alchemist Dippel, others raise real situations: Mary Shelley dreamed often that a body revives. Correlated with the information that the writer gave birth to a daughter of Percy in 1815, which was still married to his first wife, but was born prematurely and died 11 weeks after birth, we could see the reason of the revival in the story. Mary lost three children in her life, only Percy Florence Shelley was the remaining survivor of the two famous writers, around 1800. Unfortunately, he had no children.
