Of Men and Mon­sters: Lessons Learned from Mary Shelly’s Franken­stein

Be­ware to those who read what fol­lows, for spoil­ers lurk within; 

If Franken­stein's fate thou wouldst not know, stop here; do not be­gin. 

MISHAWAKA--Salu­ta­tions, dear read­ers! COVID-19 may have quar­an­tined us as phys­i­cal be­ings, but it can­not quar­an­tine our minds or our imag­i­na­tions, and I am ex­cited to tell you about my lat­est ad­ven­ture to the North Pole, where I heard the strangest tale from a man per­haps you would deem mad, and per­haps I would have too if I had­n't seen the crea­ture with my own eyes... 

But I'm start­ing this all wrong. Let's go to the be­gin­ning, shall we? 

At the open­ing of Mary Shel­ley's clas­sic Franken­stein, there's nary a mad sci­en­tist or de­formed crea­ture in sight; rather, we read through a se­ries of let­ters from the ad­ven­tur­ous and ex­u­ber­ant cap­tain of a ship bound for the North Pole, the hon­or­able Cap­tain Robert Wal­ton. 

The far­ther north they travel, the more dif­fi­cult their jour­ney be­comes, and ice be­gins to im­pede their voy­age, en­snar­ing their ves­sel in a frozen, wa­tery wilder­ness. One day, Wal­ton takes note of "a be­ing which had the shape of a man, but ap­par­ently of gi­gan­tic stature" (Shel­ley 8) trav­el­ing across the ice floes on a dog sled; the very next day, the crew dis­cover and bring on board the ema­ci­ated form of the epony­mous Vic­tor Franken­stein. Wal­ton does his best to re­vive Franken­stein and within a few days, he is well enough to be­gin re­lay­ing his tale of woe to Wal­ton. 

Franken­stein is the mis­er­able cre­ator of the crea­ture Wal­ton and his crew had spied at a dis­tance. Hav­ing dis­cov­ered the se­cret of life while study­ing at uni­ver­sity, Franken­stein fash­ioned a grue­some frame to hold his dis­cov­ery. And when his ex­per­i­ment achieved suc­cess and the crea­ture opened his eyes, Franken­stein fled in fear. 

Is­n't that like us hu­mans? We tend to fo­cus so much on what we want, we don't take time to con­sider what hap­pens af­ter we at­tain it; and then when we fi­nally get it, we stare at it with ei­ther stu­pid grins or un­masked hor­ror, de­pend­ing on the ob­ject, dis­ap­point­edly re­al­iz­ing this is­n't go­ing to give us our root de­sire. See, I be­lieve that be­hind our de­sire for every­thing is some­thing deeper, the true de­sire we of­ten don't even re­al­ize is there (happy is the per­son who does know it and can di­rectly pur­sue it!): it can be love, or hap­pi­ness, or power, but more of­ten than not our at­tempts to gain these pre­cious, in­tan­gi­ble ob­jects re­sult only in mis­ery and dis­ap­point­ment. 

Out­wardly, Franken­stein ap­pears to sim­ply de­sire to be a "man of sci­ence" (Shel­ley 29), and I think a strong ar­gu­ment can be made for him de­sir­ing re­spect, but I be­lieve there is more to Franken­stein, per­haps more than even he knows; I sense a de­sire for power deep within him. While I'm not sure his in­ten­tion was to chal­lenge God or na­ture, I can­not help but com­pare Franken­stein's ex­per­i­men­ta­tions with life to Sa­tan's de­sire to "be like the most High" (Isa. 14:14). Though I do not think Franken­stein's ex­per­i­ments were sins in them­selves (a valid ques­tion to be ask­ing our­selves to­day as we wit­ness the pro­gres­sion of Ar­ti­fi­cial In­tel­li­gence), I do think his mo­tives were sig­nif­i­cantly flawed and he un­justly vic­tim­ized him­self later on. 

As the story pro­gresses, we wit­ness ten­der love and loy­alty shown to Franken­stein by his fam­ily and by a dear child­hood friend named Henry Cler­val; Henry is the day to Vic­tor's night, the balm to Vic­tor's wounds, the rain­bow to Vic­tor's storms. Though Henry has myr­i­ads of his own woes and sor­rows, he main­tains a joy­ful, al­most child-like won­der through it all, even af­ter study­ing at uni­ver­sity (knowl­edge may be the for­bid­den fruit, but it does not in­escapably ren­der its par­tak­ers cor­rupted). Even Vic­tor notes their dis­sim­i­lar­ity, de­clar­ing "how great was the con­trast be­tween us! He was alive to every new scene; joy­ful when he saw the beau­ties of the set­ting sun, and more happy when he be­held it rise, and recom­mence a new day" (Shel­ley 112). 

This is such a beau­ti­ful il­lus­tra­tion of the kind of joy Christ so freely wants to give us. The in­vig­o­rat­ing joy can set us on fire and light up our faces, caus­ing us to be filled with thrill with every new day. But de­pres­sion can be a very real bat­tle, and when we face it, noth­ing is more en­cour­ag­ing than a friend so dear and pre­cious as Henry re­mind­ing us it is worth­while to keep on fight­ing; joy is an in­valu­able trea­sure we are seek­ing, and we are worth the ef­forts it will take to dis­cover it. Per­haps at first it will come slowly, like the first di­a­mond drops of rain in a land of des­o­la­tion, and per­haps we will dwell in that parched wilder­ness for some time with only the oc­ca­sional cool drop to re­fresh our spir­its; but as Chris­tians, we can al­ways look for­ward to a time when all sor­rows will fade away, every desert be made a gar­den, and all tears dis­solve into a never-end­ing river of life. 

But Vic­tor fights any hope ris­ing in­side him, forg­ing a prison for him­self far more ter­ri­fy­ing than the crea­ture covertly fol­low­ing him around every turn; for we now reach the point in the story where the crea­ture has mur­dered Franken­stein's youngest brother, then bargin­ing with Vic­tor for a mate, an agree­ment Vic­tor trep­i­da­tiously en­ters into and even­tu­ally breaks, end­ing the crea­ture's hope for com­pan­ion­ship. The crea­ture, in his rage at los­ing his in­tended bride, mur­ders Henry, fol­lows Vic­tor back home, and slays Vic­tor's own young bride on their wed­ding night. Vic­tor's fa­ther dies from grief soon there­after; Vic­tor swears re­venge on the crea­ture, be­gin­ning the pur­suit that even­tu­ally leads him to the arc­tic north and Cap­tain Wal­ton's ship. 

The crea­ture has a puz­zling per­son­al­ity, com­pli­cated by un­cer­tainty sur­round­ing his hon­esty, as a nar­ra­tor cou­pled with dis­so­nance be­tween seem­ingly com­pas­sion­ate ten­den­cies and mur­der­ous ac­tions, but one thing I am cer­tain of is: he truly de­tested the gift of life be­stowed upon him and if given the choice would have gladly slipped back into bliss­ful non-ex­is­tence (a choice that per­haps he ul­ti­mately did take into his own hands, though I am not fully per­suaded of this). The crea­ture's elo­quent mono­logues and pon­der­ings re­mind me of the mus­ings of the preacher of old, "There­fore I hated life; be­cause the work that is wrought un­der the sun is griev­ous unto me: for all is van­ity and vex­a­tion of spirit" (Ecc. 2:17).   

Though Vic­tor did more than enough to drag him­self down (as men­tioned above), the crea­ture cer­tainly en­cour­aged this down­ward de­scent. By the end, it felt as though they had both sunk to the same low level of vengeance and self-dis­re­gard; they cared about noth­ing ex­cept en­sur­ing the mis­ery and ul­ti­mate demise of the other. This is a grave warn­ing of the ter­ri­fy­ing places re­venge can take us if we let it, and I pray that if I am ever tempted to in­dulge in such a bit­ter­sweet en­deavor, I will see the ema­ci­ated Franken­stein, the des­per­ate sal­low face of the crea­ture, and through such im­ages in my mind I will turn swiftly from my pur­poses. 

As this re­flec­tion draws to a close, as I step out of the world so skill­fully crafted by Shel­ley and back into my own, I take a fi­nal glance back; I see a bat­tered ship full of fright­ened men aban­don­ing their mis­sion, a pale corpse, a woe­ful cap­tain, and, in the dis­tance, the fad­ing form of an an­swer to a ques­tion bet­ter left unasked. Shel­ley's char­ac­ters are rift with flaws (in that re­al­is­tic and painful way so dif­fi­cult for writ­ers to por­tray), but there is good­ness there too; in the im­mor­tal words of Sam­wise Gamgee, "There is some good in this world, and it's worth fight­ing for" (Tolkien). 

And there's good in our world too, if one only knows, like Sam­wise Gamgee and Henry Cler­val, where to look for it. 

Sources: 

Shel­ley, Mary. Franken­stein. Dover, 1994. Print. 

Tolkien, J. R. R. The Lord of the Rings: Two Tow­ers. New York: Houghton Mif­flin Com­pany, 1994. Print.