Usually kick off September with Dracula to start spooky season, thought I’d switch it up for Frankenstein this year. No spooks. Left me in a puddle of tears.
Beautiful writing, a lot to chew on regarding family obligations and human compassion, and SO INCREDIBLY SAD.
Anyone know how the character became a Halloween icon? What were ya’lls thoughts while/after reading it?
by violxtea
3 Comments
Ugly = Halloween material
Hot = Halloween material
Anything not mid = Halloween material
I think Frankenstein(‘s monster) became a bona fide horror icon after the 1931 movie was released. Obviously the potential was already there, what with him being a nature-defying monstrosity comprised of several corpses, but monsters are always scarier in the flesh than on the page (at least to me).
Oh, the Halloween icon thing is easy–it’s the movies they made from it. In the 1931 movie, with Boris Karloff, the creature is made into a mindless monster, groaning and coming after people… the mad scientist in his hilltop lab, waiting for lightning… and so on, and so forth. Really, only the basic concept was ever taken from the book. They did make some more true-to-the-book movie adaptations, but by then it was already the 90s and the dumb, groaning monster had stuck in the public consciousness.
I enjoyed the book, too. My own parents weren’t particularly great specimens of humanity, so I really empathized with the creature. It felt really terribly sad to see all that potential wasted, this sensitive child with adult feelings and impulses turning to violence because he had no one to guide him.