Frankenstein - a book review

The Bonnie Lea book club is committed to making our way through great literature periodically, so on this cold January night we talked about Mary Shelley’s classic masterpiece, Frankenstein.  Because this book was my recommendation I led the discussion. Before starting with my own topics and questions, we went around the room for all our respective thoughts on the book. All were overwhelmingly positive.

Our writer / editor Bill began, describing the book as better than expected, revealing the timeless focus on accountability for our actions. On the topic of women, over 100 years before women’s suffrage, men made bad decisions and women got hurt. Chuck highlighted the structured layers within the epistolary style, meaning the content coming from letters, to and from different people, providing multiple perspectives on life, through this modern Prometheus.  Pete found the book slow to develop but reminded him of the brutal reality for oppressed groups within any society. He had not expected such personal empathy for the monster but nevertheless found its vulnerability compelling. Joel was frustrated by the sequence of bad decisions by the protagonist – or was he the antagonist? – Dr. Frankenstein; but these set the table for the ever-quickening pace of the plotline.  He liked the constant symbolism: the spark, the light, ice, darkness, all these setting the stage.  The author’s educated, informed, and creative iteration on galvanism – sparks on corpses, a new topic of its time - melded with timeless themes of humanity.  Rick echoed in turn his great appreciation for the author’s depth of knowledge, in science, literature, and contemporary culture.  Rob R compared the central creature to Boris Karloff’s evolution of a simple creature into a complex, full of life character, where the monster ultimately becomes the victim.  Rob L remarked on the fast changing times of the early 1800s.  Yes, this is considered a masterpiece for good reason.

From a literary perspective, we discussed the triple-decker approach of a three-volume structure (and release), beginning with Victor Frankenstein’s hubristic pursuit of the essence of life, to the creature’s empathetic development turned social alienation in volume two, and finally the collapse and death of both characters in volume three.  

The creature began by seeing a new world through the eyes of a child, filled with wonder and insatiable curiosity.  In volume two, a time of observation and intellectual development (kudos to this 18-year old author on her mastery of these heady topics) at the cottage, the creature transitions from redeemed to irredeemable. His exposure to Milton’s Paradise Lost explored the nature of Satan, of good and evil, and the Fall of Man.  Suffering of Werner was Goethe’s classic Sturm und Drang (Storm and Stress) piece on unrequited love and suicide, while Parallel Lives by Plutarch was a 2^nd Century comparison of heroes and villains from ancient Rome and Greece.  All this, woven into literature’s first science fiction novel by an 18-year old girl.

Following the “daemon’s” intellectual development, and concurrent with his emotional awakening, society’s prejudices and forceful, violent rejection became the inflection point of the story. Unrequited love from the old man’s family in the cottage which he had observed and grown to love for several seasons released emotions without boundaries.  None good.  The child had entered its teen years.  Rejection hurts. Vengeance often follows.

By volume III, the plot advanced at a blistering pace.

On Shelley‘s characterization of the role of women, the creature had demanded that Dr. Frankenstein “make me a wife“.  This ‘wife’ was cast simply, as the creature’s object, not a new living being with agency.  Characters seemed to reflect this objectification as well.  Elizabeth was cast as the helpless stereotypical woman of the period. The men, on the other hand, were the emotional basket cases!

Dr. Frankenstein’s struggle with the promise (made under duress, influenced by the creature’s highly developed and skillful logic) to make a companion became a central moral paradox.  Blessingly, when put to the test of whether to repeat the first mistake, he chose not to complete the new creation. For this he paid a high price.

We posed this question of ownership, of personal responsibility, on our own particularly poor decisions during life.  Have you ever had a time when you made such a bad decision that you would rather accept the shit storm alone, rather than admit to the original sin?  Each of us contemplated big mistakes from our lives when we may not have taken ownership.   One must give the devil his due: Dr. Frankenstein would not make that second creature. Procreation could be worse than creation had been. Indeed, we can learn from our mistakes. 

One theme common in so many great stories is suffering, and Frankenstein the book was imbued with suffering.  Can lessons of suffering through others’ experiences be effective?  We agreed universally that suffering must be experiential; intellectual analysis or even vicarious experiences through literature doesn’t come close.  All enduring process improvement in life is the result of having failed first, driven by its attendant suffering. Take it. Grow.

We discussed the nature of travel in the late 1700s into the early 1800s, including the uncannily successful pursuits: finding people in places.  Here we slid briefly into the math (random steps from one point to another average the radius squared {r²} with directionless pursuit).  Again, it’s a work of fiction, artistic license permitted!  On that topic, Mary Shelly’s story is widely considered the first science fiction novel in western literature.

Pete remarked on the wind, the water, the cold and the fire and all the natural wonders of the world on display, with symbolism highlighting wondrous beauty of a natural world. This novel was also the breakout of romanticism in literature, ushering in the period of appreciation for preserving natural beauty. Think Walden as romanticism’s enduring point of reference.

While the book did not contain overtly religious overtones, there were references reflective of the day. “Why have you forsaken me” replicates the biblical suffering from the Passion.  Paradise Lost examines the Fall of Man, and the third-to-the-last paragraph written in Elizabethan English was reminiscent of King James Bible style. While not overt, biblical references appeared here and there.

We eventually drifted into a more contemporaneous discussion, the AI threat. Some argued the proximate handicap for employment with young people today is the decline of the apprenticeship model: The kids don’t want the grunt work, and AI replaces grunt work. There is no grunt work anymore.  Meanwhile, too many kids have been denied experiences to develop resilience, or adaptability to faster paradigm shifts, all these, mentally and emotionally. The iterative nature of experience-based failure pivots toward success but the monster of AI has brutally handicapped Gen Z for life, as we concluded in our meeting on The Anxious Generation.  

Back to the AI monster, we should be careful about what we wish for.  What was Dr. Frankenstein thinking when he made an 8 foot creature?  What are we doing replacing more humans with more machines every day? We know that isolation is an accelerator to self-destruction, Nelson Mandela notwithstanding.  Our development from interaction with circumstances that challenge us and change us will save us.  (John Boyd: Destruction and Creation).

As with all the great classics, they are classics for a reason, too often wasted on young people in school who cannot appreciate the lessons. They have not had enough life to live, to suffer, to grow, to understand these forces viscerally.  We agreed - which we seldom do on other topics - This is a masterpiece. 

We chose Andrew Ross Sorkin‘s book 1929 for our next read.

Honorable mentions to these other contenders, which you can read on your own.

Capitalism – A Global History, The AI Con, The Greatest Sentence Ever Written (Walter Isaacson’s analysis of the Declaration of Independence) and Devil in the White City.  I add here Target Tehran,  excellent insight into Iran’s threats to neighbors and vulnerabilities within its system.