Frankenstein is one of those stories that everyone thinks they know because of so many allusions to it in popular culture, movies based on it, etc. But the book turned out to be quite different. It’s very much in the style of a Gothic novel with intertwined plots and subplots rather than the simple horror story I was expecting.
It turns out Frankenstein is not the name of the monster, but the surname of Victor the brilliant university student who created him, who does not at all fit the mad scientist stereotype. The student, after years of hard work, succeeds in creating a rational being in his lab. His problem stems from the fact that playing God in no way makes him God. He does not have the deep love for his creature that God has and he does not have the foresight or the power to provide it with companions or an environment where it would fit in. His contempt for his own creature and refusal to honor a promise to at least make a companion for it causes it to retaliate by killing its creator’s own loved ones. By the end of the story, Victor Frankenstein is in futile pursuit of his creature, having resolved to destroy it so that it can do no more harm.
<i>Frankenstein</i> is basically a cautionary tale about the unpredictability of powerful new technologies: they do not exist in a vacuum and they are not necessarily a force for good if their effects are not thought through.
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