Frankenstein (Up to Part One, Chapter Six)

Of all the people who might put off reading this classic until their Fifties, I might be the least likely candidate.  I’m shaking my head over it even now.  When I was a boy, I loved everything about “monsters”; I put together the prefabricated monster models, watched as many late-night monster movies as my parents would allow, read all the monster-themed comic books and storybooks I could find, and so on.  Even my interest in “The Wizard of Oz,” “Star Trek” and all the other early “space”-oriented TV shows, the soap opera “Dark Shadows,” and later in life my almost exclusive reading of science fiction all had their roots in this Monster Mania.  But Frankenstein?  Interesting, I supposed; but any monster that I felt I could outrun just didn’t terrify me all that much… 

Also, the little information that did trickle through to me about this book seemed to indicate that is was mostly about “boring adult stuff.”  And yes, I would have had a hard time appreciating it at the age of nine, or thereabouts.  When I read Kipling’s “The Jungle Book” a couple of years ago, I enjoyed it immensely more than I did as a child.  (Alternatively, I think I would have enjoyed “The Chronicles of Narnia” more then than now.)  This book does start off rather slow, working its way very gradually toward the main premise, which really only manifests at the beginning of Chapter Four. 

I had known that the story took place partly in the icy Arctic, which to my mind had always seemed a preposterously desperate attempt on the part of the author to add interest to the settings of the story.  But I had not realized that the story practically begins there.  That our first glimpse of the monster was from a distance, being pulled in a sleigh by a team of dogs in extreme arctic regions was an almost ludicrous surprise.  Up till then, we were taken through several personal letters written by a rather minor character in the story, followed by a number of pages describing an arctic expedition by ship.  If this all seems a rather unnecessary preamble to the story as related by the scientist rescued by the ship’s crew, it is at least entertainingly written.  Ms. Shelley wrote this - much of it, anyway - at the age of nineteen, and the verbiage displays that impeccably correct Literary English found in the works of most of the great British authors.  I almost always enjoy this style of writing very much.  Individual words are seemingly chosen very meticulously to impart meaning with great precision.  The level of communication is greatly enhanced (or should I have said “magnified”?) by this means. 

So we finally get to the point of the Scientist (we have yet to be told his name) telling his story.  Here again, we get a lot of background that has little to do with the premise.  But, also again, it is engagingly written with a lot of food for thought bordering on the philosophical.  Most of this prepares us to understand why the Scientist discovered how to do what he did – why his thought processes were so different from his peers as to lead him to discoveries that no one else ever made.  Starting with Natural History followed by an immersion in Chemistry leading to an obsession for discovering how and why life arises; all these steps are nicely illustrated.  When he has his “Aha Experience” the obsession really kicks in – and now we have a more unhealthy obsessive “addiction” to his scientific quest.

 

It’s interesting to watch the process unfold.  “None but those who have experienced them can conceive of the enticements of science.  In other studies you go as far as others have gone before you, and there is nothing more to know; but in a scientific pursuit there is continual food for discovery and wonder.  A mind of moderate capacity, which closely pursues one study, must infallibly arrive at great proficiency in that study…”  But later:  “Learn from me, if not by my precepts, at least by my example, how dangerous is the acquirement of knowledge, and how much happier that man is who believes his native town to be the world, than he who aspires to become greater than his nature will allow.”  Here we see the aspect of this work as a Cautionary Tale.  This is “Science as Pandora’s Box.”  And therein lies the “horror” of this classic Horror Story.




Next week's segment: Part One, Chapter Six through Part Two, Chapter Five