2nd Frankenstein Post

With it being over 183 years since Mary Shelley created her spectacular novel, there is still debate as to what her message was to all who read it. Many believe that her intent was to criticize man's strive to achieve a god-like status through science. The other argument is that Shelley wanted to create a character who had emotional questions and inner struggle just as any reader would too and be able to relate to the creature. Christopher Schildt put it very eloquently;
"'Mary Shelley was not writing about the evils of science and progress,...But suffering and loss and pain, the feeling of being ostracized...'"
I strongly agree with Mr. Schildt because it was not in the nature of a romantic writer to criticize exploration and experimentation but to encourage it. A romantic writer, like Mary Shelley, uses illustrious words to portray feelings to the reader and to convey their theme, in this case inner pain and loss. Everyone has felt, at one time or another, like they were an outcast and no one understood their feelings; Shelley played on this feeling to make her creature have a sympathetic facet so as to drag the reader closer.
"But soon...I shall die, and what I now feel be no longer felt. Soon these burning miseries will be extinct." (Shelley 213)
There is not a good soul on this earth that could not feel even a shred of sympathy for that statement...even from a "Monster".