Book Report

As some of you may know for the last year or so (I think more of the 'so') I have been reading "Frankenstein." It is a small book only about half an inch thick, but small print. Anyway, I had a hard time keeping myself interested in the book. I stopped reading it once or twice. When I started again I started from the beginning. But now I am done!


It is a good book and considered a classic for good reason. But with these classic books are what I am going to call "commercials". You are reading and enjoying. Then is starts going on about things you don't need or want to know. It was "commercials" that stopped me from reading it faster.

The story is different than any of the stories I had heard before. It wasn't about he monster killing anyone and everyone just because he was monster. This monster had feelings and talked, reasoned and "learned...to work mischief." Frankenstein, who isn't the monster...or is he, starts out full of life. Excited to learn and become useful in the world, but starts by creating the "monster." He is so obsessed with making this being until at the very end when he brings it to life, he hates it. He thinks it is hideous. As the monster learns, all he wants is to love and be loved. But he can't be because he is huge and grotesque (it was easier for Frankenstein for use bigger parts.) Then he turns mean and evil because he's hated by his creator. So he starts killing the people Victor loves to make him as miserable as he is. So very sad. Victor hates him because he is ugly and is tormented by the fact that he created him and because he kills his family and friends.

Here are some parts I liked. Some I felt were profound. Some were just written really good.


Walton, friend of Victor Frankenstein-

-He meets Victor for the first time at the end of Victor's journey.

"Must I then lose this admirable being? I have longed for a friend; I have sought one who would sympathise with and love me. Behold, on these desert seas I have found such a one; but I fear I have gained him only to know his value and lose him."

-About his new friend.

"What a glorious creature must he have been in the days of his prosperity when he is thus noble and godlike in ruin!"


Victor-

-Speech given to the crew of Walton who decide they are going to return home.

"And now, behold, with the first imagination of danger, or, if you will, the first mighty and terrific trial of your courage, you shrink away, and are content to be handed down as men who had not strength enough to endure could and peril; and so, poor souls, they were chilly and returned to their warm firesides. Why that requires not this preparation; ye need not have come thus far, and dragged you captain to the shame of a defeat, merely to prove yourselves cowards. Oh, be men, or be more than men.....Return as heroes who have fought and conquered, and who know not what it is to turn their backs on the foe."


-Just after creating the monster, working all day and all night for months.

"A human being in perfection ought always to preserve a calm and peaceful mind, and never to allow passion or a transitory desire to disturb his tranquillity. I don not think that the pursuit of knowledge is an exception to this rule. If the study to which you apply yourself has a tendency to weaken you affections, and to destroy you taste for those simple pleasures in which no alloy can possibly mix, then that study is certainly unlawful...not befitting the human mind.


-After the murder of his new wife.

"Nothing is so painful to the human mind as a great and sudden change...A fiend had snatched from me every hope of future happiness."


The Monster-

-As he is learning to be human.

"My sensations had, by this time, become distinct, and my mind received every day additional ideas. My eyes became accustomed to the light, and to perceive objects in their right forms; I distinguished the insect from the herb, and, by degrees, one herb from another. I found that the sparrow uttered none but harsh notes, whilst those of the blackbird and thrush were sweet and enticing."

-Once able to understand people as they talk, he learns they hate and fear him because of his appearance.

"Of what a strange nature is knowledge! It clings to the mind, when it has once seized on it, like a lichen on the rock."


-On why he is mean.

"I am malicious because I am miserable. Am I not shunned and hated by all mankind? You, my creator, would tear me to pieces, and triumph...tell me why I should pity man more than he pities me?"



Please don't grade this book report. I will be sad. But the book is good I would recommend it to anyone.