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Frankenstein

Frankenstein is the former name of Zabkowice Slaskie, a city in Silesia and the historical home of the Frankenstein family. One of the members of that family met with Mary Shelley during her European trip and obviously made a deep impression on the young writer, so she decided to name a character in her novel after him.

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Frankenstein, or The Modern Prometheus is a novel by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley. First published on March 11, 1818 (but more often read in the revised and corrected third edition, published in 1831), it is an early example of science fiction. Some (led by Brian Aldiss) claim that it is the first science fiction novel.

Plot

Spoiler warning: Plot or ending details follow.

The novel opens with Captain Walton in a ship sailing north of the Arctic Circle. Walton's ship becomes ice-bound, and as he contemplates his isolation and paralysis, he spots (perhaps) a figure walking across the ice. This is Victor Frankenstein. The narrative of Walton is a frame narrative that allows for the story of Victor to be related. At the same time, Walton's predicament is symbolically appropriate for Victor's tale of displaced passion and brutalism.

Curious and intelligent from a young age, Victor leaves his beloved family in Geneva, Switzerland to study science in Germany. In a moment of inspiration, Victor discovers the means by which inanimate matter can be imbued with life. (When the book was written, science had a very imperfect understanding of the difference between living and dead matter.) With great drive and fervor, he sets about constructing a creature—intended as a companion, perhaps—from various materials, including cadavers.

He intended the creature to be beautiful, but when the creature awoke, he was disgusted. Its yellow eyes, rough stitching, large size—Victor found this revolting and although the creature expressed him no harm (in fact it grinned at him), Victor ran out of the room in terror whereupon the creature disappeared. Overwork caused Victor to take ill for several months. After recovering, he received a letter from home informing him of the murder of his youngest brother William. He departed for Switzerland at once. Near Geneva, Victor sees the creature and is convinced it killed William. Upon arriving home he finds Justine, the family's maid, framed for the murder. She is convicted and executed. To recover from the ordeal, Victor goes hiking into the mountains. He meets his creation atop a glacier.

The creature is strikingly eloquent, and describes his feelings first of confusion, then rejection and hate. He explains how he learnt how to talk by studying a family through a crack in the wall. He performs in secret many kind deeds for this family, but in the end, they drive him away when they see his appearance. He gets the same response from any human who sees him. The creature confesses that it was indeed he who killed William and framed Justine, and that he did so out of revenge. But now, the creature only wants one thing; he begs Victor to create a female companion for him.

At first, Victor agrees, but later, he tears up the half-made companion in disgust. In retribution, the creature kills Henry, Victor's best friend. On Victor's wedding night, the creature kills his wife. Victor now becomes the hunter: he pursues the creature into the arctic ice, though in vain—near exhaustion, he is stranded when an iceberg breaks away, carrying him out into the ocean. At that moment, Captain Walton's ship arrives and he is rescued.

Walton assumes the narration again, describing a temporary recovery in Victor's health, allowing him to relate his extraordinary story. However Victor's health soon fails, and he dies. Finally, the creature boards the ship and finds Victor dead, and greatly laments what he has done to his maker. He vows to commit suicide, and leaves.

Genesis

During the snowy summer of 1816, the "Year Without A Summer," the world was locked in in a long cold volcanic winter responsible for the deaths of million, caused by the eruption of Tambora in 1815. In this terrible year, Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley and her husband Percy Bysshe Shelley visited Lord Byron in Switzerland. After reading an anthology of German ghost stories, Byron challenged the Shelleys and his personal physician John William Polidori to each compose a story of their own. Of the four, only Polidori completed a story. Mary conceived an idea, and this was the germ of Frankenstein.

It is worth noting that Byron managed to write a fragment based on the vampire legends he heard while traveling the Balkans. Polidori used this fragment to create the novel The Vampyre (1819), which is the origin of all subsequent vampire literature. Thus, the Frankenstein and vampire themes were created from that single circumstance.

Themes

The novel is subtitled "The Modern Prometheus," and this suggests the book's major inspiration. Byron was particularly attached to the play Prometheus Bound by Aeschylus, and Percy Shelley would soon write Prometheus Unbound. In addition, Shelley's portrayal of the monster owes much to the character of Satan in John Milton's Paradise Lost. This poem was one of the most popular among young poets of the time, and Shelley even allows the monster himself to read it.

Frankenstein is in some ways allegorical, and was conceived and written during an early phase of the Industrial Revolution, at a time of dramatic change. Behind Frankenstein's experiments is the search for ultimate power or godhood: what greater power could there be than the act of creation of life? Frankenstein and his utter disregard for the human and animal remains gathered in his pursuit of power can be taken as symbolic of the rampant forces of laissez-faire capitalism extant at the time and their basic disregard for human dignity. Moreover, the creation rebels against its creator: a clear message that irresponsible uses of technologies can have unconsidered consequences.

NB. In current usage, Frankenstein is often incorrectly used to refer to Frankenstein's monster rather than to its creator.

The name was probably taken from the German name of a village called Frankenstein (nowadays in Poland), where silver and gold used to be mined and tremendous killing reek was around due to chemicals used. According to another theory the name was taken from Castle Frankenstein near Darmstadt, where a notorious alchemist named Konrad Dippel made experiments with human bodies. On her journey to Switzerland Mary Shelley stayed nearby.

Victor Frankenstein studied in the Bavarian city of Ingolstadt. The medical department was famous up to the year 1800 when it was closed. Also the secret society of the "Illuminati" was founded in Ingolstadt. Shelley's husband Percy was a member of this organisation.

Film adaptations

The first film of Frankenstein was made in 1910 and produced by Thomas Edison. The "classic" film from 1931 stars Boris Karloff as the monster, and was directed by James Whale. The film has been selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry. Its first sequel, Bride of Frankenstein (1935), was also directed by Whale and is considered by many to contain the most spectacular laboratory scene of any of the series. Son Of Frankenstein followed in 1939. Later efforts by Universal Pictures rapidly degenerated into farce, culminating in the outright comedy Bud Abbott and Lou Costello Meet Frankenstein. In Great Britain, a long-running series by Hammer Films focused on the character of Dr. Frankenstein (usually played by Peter Cushing) rather than his monsters. The films have occasionally been parodied, a notable example being Mel Brooks' comedy Young Frankenstein (1974), which borrows heavily from Whale's two Frankenstein films, including the use of Whale's original laboratory set pieces and the technical contributions of their original creator, Kenneth Strickfaden. A more recent notable adaptation is Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (1994), directed by Kenneth Branagh. The Universal version was itself reinterpreted in the 2004 Stephen Sommer film Van Helsing.

In the TV show Late Night with Conan O'Brien, Frankenstein's monster is a recurring character in the segment Project Gutenberg