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Frankenstein (novel)/Headscratchers: Difference between revisions
transplanted non-novel item to Frankenstein/Headscratchers, spelling fixes
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** Remember that the creature in the original book is quite intelligent. Possibly it wasn't just the risk that the pair would breed that Frankenstein was worried about, but the risk that his creation would copy his method of ''constructing'' new creatures, had it observed its bride's "birth" from start to finish.
*** The Danny Boyle play suggests that Dr. Frankenstein takes on the task of creating a female Creature because he's intrigued by the challenge of making a perfect, beautiful Goddess of a creature. Maybe the Doctor decided that if he couldn't make the female "perfect," he'd rather not make her at all -- and of course, what Victorian woman would be "perfect" without the ability to bear healthy, live children?
* If Dr. Frankenstein was so horrified by the
▲* If Dr. Frankenstein was so horrified by the monsters appearence, wouldn't common sense say make a better looking monster before it comes to life? I mean, you had been working on this creature for so long, you'd think after seeing it continuously it would kinda click in your mind. Dr. Frank-N-Furter had his mind right
** I can't find the exact quote, but I vaguely remember that Frankenstein did deliberately set out to create a good looking creature and chose the limbs to be in proportion, but when he was given the spark of life, he looked hideous. In a way, it's like creating what you think is the best looking animatronic model and then seeing how bad it looks on screen.
*** What I find appalling is that it doesn't click in Dr. Frankenstein's head that he's creating a body that's covered with stitches and bone-thin (which will look unattractive) and doesn't try and put extra layers of skin to cover the
*** It doesn't actually say how Frankenstein created the monster in the book. Moreover, the point is that the monster should have been beautiful- perfectly in proportion, lustrous hair etc., except because of the monsters eyes (and the fact its an artificial human full stop) it fell so deep into the
*** We all know what it's like to work on something (say, [[Tropes Will Ruin Your Life|this site or some other lengthy project]]) for so long that you're seeing spots in front of your eyes and you're sleep-deprived and starting to lose it. Even cramming for finals or working obsessively on something on an ordinary job can do that to a dedicated person. your spool unwinds ''a little bit''. What happened to the Doc was just a more extreme version of that. To do what he did he had to get so into his work that he got blinded to all details, even what would seem bleeding obvious to anyone else, and his spool pretty much totally unwound for the time being in the process.
*** Frankenstein did try bringing a dead person back to life. It didn't work. He mentions that while he can revive dead flesh, he at that time had not discovered how to resurrect a whole person.
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** Victor mentions being fascinated by the power of lightning, so you can kind of see where the idea might have come from... There's a specific passage where it talks about seeing a tree struck by lightning, which leads to his interest in science.
** The story kind of rushes over the actual moment of creating life. Yes, the lightning (and electricity) is mentioned, and great stress is put on Victor's fascination with alchemy, which would suggest this. However, the book leaves the process to the imagination.
* Okay, so Frankenstein's monster, a perfectly proportioned 8 foot tall man (for reference, that's about the size of the [[The Incredible Hulk (
** Well, all they had to go by in those days was observation and the means, motive, and opportunity. What would possess a servant woman to throttle the son of her master (I'm assuming she was a servant)? Means: Hire a big guy to do the deed so she can stay 'clean'. Motive: Revenge? Jealous love (the kid should've been hers, but wasn't. Crazy, I know.)? Maybe the kid was hers and she thought him a mistake? Maybe she just got fed up with the brat and decided to snuff him out? Opportunity: They were out on a trip together, and the boy managed to get himself
*** The motive given in the court was theft of the locket the boy was carrying. It wasn't just a picture; the picture was in a valuable locket. It's implied, however, that the jury is horrified at the crime and just looking for someone to pin it on. When Elizabeth offers a strong character witness, the jury hates Justine even more because of her ingratitude toward one who loved her so much. To them, Justine's guilt was a foregone conclusion.
** Plus, [[Unfortunate Implications]] ahoy: She was a servant woman. Back in those days, servants were seen as a class lower than the wealthy and were more often than not treated with minimum respect by the people they were working for. Sure they had some rights, but as far as society was concerned, a servant had little to no say. In Justine's case, the son of her master, the one who loved her so much, is now dead. She was doomed right from the start.
* Frankenstein creates the monster by stitching together body parts, which really makes no sense. Surely it would be way more practical to find one intact corpse than to string together parts from different bodies.
** That's the route taken in ''[[Young Frankenstein]]'', where the good Doctor and Eyegore make off with an oversized corpse.
** Also in [[Mary Shelley's Frankenstein|Branagh's version]], where the monster is built from the base of recently-executed [[Robert De Niro]] and given the dead brain of [[
** Well, there aren't really that many "intact" corpses since you usually either die of injury or die of old age. If Frankenstein doesn't want his creation to have an elderly the body his only option is to find young ones, hence the injuries and need for stitching. And he probably knows better than to handle corpses of people who died of diseases.
** In the book, he doesn't stitch pieces together. He constructs a man completely from scratch, albeit with raw materials taken from cadavers. He cites the minuteness of the parts as his chief difficulty, so he increases ''everything'' in size, right down to the veins.
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* The monster is created over the course of months, from many different body parts. How did Victor keep the body from decaying?
** The story mentions (at the very end) the monster's mummy-like skin. Could he be mummyfied?
* On occasion, the monster being called "Frankenstein" is justified by saying that he inherits his master surname. Fair enough, but isn't he technically the biological offspring of the people whose bodies were used to create him? Also, there does not seem to be much of a precedent in artificial life-forms inheriting the names of the scientists who created them unless the scientists were intending to raise them as children. No one ever gave [[Star Trek:
** Perhaps the more salient point is: it's not the like the novel calls him that, or any other source for well over a century. It's a persistent misnomer born of confusion and ignorance.
** I'm completely aware that the monster in the book was never called "Frankenstein." I'm talking about a common justification by people in [[Real Life]] who are used to calling him that.
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