Frankenstein - Mary Shelley

     I hadn’t read Frankenstein up till now, so I was intrigued to find out that it wasn’t the tale I assumed. I was under the impression that the monster was inept at language, so seeing him speak eloquent sentences threw me off. “Is this really the monster?” I asked myself. But this furthered my interests in the monster because of course Frankenstein would use a brilliant brain for his creation. 

     Something that confused me in the story was the timeline of events. Frankenstein mentions that only a few months had passed between the creation of his monster and the death of William. But in the monster’s story, a year and a half had passed. The latter making the most sense. I was so confused at this and thought it was a mistake by the author, but I realized that Frankenstein was possibly an unreliable narrator. He’s insane enough to animate a dead body, why wouldn’t he be a crazy and untrustworthy narrator? But something that Tom had brought up in class, “he was also on the verge of dying when he told his story.” This adds another case to believe that Frankenstein could’ve confused his facts. And the only truth to the story we believe was true was that the monster truly did exist as it later boarded the ship. 

     The gothic elements of Frankenstein come from the perspective of the monster itself. He’s supposed to be made of all these parts from beautiful people but being stitched together, he revered as a monster. We feel sympathy for it (despite all the horrible things it’s down) because all he wants to do is understand and be accepted.