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Frankenstein (Enriched Classics) | |||||||
 
| 60% Recommended by our customers. Publisher: Pocket Catalog: Book Release date: 2004-04-27 Media: Mass Market Paperback Number of pages: 352 Ean: 9780743487580 Book Isbn: 0743487583  Tip: compare prices with similar booksAuthor:
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BY PRACTICAL SCHOLARSHIP A timeless, terrifying tale of one man's obsession to create life -- and the monster that became his legacy. • A concise introduction that gives readers important background information • A chronology of the author's life and work • A timeline of significant events that provides the book's historical context • An outline of key themes and plot points to help readers form their own interpretations • Detailed explanatory notes • Critical analysis, including contemporary and modern perspectives on the work • Discussion questions to promote lively classroom and book group interaction • A list of recommended related books and films to broaden the reader's experience SERIES EDITED BY CYNTHIA BRANTLEY JOHNSON |
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Written on April 17, 2006 Summary: Frankenstein movie lovers may be disappointed. Happily for movie-goers, Frankenstein movies resemble this book only slightly. The pathos (for the movie and the book) is launched when Victor Frankenstein, a young college student, creates a live monster from "dead parts." However, I was surprised to find that Mary Shelley's novel provides no hint of how Victor, after much unexplained experimentation, "creates life" and animates a collection of bones and other unspecified ingredients. Further, she fails to explain how the monster is able to quickly and easily become a fluent speaker, reader, and writer with no instruction. She asks us to accept that the monster, at 8 feet tall, moves undetected, through much of Europe, for years. The plot is so obviously contrived that the novel fails the most basic test of fiction. Shelley did not move me to suspend disbelief. Furthermore, all of her characters speak in the same voice. Parents, children, Victor, the monster, and the narrator/ship captain all sound the same. Unfortunately, we are reminded repeatedly that Victor is very, very, very tortured and that the monster is very, very, very hideous and evil. I am sure that in her era, Shelly's style was more accepted, even expected. The overwrought melodrama, the endless agony, and illness and death resulting from torturous melancholia are all Victorian hallmarks. However, her failures as a writer of fiction made this a difficult, unrewarding read for me. I allow 3 stars for the dynasty of horror and comedic films that arose from her kernel of a good tale.  Written on March 20, 2006 Summary: The Creator and the Creation Frankenstein---The word conjures up an image of a gigantic monster out to demolish mankind and everything attributed to it,an ogre created by man bent on dissolving his maker in utter misery. "Frankenstein" has travelled over the ages to become synonymous with destrution,blood,murder,havoc,fear and everything and anything that's even remotely associated with evil. "Frankenstein" has become a cliche. And that's exactly where the greatness of the authoress Mary Shelley rests. The plot in the novel is simple enough---a young ardent man steeply soaked in "natural philosophy" creates a monster with his genius,regrets his doing,asunders it and then suffers the agony of his own architect---but the classic proportions of the tale are vividly accounted in the entwining philosophies,morals,allusions and allegories that it invokes to. It's indeed a wonder that Shelley could've exploited an innovative, simple idea to garb it into a massively broad saga at the tender age of 19,but then again, that's what you call greatness. Take Mozart for inatance. He was composing symphonies and sonatas when he was barely six! Mary Shelley's "Frankenstein" begins when a friendless, doughty and resiliently ambitious seafarer Robert Walton saves a strange man from the brink of death amidst a sea of ice whose first words are:"Before I come on board your vessel, will you have the kindness to inform me whither you are bound?" This is Frankenstein, Victor Frankenstein and the whole novel revolves around him and the monster he had created. Walton writes to his sister Margaret in England about the fall of Frankenstein from greatness and as the tale unfolds from the man of science's own shivering lips, we've taken on a ride on a wave that flatters to deceives. Victor Frankenstein is a young Swiss who leaves his hometown Geneva to pursue natural philosophy at the University of Ingolstadt. His knowledge of Cornelius Agrappa, Alberta Magnus and Paracelus pushes him towards a realm beyond the confined boundaries of chemistry and two years of dedication and devotion and Professor M.Walton's "words of fate,enounced to destroy" him and he reaps a result of magnanimous proportions. He creates "the daemon", his "own vampire, my(his) own spirit let loose from the grave, and forced to destroy all that was dear to men", a monster whose gigantic stature,ugly features,hoarse voice and crude appearance repugnates its maker and Frankenstein denounces him. And denounces his fortune,career, family,peace of mind and charm of life. For the monster,unbaptized and solitary,comes back again and again to haunt the Swiss. It first kills his youngest brother William,then transfigures into the cause of the doom of the innocent Justine Moritz who's falsely charged with the child's murder;the ogre puts Frankenstein's childhood friend Henry Clerval to death,mortifies his father to his death-bed,destroys the life of his love Elizabeth on their wedding night,allures his creator to death's dwelling and ultimately drags himself to te inevitable end. The plot then is as plain as white paper,as ever so slightly whispered earlier, but that the scope of discussion of characters and events is as extensive as the horizon is illustriously brought to the picture as we explore the landscape of "Frankenstein". The reader cannot help but sympathise both with the creator and his creation---one repenting his "unhllowed arts" for being "not in deed,but in effect" the curse and murderer of one's family,and by extent,mankind;the other willing to harmonise oneself into the fabrication of society when one's physical features are not withstanding. The notion of Frankenstein an ignorant and languid person pets is that of a hideous fiend mustered from animation pictures and cartoons but the essence of it transcends much farther from this simple and debvastating prejudice. The theme of the novel,that of man inviting his own destruction and being chased by his own myriad forces of vices,is disturbing enough and the sophistication even more muddling. Frankenstein is a distorted harmless young man who realises his blunder when it's too late. A man shadowed by a curse he himself has raised and who loses one beloved after another is always going to transpire confusement and indecision and so does he who actually makes the novel happen. He seeks revenge but knows not how,he is compassionate towards his "fiend enemy" but refuses to show it. The reader embarks on his queerness not to fulfill his promise and manufacture female partner for his creation. Frankenstein reasons with himself that two fiends would be one too many for the world to endure and their posterity could aspire to evilry. But was he right to believe what Brutus did of Caesar in William Shakespeare's "Julius Caesar"? That "He would be crown'd:/How that might change his nature, there's the question.....Fashion it thus:that what he is,augmenter,/Would run to these and these extremities? That he should kill his own child and "sport thus with life"? And indeed was Frankenstein's monster as terrible and catastrophic as he deciphered him to be? In the struggle of this fiend to congregate his being with men and their ways,we find an underlying sense of pathos and self-consciouness expressed bluntly and confusedly. At one moment, the colossal beast stoops down to piti and submission:"Was I then a monster,a blot upon the earth,from which all men fled, and whom all men disowned?" On another occasion,he tranmutes into a figure of abhorrence and disastrous:"You are my creator, but I am your master;obey". This juggling of self-assertion and self-submission makes the giant a confused,complex individual as well as a victim of circumstances since his motives are misconstrued. The cruel end of his strangely pleasant relationship with the cottagers and the rustic soughting "to destroy the saviour of his child" provide testimonies. The reader discerns his parallel with Shylock in Shakespeare's "The Merchant of Venice",whose tale too is a tragedy of circumstancs, the awkwardness and hardships of a Bohemian surviving on the fringes of human attachment. The similarities between the Creator and the Creation are in abundance and are stark. Both are equally anguished---the Creator rueing His germ of an idea to build anything so splendourly ugly and the Creation questioning his independence and the Creator's need to make him. This is the allegory,or if you will,the theme of of Shelley's darkly eerie narrative. The invokation to the first-person narrative,the plethora of similes and metaphors,the lofty diction and the intricacy of language augment to the authoress's aim to portray the dark shades of life on a more gentle and lighter backdrop. In Frankenstein's pursuit of his monster,the authoress alludes to man's constant hunt of vice in his own self,in the fiend's direct conveyance of his mortal,spiritual and moral wounds,Shelley reveals the hopelessness of the socially deprived;in the end, she hungs upon the wall the conclusion that all such chases ollide with. Herman Melville's classic "Moby Dick" ran on a similar line and it,like "Frankenstein",is a tour de force. First publisher in 1818 and set against the era of the eighteenth century, Mary Shelley's intuitive idea dressed in wondrous clothes sparkling with divine metaphysics and resonding portayal of life,truth and futility sustains a powerful impact on us even long after w've closed the book and started chasing our own Frankenstein's monster.  Written on February 25, 2006 Summary: YUCK! DONT READ IT ITS HORRIBLE this book was soo boring i stopped reading it because the book took forever to get somewhere. WASTE OF TIME! Written on December 15, 2005 Summary: Best book I was ever forced to read I was required to read this book in college for my information technology & society course. At first I was hesitant, for I was not generally a fan of books that I was required to read in class, with the exception of "The Importance of Being Earnest." However, I found that, as with "Earnest", I was pleasantly surprised. I became so absorbed in the book that it only took me two days to read it. "Frankenstein" is a story that questions ethics, society and relationships. It is dark in the same way as "Dracula," but unlike "Dracula", which is also a fine book, there is an undertone of tenderness and sadness. The monster and Dr. Frankenstein both become neither hero nor villain, and the reader finds themself wondering whose side to choose.  Written on November 30, 2005 Summary: Very disappointing. I have always wanted to read the original Frankenstein. Now I wish I had just stuck to watching the many movies with this iconic character. After reading the original, I am at a complete loss as to how Hollywood arrived upon the famous monster played by Boris Karloff in the 1931 movie. The real monster is nothing like the square-headed, heavy-footed greenish creature that we all know and love from movies. This book is slow moving, filled with stilted dialogue, sluggish prose and none of the familiarities of the story most of us have come to expect. The monster speaks eloquently (no incoherent grunts) of his desire to have a mate. Frankenstein cannot bring himself to create another so the monster kills everyone near and dear to the doctor. This leads Victor Frankenstein to chase the monster, hoping to catch and destroy the life he once created. Of course I can't tell you how it ends, only that it is nothing like the monster story most of us know. The book is actually told as a series of letters from a man who has encountered Dr. Frankenstein and who is retelling what the doctor told him. The idea of reanimating dead tissue is interesting but not really explored. The monster was not created by lightening and in fact we have no idea how Dr. Frankenstein even did create his biggest mistake. The story is about the relationships between the doctor and the monster, the doctor and his fiancé (not really much of a love story although it is often touted as one) and the doctor and his best friend. I'm not really sure how this is a "classic" except it is such an unusual premise for a story. However, the writing and the plot of the book are mediocre at best. |
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| Catalog | Book | Book | Book | Book | Book | Book |
| Release date | 2004-04-27 | 2000-07-03 | 1961-01-01 | 2003-09-30 | 2006-10-17 | 2003-07-01 |
| Media | Mass Market Paperback | Paperback | Mass Market Paperback | Mass Market Paperback | Paperback | Mass Market Paperback |
| Number of pages | 352 | 100 | 268 | 528 | 288 | 400 |
| Ean | 9780743487580 | 9780764585937 | 9780451524935 | 9780743477369 | 9780060850524 | 9780743477123 |
| Book Isbn | 0743487583 | 0764585932 | 0451524934 | 0743477367 | 0060850523 | 074347712X |
| Upc | - | 785555026360 | - | - | - | - |
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