Soul to Squeeze

On to Frankenstein; or, The Swiss Godzilla. Started reading it yesterday and blew threw fifty-odd pages in an hour or two. It's very easy for me to read, possibly because I'm so familiar with the story itself, down to the particulars of Clerval, Justine, and William, which it seems like get glossed over in some interpretations. I enjoy it a lot, even though since it's from 1818 it's kind of proto-Gothic in terms of style, and in a way very different from Jekyll and Hyde, at least as far as I can tell.

The reason I call it The Swiss Godzilla is that, in a lot of ways, it's the forerunner to the original Godzilla and a lot of early-Cold-War-era movies. Science has gone wrong! Egads! The creation is destroying the calm, peaceful life we had before! The horror! The difference is that, of course, Frankenstein's monster is significantly more subtle than a a guy in a big green honkin' dinosaur costume. I do enjoy Godzilla, though. Atomic breath is badass.

It makes me think, though, that the soul of Frankenstein is elsewhere than the whole Science Gone Wrong spiel. It's deeper than that. There's more to Frankenstein's struggle, more to the Monster's search for meaning. Godzilla never befriends a blind man only to have the poor guy realize he's an atomic disaster. Nor does Godzilla suffer philosophically and explain to his creator what he means.

It's interesting to me that the villain in Frankenstein is a dual system of monster and master. Frankenstein himself seems almost soulless, like his whole argument of, "Oh, woe is me, what have I unleashed?" is arbitrary, and that he doesn't particularly care what he's doing to the poor human creature that he created. The monster, on the other hand, is a complete product of his upbringing, as his absentee Genevean father never gave him and love and actively tries to kill him, giving the monster his motivation to act. The two of them combined are evil: the evil of vengeful destruction and of the grieving search for purpose.

I like Frankenstein for that. I don't really understand people who don't like it.