In 1818, Mary Shelley anonymously published Frankenstein, a horror that would one day greatly influence monster media. And seeing as next week is Halloween, I figure I could write a breif blog post about it.
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Mary Shelley's name was not on the first edition of Frankenstein, as it was still uncommon for women to write books. Reviews were mixed, with some praising its ingenious writing style and others panning its dark and sometimes meandering plot. Still, the public instatnly latched on to it, and it still holds up today.
Many of the now commonplace elements of horror literature (mad scientists, reanimated corpses, dark and stormy nights, etc.) weren't the norm before Frankenstein. Of course, the monster himself has become a staple of the modern Halloween scene. Nowadays he looks a little different then the meat puppet Shelley envisioned, but he's there nonetheless. Next week, gentle bloggers, is actual Halloween.So I have something special planned.
Well, not particularly. It's just Halloween themed again.
I have personally read 'Frankenstein" and I think that it is interesting that Mary Shelly's view of the monster is different from the modern day one. He was a creation of different human body parts in the book. Halloween has now created him as a green, bolt-headed monster.
ReplyDeleteI was totally upset with the book "Frankenstein". I was expecting for it to be about a big green illiterate monster, not an ugly literate monster that used all these elaborate words and phrases that forced me to look in my dictionary and sparknotes every two seconds. Why does the media form this misconception of him? The story is not even the same.
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