I have read a gothic horror novel, “Frankenstein: or The Modern Prometheus”. It is a story for people who love suspense, and despite its background in Europe of late 18th century, it has a common timeless theme for neglection or hate of particular people. Socio-politically it may be a pioneering story that endure postcolonial criticism. The monster appears in the story supposed to be a being of a good way of thinking, however, its horrifying look for human beings evokes a hate and an attack from the humans to the being. Thus he became a wicked creature that curses its own existence, and killed some of the people surrounding his creator. The importance of just a mere appearance is supposed in Arthur C. Clarke’s “Childhood’s End”, and torturing of the beings is appeared in the tales of Middle Earth by J.R.R. Tolkien as elves becoming orcs. “Frankenstein” concentrates in this topic in more through ways. It cast doubts to the propagation of human beings, which cannot wait for the studying of the creature created and cannot be friendly for its horrifying looks and origins. The organization of the story is a bit complicating. It starts with letters from Walton to Margaret (the fourth Margaret from England! Due to my recent reading activity, there are Margaret from England in “Frankenstein”, Margarete from Germany in “Faust”, Marguerite from France in “La Recherche de l’absolu”, and Маргарита from Russia in “Мастер и Маргарита”. Thus, it becomes like a situation in a comedy movie “Being John Malkovich”, when Malkovich entered the tunnel and found everything became Malkovich, shouting “Malkovich?”, “Malkovich?”, “Malkovich?”, “Malkovich?”, “Malkovich!”), and the story of Victor Frankenstein and the monster take in turn, ended by the note of Walton. This organization is required from familiarity to readers and from being a suspense story. The viewpoints from narrators very much restrict the view and distort opinions to the situation, therefore they are not sincere and the reader has to think by oneself. It silently shows postcolonial views and what is not described is evident from its open ending, in which the matter of this story is still ongoing in actual society (even in the 21st century).
From viewpoints of structuralism echoes of the flow of story, repetitions and contrasts of metaphors are so well described that this novel becomes one of the most famous classics. There are lot of criticisms for this story and for Japanese people, there is “An Introduction to the theories of criticisms: a course for deciphering “Frankenstein”（批評理論入門『フランケンシュタイン』解剖講義）” by Yumiko Hirono（廣野由美子）. This is in pocket edition for liberal arts. More advanced theories are described in Peter Barry’s famous book, “Theory: An Introduction to Literary and Cultural Theory”, however Ms. Hirono’s book well described an application of the theories to actual novel, “Frankenstein”. This blog is in a brief format, but once you have a plenty of time, you can understand almost all the theories are applicable for deciphering an actual novel. Listing up the points would metamorphizes your thoughts.
Overall, the story reminds us of timeless theme for a desire to be embraced by some familiar beings.
