The poem “Making Frankenstein” by Wyatt Prunty is a coming of age tale about a young boy and his many curiosities. It dramatizes a young boy and his curiosity of maturity and his lack of understanding due to his innocence. The speaker is an older man who is reflecting back on his innocent childhood and his many curiosities. The story begins with an agitated child imploring his parents to allow him to go watch The Curse of Frankenstein. Although the child pleads for permission, his parents refuse. However the child’s uncle convinces his parents otherwise: “Then his uncle called and offered and they caved” (LL. 5). The following evening he began to act slightly skittish and headed off to bed. While drifting off to sleep, he had a night terror: “No but, midnight he woke up screaming” (LL. 10). There is a subtle awkwardness the following morning when his father tells him he is too anatomical: “too anatomical.’ ‘What’s …show more content…
15). The child continually pondered his father’s bewildering statement: “But what was anatomical? He asked again” (LL. 24). Offering a clue, his father brought him a box of with old pictures of the human body. Proving his innocence, the boy speculated the pictures were of packaged meat which disturbed him: “the boy felt certain were the pictures of mixed meats” (LL. 29). In addition, his father presents another book to the child on pathology further perplexing his young mind. Describing the diseases as forming from intimate contact, he is left with an additional baffling question: “But what is intimate?” (LL. 35). Following the consumption of his drink, his father says: “That’s how you made your way into this world” (LL. 37). Not understanding the underlying sexual meaning of what his father has just said, he stretches and heads to bed. As can be seen, his father was not a serious