“IT’S ALLIIIIIVE!!!” Everyone knows the famous line from pop culture’s Frankenstein where, surrounded by fantastical science equipment, Dr. Frankenstein, aided by his hunched assistant, Igor, zaps life into a grotesque monster within medieval castle under the cover of a dark and stormy night. At the epicenter, a creature awakens while the mad scientist cackles maniacally. It would be equally shocking for most, however, to find that Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, the original, poses a quite different, almost anti-climatic, scene–void of any shouting, Igors, and with no clear depiction of the creature’s endowment of life-giving forces. In fact, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein contrasts heavily to the pop culture Frankenstein in many aspects, namely, …show more content…
Beginning with the only two characters that are actually present within both versions: Victor and the monster. Victor’s conflict within the film is against nature to create an animate being–a human in particular. One may notice the faint similarity in the conflict that the young Victor faced in the novel before succeeding in his endeavours and setting off the subsequent conflicts that create the story of Frankenstein. However, the similarities end there. While the novel takes off with other conflicts for the maturing Victor, the movie adaption only presents one, main conflict for its Victor: striving to create life in human form. The film actually ends after he succeeds in creating the monster, and then killing it shortly after with the help of Igor–the main character and through whose perspective we witness the movie’s story. The creature, being only alive for a few moments in the movie faces no real, romantic conflict that of which its predecessor struggled with at great length. In the novel, the creature ponders, “But where were my friends and relations?... What was I” (Shelley 109)? This quote proves the deep, romantic, and existential conflicts that the creature had to