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Summary: Truely Timeless Themes
Review: Frankenstein, by Mary Shelley, is a vortex of action. It follows the ambitious Victor Frankenstein who has set out to do the impossible: resurrect the dead. Victor is so swept up in his ambitions that he fails to acknowledge any of the consequences of following his dream -- that is until it is to late. Despite its great plot, Frankenstein is great for another reason as well: its timelessness. Many of the ethical questions regarding the limits of technology that Shelley pursues in Frankenstein are relevant today with the advent of cloning and genetic engineering.
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Summary: One thumb up
Review: This book was not all THAT great. I found it rather boring most of the story because Dr. Frankenstein and the wretch talk on for, what seems like ages, when they could 'sum it up' in about one paragraph. The theme is great, but it was a long book for what Mary Shelley is portraying. I recommend seeing the movie, as the lighting up scene in the movie is MUCH better then the one in the book. The book stated something of this sort: And then he was alive. Nope, no lightning, no of those 'shreeky funny squealing noises' evil doctors make. In fact, Dr. Frankenstein wasn't that evil at all. I don't recommened reading this book on your own free leisure time unless you enjoy reading classic books. I think this book is classic because they made a good movie out of it. If you have read this book: you cannot learn the whole english language in TWO YEARS! Another thing that bugged me was the fact that some of the stuff in it was so surreal. If you want to read surreal, might I recommend THE ODYSSEY. Yet, I gave it 3 stars because it is a classic and obviously there has to be SOMETHING good about it, but I have yet to find that!
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Summary: Mary Shelley's Masterpiece
Review: "Frankenstein" is Mary Shelley's first novel written in 1818 It is turned to everyone: young people, who are still in the search for their own identity, adults who will be called to reconsider some well-forgotten moments of their life, and all pleasure seeking readers. This novel is influenced by Mary Shelley's personal misfortune. The aspiration for writing the story appeared in a peculiar way, and so strange is the content. It is not an everyday chance to find and read such a novel. It follows the characteristic features of the novels of the nineteenth century--it is as if not directly retold by the author. Mary Shelley is hidden somewhere behind the story of the characters. And this makes the novel not only sound real, but also even-handed, and thus credibility is established. "Frankenstein" is in the form of letters, and the story sounds as though it is directed and created for the reader. The Epistolary technique brings the reader into the action. A letter is something extremely personal and dear, and by making the reader part of it, the whole experience is more than just reading a book. The fact that the book is still widely read and studied is because Mary Shelley addresses issues that are timeless. This is one of the basic merits of the novel. The monster is the embodiment of men's defiance and disrespect of Nature. So we are confronted with questions about the importance of human life, the responsibilities one should bear for what she does, the availability of happiness in one's life, and the prejudices of society towards the one who is different. But what is most valuable in the book is not posing questions, but rather lighting the way to find the answers. After reading this book, one is called to rethink her values and her place in the modern society. Mary Shelley's book imposes a philosophical issue of whom we really are -creatures learned to conform to society, living by its norms, with its consciousness. We subconsciously hide our feelings from the rest of the society. Thus we may lose them and become rational creatures, losing touch with our identity and individuality. Reading such books brings not only pleasure, but also acumen into our own psyche. So by opening the first pages of Mary Shelley' s masterpiece--Frankenstein, you are on the verge of savoring the authenticity and originality of this literary creation.
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Summary: It isn't easy reading...
Review: ...after all, it was written a long time ago. But may I remind the reader that Mary Shelley has made an incredible leap into the future of science to bring her audience what may have been (at the time) a procedure for bringing dead tissue to life. It may seem fantastic, but Shelley's creative talents have intrigued readers for decades. The most ingenius aspect of the novel is not in its style, but the ideology. Shelley has injected her tale of horror with a dose of social commentary that holds true throughout the ages, teaching a valuable lesson about judgment of character. Especially poignant today, Shelley has also given an eerily foreshadowed warning to us about the possible dangers in genetic engineering.
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Summary: Thoroughly Gripping
Review: I read this book almost entirely in one sitting. It is haunting, and beautifully written, well worth it's title as a classic. The only horror book I would ever reccommend, because of its messages about human nature. We are on the verge now of cloning human beings. Perhaps we should re-read this novel first, before we become Frankensteins ourselves...
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Summary: You have to read this book to dispell the myths
Review: I'm sure I was like most people in my view of Dr. Frankenstein's creation. Hollywood has turned the creature into a life form just above your typical lizard(no offense to the lizard lovers). However, reading this book opened my eyes, the story is incredible and the creature is far from what you would typically see on the screen. He's a loving, intelligent being in search of a place and people where he'll be accepted and loved. I can't recommend this book enough!! I waited until my late 20's to read it and my one regret is that I waited so long.
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Summary: Bad Book
Review: This book was so boring I threw it out my window. (Almost) It just had too much detail
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Summary: Mary Shelley = Prodigy
Review: mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein when she was 19- a very mature drama which twists upon the question of whence does life come. The book is Romantic in that it is the story of a creator who turns away from his creation. What would it be like if your creator, your parents or God, hated you and sought to destroy you? Frankenstein's Monster was hated by his creator and could not find a friend because he looked so hideous. This is a powerful, tragic statement. (...) Shelly's writing is very well composed and full of extraordinary intuitions about what it means to be created, and hated.
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Summary: Frankenstein
Review: Frankenstein is a classic book that everybody is aware about. However, to me the actual story was unclear for example: the creation was named after the Doctor, Frankenstein. From the start Dr. Frankenstein was a scientist and found ways to make inanimate objects become animate. From this Frankenstein was born from old apendages unporportionate to the body. After becoming deathly ill Dr. Frankenstein relized the mistake he had made creating such a monster and quickly went to destroy it. The beast had actually run away and was surviving in the wilderness and spying on a family before he was shooed away and his emotions began to take place. Meeting up with Frankenstein the doctor quaralled with him and reconsideration of his thoughts take place as he decides what to do with the monster that he has created.
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Summary: An Anti-Technological Warning?
Review: Think about how technology and humanity often clash with one another. For 18 years, an unidentified mail bomber kills several and wounds many, his career culminating in an anti-technological jerimiad blackmailed into mass media publication by both The New York Times and the Washington Post. Doctors in Scotland succeed in cloning a sheep, and knowingly set off both heartfelt protest and academic wrangling. The decoding of the human genome sparks scientific firestorms--as scientists debate the possibilities for both help and harm to come when new techniques of curing disease and prolonging life spring into being. The proliferation of nuclear weapons heralds a chaotic possible future that political scientists still cannot completely fathom, even as the looming shadow continues to pursue us all. Mary Wolstonecraft Shelley, author of "Frankenstein," seemingly foresaw what lurks within all these examples. As the wife of Percy Blythe Shelley--famous even today as perhaps the greatest poet of the Romantic Era--Mary Shelley shared with her husband the concerns of many of the most humanized intellectuals on the planet. Technology in 1821 was a relatively new social force. Industrializing rapidly, the England with which Shelley was familiar had already bent beneath the weight of changes wrought by the beginning of the age of machines only decades before. Old ways obliterated themselves. New, and unfamiliar metaphors to the human condition quickly replaced them. Considered by some as the first science fiction novel ever written, "Frankenstein," as a novel, could be and might best be considered something of oracular proportions. Sweeping in its scope, wise in its prophetic and albeit poetic assessments of what technology really means to the survival of the human spirit, the novel rises up from the predominant notions of both medicine and the ultimate purpose of technology--in that the prolongation of life and the defeat of death are the ultimate endpoints of both. Moreover, the prospects of creating life from death--and we all know the familiar scenes from the movie in which the crazed Dr. Frankenstein robs graves in the pouring rain--provide an ironic counterpoint to the major thrust of the novel's theme. Even more ironic is that no one will ever know how Shelley might have felt to have learned that her grave warning to the human race would be hacked and cut to pieces to serve as a form of entertainment that was undreamed of in her age. What would she have thought of Boris Karloff's chilling portrayal as a blunt-headed beast of her protagonist's creation? Could she have ever dreamed that the very message beneath her life's work would be mangled and disembowled of any and all meaning? While many today celebrate the fact that Mary Shelley's "Frankenstein" is the archetype of the modern horror story--the birth of a monster that takes more contemporary form in movies such as "Alien" and "Jurassic Park"--few consider the powerful metaphors within the novel itself. Unlike the movie, Mary Shelley's version begin with a harrowing encounter in the Artic--the ice cold and unhospitable axis of the world, the place by which the world turns and turns ruthlessly with no consideration for the fragility of human life--and continues with almost karmic dimensions as Dr. Viktor Frankenstein, fully and suddenly understanding the scientific terror and technological golem he has obsessively unleashed, devotes the grim remainder of his life to the destruction of what he has created. It's an old tale, too, a little like Dante entering a wood and visiting Hell, the tale of Dr. Frankenstein is synonymous with the advent of middle age: We spend our youths dreaming of our creation, and yet we spend our later years often searching for ways to destroy that for which we once dreamed. "Frankenstein" is one of richest novels ever written. A favorite of generations, it regales in a style that is itself a vivid example of how technology and its unforseen imperitive--that we constantly hurry and curry the lowest common denominator--have turned both the novel and the English language into a strange changeling that is a pallid, shadowy reflection of an age of philosophic and spiritual grandeur that unavoidably midwived the modern age. Regardless of its richness, however, Mary Shelley's "Frankenstein" won't alienate a reader who gives herself to the oceanic flow of her voice. Told simply and with a passion unsurprisingly absent from contemporary prose, "Frankenstein" is a novel whose time has yet to come.
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