In Frankenstein, the creature represents all of us and embodies our ultimate longing for humanity and acceptance. Because the creature can’t truly be depicted and his existence is shrouded in mystery through filtered narratives and descriptions, we come to sympathize with him. This sympathy, which is truly indicative of the sublime, thus makes sense when we confer our sense of awe and heap all our passions onto this creature. The creature was not originally bent on exacting revenge but only became a monster because of the dehumanization that he was subjected to by his creator Victor Frankenstein. The monster lies within us as the alienation and isolation that he experiences causes him to revolt and wreak havoc, so that others can understand his pain and misery. A simple creator-creation dynamic and capitalist-marxist dialectic fails to imbibe the essence of Frankenstein because it ignores the crucial betrayal of Justine, who represents justice and moral precision. While Justine typified neither capitalism nor Marxism, her betrayal by both Victor and the creature signifies the death of humanity. The monster becomes a caveat of what can happen to us when we lose our humanity, attempt to overpower nature, and fail to understand “the other” in our midst, whatever that may connote. The monstrosity that lurks within humanity is always there, but only becomes dangerous and revolutionary when we feel that humanity is incapable of understanding our thoughts, whims, and desires. Only when we become “the other” and are deemed to be abhorrent does the revolutionary aspect of this monster unleash itself. It attempts to undo the wrongs that have been perpetrated on it but ultimately induces terror and fear, sublime emotions. If the creature could be solidified or depicted, if its every thought could be ascertained and its role completely clarified, it would lose the universal sympathy aroused by our humanity. The logic of Marxism thus fails to explicate the meaning of the text, as the inversion of power between the proletariat and the capitalist, man and nature, and knowledge and ignorance doesn’t result in liberation of humanity, but utter destruction. Even though Warren Montag’s argument was perhaps presumptive in applying Marxist criticism, it was correct in stating that it would be foolish to assume that the novel had no contextual significance. The Romantic and Gothic genres both evoke the large landscapes, sense of vastness, and powerful mysticism inherent in Frankenstein. The Romantic and Gothic genres fuse with Shelley’s sociopolitical circumstances of the day to produce a work of art, which has a sense of organic unity that synthesizes elements of both the beautiful and the sublime. Hollywood’s greatest injustice then, may have been to transform such a complex and meaningful novel into a rather sensational science fiction thriller.
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I love that you commented on almost all of the things we’ve discussed from Marxism to the sublime to the character’s ambiguity. One thing that I thought of to add to maybe enhance the interpretation would be the idea of the novel as a critique of the enlightenment. You talk about the dehumanization of the creature and I think it would have been helpful to introduce the idea that the creature represents the enlightenment ideal of the body as a kind of soulless collection of moving parts. Overall, I think it’s a great post with lots of interesting ideas!
You seem to reject the marxist analysis in your post, and if I may, I would like to offer a simile that I believe would express a different perspective to the theoretical field. Marxism is like global warming. Marxism is not a practical political thought that may be compared or contrasted with republicanism, totalitarianism, democracy, although it does have its bastardized derivatives in forms such as stalinism. Instead, like global warming science, it is a predictive theory; it does not “fight,” for any ideal system, it acts as a prophecy. It predicts a set of revolutionary actions about the future for society, and this action is inherently violent. To say that marxism failed because it results in violence, and violence is bad, is like saying that global warming failed because the temperature rose, and climate change is bad. Marxism does indeed predict “utter destruction,” through the hegemony of societal violence within the capitalist symptom. Also, you might look at the events of the novel as a societal stage too primitive for revolution of the proletariat, and only the creation of the societal symptom. Utopia would not exist at this stage. I think that Marxist criticism could greatly aid your argument.
This interpretation incorporates some of the major literary themes we’ve went over this year, such as Marxist criticism and the French Revolution. It effectively deconstructs each of them to support the overarching central focus: that the novel finds meaning in the portrayal of humanity within the creature. More evidence that could be added towards supporting this would be to include some poignant scenes in the novel that clearly demonstrate the creature’s humanity, such as the scene where the creature lives near and even supports a poor rural household, only to be shut down once he finally comes face-to-face with its inhabitants. Some more supporting evidence towards how Marxism failed to “explicate the meaning of the text” would add depth to that claim, but the interpretation here is effective all around regardless.