Frankenstein and The Chrysalids

http://www.youtube.com/embed/NvElnuqtthg

Frankenstein: The Modern Prometheus

        Whenever someone mentions the name Frankenstein, people immediately think of a deformed, eight foot monster with lightning rods protruding from either side of its neck, as it has been portrayed in many a movie. But, when Mary Shelley wrote the novel Frankenstein in 1818, she envisioned a different character than the one we see today. She wanted the creature to be built out of human body part, but she also wanted the creature to seem as human as possible. She wanted people to understand how we can be so utterly cruel to a creature of almost identical intelligence just because of the way we perceive them to be. This novel really delves into the very essence of humanity and I wish to explore the things I have learned and identified upon reading this book.

        There were a lot of settings throughout this book because of the fact that after the monster completely destroys Frankenstein’s life, he hunts the creature all across the globe. However, there are two main settings that either reoccur or have a large significance to the plot life. The first setting is situated in the Arctic Circle. After his ship becomes trapped in an ice sheet, Captain Robert Walton finds Frankenstein on the ice and brings him aboard his ship. Once he has revived him enough, Frankenstein begins to recount the tale of his life, so, in a sense; this is where the story unfolds. Once Frankenstein begins his life story, we are transported to the city of Geneva, where Frankenstein was born. He grows up in a safe environment, surrounded by loving family and friends. However, after his creation and abandonment of the creature, he is plagued by it when he returns to Geneva. Over the course of the story, the monster destroys his entire family, including his best friend Henry Clerval, and his wife, Elizabeth Lavenza. I think that the two settings helped to make the story better by making the reader ask the question “how did Frankenstein end up in the Arctic?” I asked myself that same question because, to me, it was interesting to find out how a person had gone from having everything, to nothing in just a few short years.

What I really enjoyed about this book was the fact that Mary Shelley went into such great detail about the different characters, it didn’t matter if the character was the main protagonist, or a character that was in the story for one chapter, the amount of detail and depth that Shelley put into the development of every single one of her characters was incredible. The characters she created were fairly relatable in the sense that they were not perfect human being who could do no wrong; rather, they had the same problems and faced the same challanges that most people face in their day to day lives. Now, granted, most people do not build monsters out of human body parts and attempt to give the form life, but, the excitement that Frankenstein felt when he was creating the monster, only to finish his creation and then become horrified of the creature that he had endowed with life, has probably happened to many of us, but in a different situation. When I was in my grade 7 art class, I was really passionate on this one sketch that I was working on. I worked on it for weeks, eagerly anticipating the moment when I would finish and be able to look upon it with pride. But, as I put my finishing touches on the sketch, my entire state of mind changed and, instead of being proud of my achievement, I was disgusted at how terrible the drawing was. The reason I mention this is the fact that this experience is fairly similar to that of Frankenstein’s. You set your standards so high that when you have finished your assignment or project, it could never live up to that high of a standard, so you believe it to be terrible. This is what I believed happened to Frankenstein when he had finished creating the monster.

         While I was reading this book, many disturbing elements surfaced as I became more engrossed in the story line. For instance, when the Frankenstein creature is rejected by the people he was watching over, he completely loses control of himself and proceeds to burn down the building in a spectacular fashion. Once he had accomplished this task, he decides to go into the woods and find a new place to live. While he travels through the brush, he encounters a small child who falls into a steam. Seeing as this person is in trouble, the creature proceeds to help her out. But, when another human appears on the scene, who is recognized as the child’s father, takes the child from the monster, and then shoots the monster in the shoulder, before disappearing into the woods. Now, I may act differently if I was encountered with the same situation, but the fact still remains that the father immediately assumed that the monster was the cause of his child’s suffering.  I found this sequence very disturbing because, in all fairness, the creature had done nothing to deserve that kind of ill-treatment, and yet, had a bullet lodged in his shoulder. This book has truly opened my eyes to the cruelty that we humans exact on each other. This brought my train of thought to the World Trade Centres that went down in 2001. The men, who commandeered those planes, knew that they were going to die, but, the real question I think they should have asked themselves was ‘what are we dying for?’ They made the chose to kill thousands, and for what? What makes a person so hateful of someone else that they feel the need to murder thousands of innocent people to exact revenge? This is something that I will be thinking about for a long time to come.

       Overall, this was a very interesting book to read. There was never a dull moment in the life of Victor Frankenstein, and at the end of every chapter, it kept you guessing and wondering what kind of new twists or surprises were in store for you. This book was fairly fast paced, but Shelley did not make that an excuse for not going in depth into the lives of each and every one of her many characters. This was a great novel to read, and I would recommend this book to anyone who is a gothic horror fan, or who enjoys reading about the lives of the unfortunate.     

Next Generation of Frankenstein

 

A phantom, a skeleton, and a bloody sword

will unravel the very fabric of your existence

If you have read Frankenstein, and enjoyed it, then you will love reading the cavern of death. This book grasps the same aspects that Frankenstein was based upon; romance; the love between Frankenstein and Elizabeth is equal to that of Albert and Constance, isolation; when Frankenstein loses everything and rejects the company of man, as does Albert when he is exiled, and revenge on the wicked; Frankenstein’s hunt for the creature, and Albert’s desire to claim vengeance on Frederic. The Cavern of Death is based in Dornheim, Germany, and is the story of a young Sir Albert who is traveling home after being away for three, long years. When he arrives, he awaits the welcome of his long time friend, Lord Frederic, and the embrace of his true love, the beautiful Constance. This arrival is short lived, however, when Albert learns that he has competition for Constance’s hand in marriage. After Frederic enlists his help to assassinate another potential suitor, the Baron of Dornheim, so that he may marry Constance, Albert hatches a plan to run away with her. But, his plans are foiled, and he is chased off to a haunted cavern where he is greeted by three supernatural beings who reveal an unspeakable murder and the long-concealed secret of his own birth. Phenomenally popular in both England and the United States, the Cavern of Death combines the essence of romance and horror into one unique novel.

The Life and Times of Austin Sampson

As far back as I can remember, Austin Sampson has always loved reading and writing. Even from an early age, he was fascinated by the stories his parents read to him before bed, whether it was about the bloody campaigns of Alexander the Great and his conquest of Europe, or the creatures and magic that ruled the world of Harry Potter, he always listened with great interest. Then, tragedy struck his family. On a trip to Venice, an earthquake ripped through the streets, leveling bridges and buildings alike. Austin was at a nursery in a different part of the city, so he was unaffected by the quake, but his parents weren’t as lucky. The hotel that they were staying in completely collapsed and buried them both alive. Austin was now left an orphan, with no family and no friends. He was sent to an orphanage where he stayed for three years, living with the other children who had lost or been abandoned by their parents. After those three years, he was adopted by Danielle Steel, who is one of the greatest writers of all time, famous for her romance novels and mainstream drama. After a few years of homeschooling, he was enrolled in Millbrook High School in North Carolina. He completed his four years at the top of his class, and then went to study at the Kingston University where he studied English and literature. When he had completed his studies, he took a job as a columnist in The New York Times where he wrote many enthusiastic and extensive articles on the rise and fall of American Economics, Marriages and Divorces of famous people, and, every once and a while, insight into the lives of  senior politicians and directors. During the five years that he worked at the paper, he worked his way up the managerial ladder until he became editor of the paper after its editor, Damian Bates passed away in 2024 due to a bone disorder called Fibrodysplasia Ossificans Progressiva. He worked as an editor for another three years, until in 2029, he quit the paper, and became an author. His first book, The Lightning Wars, was a fantasy novel about a team of soldiers who fight daemons and supernatural beings across the universe. This book was published in 2030, and, as it would come to be known, would become a major stepping stone to Austin’s success. In the first month of its publication, it sold over a 500,000 copies in the United States and approximately 2 million copies worldwide. He would go on to continue the series, writing another four books by 2036. His books became the biggest hit series since J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter in 2000. After he had finished this series, by killing off the main character, he now faced a problem that Sir. Arthur Conan Doyle faced when he tried to kill off Sherlock Holmes. The public was just not ready for this sensational character to die off, so, for two weeks straight, they protested in front of his home, trying to get him to keep the series alive. Eventually, Austin caved and began his second series, The Cyclone Campaign, which starts off where the first series ended. He wrote another five books for this series before he retired from the field of writing by ended the series in 2044. While he was working on his third book, he married his long time girlfriend Michelle Carmichael. He then moved to the Scottish countryside and used his considerable fortune to reclaim the land that had been destroyed by Donald Trump in the golf course fiasco. He now lives in Sussex with his wife and two children, Michael and James.