Don’t Reanimate Corpses!

Frankestein (Part 1) #13

Hi! I’m John Green, this is Crash Course Literature, and It’s alive! Mr. Green?
Mr. Green? That’s my favorite part of the movie… No. No. No. No. Me From
The Past don’t you dare. That line is not in the book. And Frankenstein is the
doctor not the monster. Also, there is no Igor in the book or in the movie for
that matter. His name was Fritz. Let’s move on! [Theme Music] So, way
before you actually read Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, you probably heard
about it... I mean the novel is almost 200 years old now, but we can’t seem
to get away from its story and its ideas. Its been adapted into plays, and
books, and comics, and more than 100 movies — from your classic Boris
Karloff picture to “Blackenstein,” “Frankenstein Meets the Space Monster,”
“The Erotic Rites of Frankenstein”... And of course 2013’s “I, Frankenstein”
which has a resounding 4% fresh on RottenTomatoes.com By the way I
wanted to blow Crash Course’s entire budget on licensing “The Erotic Rites
of Frankenstein” but Stan said we couldn’t! Anyway, after all those
experiences with he story, reading the novel is kind of surprising because it
opens not with the story of Victor Frankenstein, but with a series of letters
from an Arctic explorer. Also, the monster, who as previously noted is not
named Frankenstein, he doesn’t have a name that’s really important
actually, but he’s a pretty articulate guy. I mean he reads “Plutarch’s Lives”
and “Paradise Lost.” He’s better read than most of us. So genre wise, Mary
Shelley’s “Frankenstein” is kind of a triple threat. I mean it’s often
recognized as the first work of science fiction. It’s one of the greatest horror
novels ever. And it’s often called the greatest capital “R” Romantic novel. I
mean like Lord Byron romantic not Danielle Steele romantic. You know the
idea that like emotions like awe and terror and horror – the modern
emotions - can be the center of an aesthetic experience. Also, Percy Shelley
romantic which reminds me to talk about Mary Shelley’s biography. Mary
Shelley’s father was an anarchist author, and her mother was Mary
Walstonecraft, a famous early feminist who died just 11 days after Mary was
born. Her mother’s death was a huge influence on Mary Shelley and if
you’re into biographical readings, then you can look at Frankenstein as a
story of a monstrous and disastrous birth. Anyway, when Mary was 14,
Percy Shelley, one of the great lyric poets of the age, came to visit her father
after being thrown out of Oxford for writing a pamphlet on atheism. Percy
Shelley was already married, but two years later, when Mary was just 16,
they eloped to the continent along with Mary Shelley’s stepsister Claire
Clairmont… are these names made up? By then Mary was already pregnant
with their first child. So, it’s 16 and Pregnant, the British Romantic Literature
edition. So a couple of years later... oh it must be time for the Open Letter
'cause my desk just moved. An open letter to Percy Shelley’s heart.
Metaphorically, you were complex. I mean after you fell in love with 16 yr
old Mary Shelley you repeatedly threatened to commit suicide even though
you were already married to a different person named Harriet. After leaving
Harriet for this teenager, Mary, Harriet would go on to commit suicide while
pregnant with Percy Shelley’s child. And another woman who was in love
with you, Mary Shelley’s half-sister Fanny also committed suicide. But I want
to talk about your literal heart Percy Shelley, because when you drowned in
a sailing accident, your friends burned your body and were stunned to see
that your heart did not burn. Somebody grabbed it from the fire, it traded
hands a few times, it ended up with Mary. And it was eventually buried with
Mary and Percy’s son 67 years after Percy died. And some people think the
reason the heart didn’t burn is because Percy Shelley suffered from
calcification of the heart which turned his heart almost into a bone-like
structure. In short, you were literally, hard-hearted. Best wishes, John
Green. So a couple years later Mary Shelley, Percy Shelley, Claire Clairmont,
Lord Byron (with whom Claire was having an affair – although who wasn’t
having an affair with Lord Byron), and Byron’s doctor were all hanging out in
Geneva. And despite all the lakes and chocolate, Geneva was pretty boring,
and also the weather was unrelentingly terrible so there was nothing to do
all day except sit around reading creepy German ghost stories. So naturally
enough, a novel-writing contest ensued. It was basically like the most
productive NaNoWriMo of all time. The doctor wrote a story that would
later be a huge influence on Bram Stoker’s “Dracula,” and Mary Shelley
wrote “Frankenstein.” She was still a teenager. It’s just not fair! Anyway, in
the introduction to the 1831 edition of the novel, Mary Shelley explained,
“How I, then a young girl, came to think of, and to dilate upon, so very
hideous an idea.” She wanted to write a story that would “speak to the
mysterious fears of our nature, and awaken thrilling horror.” The idea that
art could awaken that horror and awe and connect us to the broader natural
world was really key to the romantics. But she couldn’t figure out how to
turn ideas into like a plot until she stayed up late one night listening to Percy
Shelley and Byron discuss new developments in electricity and the
possibility of the dead being brought back to life. That night she went to bed
and had a terrible waking dream. She wrote, “I saw the pale student of
unhallowed arts kneeling beside the thing he had put together. I saw the
hideous phantasm of a man stretched out, and then, on the working of
some powerful engine, show signs of life, and stir with an uneasy, half vital
motion. Frightful must it be.” Uggh. it’s so creepy. Anyway, that’s Mary
Shelley’s story of the creation of Frankenstein. Let’s talk about now what
she created, the upshot of which is: Don’t re-animate corpses. Alright, Let’s
go to the Thought Bubble So the novel opens with with the aforementioned
boring letters that arctic explorer Walton sends to his sister in England.
Walton is sailing toward the North Pole when he sees a man cruising by on a
dog sled. The man is Victor Frankenstein. Once upon a time, he was a nice
Swiss boy with a couple of younger brothers, a dead mother, a best friend,
and a cute cousin. But then he went to university and took organic
chemistry and became obsessed with reanimating the dead which is why
you should never go to college. Just kidding, go to college. So eventually
Victor figures out how to make dead flesh live and he assembles this huge
creature out of dead bodies and farm animal parts , hooks up the juice, and
animates it. Only he’s so horrified that he runs away and conveniently
develops a bad case of brain fever. Rejected by his creator, the monster
wanders into the wilderness where he seeks shelter and then eventually
learns to read and write. The monster returns to Victor and he’s like “look
I’ve done so much book learning” but that doesn’t convince Victor that the
monster is not a monster. So the monster becomes a real monster. He kills
Victor’s youngest brother and then when Victor rejects the monster’s
request for a mate, the monster kills Victor’s best friend and then his cousin
-- to whom Victor is getting married, because, you know, that’s what they
did back then. The creature flees to the Arctic and then Victor pursues him
which is how he ends up on Walton’s ship where he dies. The creature, who
they’ve found, is so distraught that he says he’s going to die too. And then
Walton has to turn the ship around and never achieve his sublime goal, and
everything’s terrible. Because this is what happens when you major in
Organic Chemistry like my brother, Hank, instead of something healthy and
good like film or history or literature. Thanks Thought Bubble. So
Frankenstein is fundamentally a story about creation, about new and
terrifying ways to bring light and life into the world. And in that sense, it’s
loosely tied to two other creation stories, which Mary Shelley acknowledged
in the text. The first, is right there in its subtitle, “The Modern Prometheus,”
which is taken of course from Greek mythology. Prometheus is a Titan, he’s
best known for giving fire to Mankind - an idea that Zeus of course hated. I
don’t know why Zeus thought we couldn’t be trusted with fire… come on,
Stan, please stop having my head blow up. Anyway, to punish Prometheus,
Zeus has him chained to a rock and he has an eagle show up every day to
peck out Prometheus’s liver, which then grows back every night, until
Hercules stages the ultimate prison break. Read one way, this myth is a
cautionary tale. If you overreach yourself, if you share secret knowledge,
you’re going to get you liver pecked out everyday, but that’s not how the
Romantics read it. To them Prometheus was a hero. They saw Prometheus
as a figure who never gives up even when faced with incredible suffering.
But “Frankenstein” has a more ambivalent relationship to the myth. I mean
you can definitely read the novel as a story about what happens when
humans overstep. After all, that’s what Mary Shelley says when she tells the
story of her dream, that Frankenstein’s creation would be horrifying
because quote “supremely frightful would be the effect of any human
endeavour to mock the stupendous mechanism of the Creator of the world.”
My god, she could write a sentence. And Victor Frankenstein is certainly
punished for his actions, right, I mean he see’s the murder of his friends and
family and then he dies a tragic icy death at the ripe old age of 25. Which for
the record high school students, is not old. But you can also read
“Frankenstein” another way. As a celebration of ambition and super-human
effort. I mean, why is that whole arctic explorer frame a thing? Frankenstein
only begins to tell Walton his story when Walton suggests that he is willing
to risk his own life and that of his crew for knowledge. So it seems like
Victor’s trying to share his own experience as a cautionary tale. But then, at
the end, when crew demands that Walton turn back SO THAT EVERYONE
DOESN’T DIE, Victor is furious. “Oh! be men, or be more than men,” he says.
“Return as heroes who have fought and conquered, and who know not what
it is to turn their backs on the foe.” But Walton defers to the crew, writing
his sister, “Thus are my hopes blasted by cowardice and indecision; I come
back ignorant and disappointed.” So I don’t think the novel is arguing that
like the heroic human life is one that lives in a quiet bubble of ignorance.
That kind of ambivalence — We shouldn’t overreach! Wait, except at
sometimes maybe we should! — is typical of the novel and it’s also typical of
Mary Shelley herself. She once wrote in her journal, “I am not a person of
opinions because I feel the counterarguments too strongly.” The other
creation myth with which “Frankenstein” is intertwined is of course the
biblical one as recounted by John Milton in the very good, very long
“Paradise Lost,” which we aren’t reading in Crash Course Literature because
I didn’t wanna. One thing to pay attention to in books is what books the
characters are reading and it’s no coincidence that the monster
conveniently reads “Paradise Lost”. Plus the novel’s epigraph comes from
Milton in a scene in which Adam says to God: "Did I request thee, Maker,
from my clay To mould me Man, did I solicit thee From darkness to promote
me?" It’s essentially the same thing as when you say to your parents “I
didn’t ask to be born!” but of course that doesn’t make as good of an
epigraph. So in this interpretation Victor is playing God and the creature is
the sinning Adam. But it’s hardly so simple I mean Victor refers to the
creature as a devil and the creature seems to support this at times. Plus, In
the middle of the book they have this intense argument about moral
philosophy—you know as you do with monsters, Godzilla was into
Immanuel Kant, King Kong, of course, huge fan of Thomas Hobbes - anyway,
the monster says, “I am thy creature; I ought to be thy Adam; but I am
rather the fallen angel, whom thou drivest from joy for no misdeed.
Everywhere I see bliss, from which I alone am irrevocably excluded.” It’s
hard out there for a monster and it’s important to remember that God did
not expel Satan for no misdeed. But part of what makes this so rich is that
both “Frankenstein” and “Paradise Lost” defy easy readings. I mean,
“Frankenstein” allies the creature with Satan but that doesn’t mean the
creature is all bad. There are readings of Milton’s poem that perceive God as
sort of a stick in the mud and Satan as the really interesting character who
struggles undaunted despite his exile from heaven. Anyway, that was the
view the Romantics took and part of why the poet Robert Southey referred
to Byron and Percy Shelley and their circle as belonging to the Satanic school
of Romanticism. But anyway, all these allusion to Milton bring up some
pretty tough questions: I mean Does Victor see himself as God? And if so is
he a good God? Does the monster deserve his exile? Is he inherently sinful
or is sin something that God allows to enter, as in Milton’s poem? Just as we
wonder whether Victor and Walton should be praised or damned for their
pursuit of knowledge we have to wonder that about the monster as well.
Whether we’re talking about mad scientists or the monsters they create or
arctic explorers, seeking knowledge is a way of becoming human. Both in
the best and worst senses of the word. And to me the great question of the
novel is: Who’s more human - Victor of the monster he has created? Next
week we’ll continue our discussion of “Frankenstein” by examining those
questions through different lenses. Until then thanks for watching.