Frankenstein: Student Edition

Students from Bard Early College Hudson Valley, Chance Tangunu (Poughkeepsie HS), Finn Simons (Beacon HS), Rowan Khleifat (Roy C. Ketcham HS), and Devin Suchite Rosado (Dover HS) discuss the 1818 edition of Mary Shelly's Frankenstein and respond to our professor podcast on the same text. 

Transcript

Matt Park 
The world to me was a secret which I desired to divine. Curiosity, earnest research to learn the hidden laws of nature, gladness akin to rapture, as they were unfolded to me are among the earliest sensations I can remember. 

Welcome to the Bard Sequence Seminar Podcast. Today, it's Frankenstein: Student Edition.

And I'm Matt Park, director of the Bard Sequence. Today I will be your friendly moderator. I'm joined by Roman Khleifat, Finn Simons, Chance Tangunu, and Devin Suchite. Rowan, would you mind starting off by introducing yourself? Tell us about you, what high school do you go to, and a little something about yourself.

Rowan Khleifat
Hi, I'm Rowan. I am a junior at Roy C. Ketchum High School in Wappingers Falls. I'm a huge theater kid and art nerd and I'm also a D &D enthusiast. And I also really love everything gothic and gritty and so I'm super excited to talk about Frankenstein.

Matt
So, Stranger Things?

Rowan 
Yeah, kinda. I personally, when it comes to D &D, Stranger Things is not the best model to go off of, but to be fair, that was my first kind of introduction to it, so I can't say too much about it being bad.

Matt
You checked off all the boxes. I do have to say, though, I don't like this season. I think this show was probably a good three seasons. It could have been a great three season show, and it's like a average five season show because they're doing too much. 

Rowan 
Oh my God, how dare you.

Matt

OK. Well, we'll have to have this conversation. 

Rowan
Well, that's a whole other conversation.

Matt

All right, all right. Let's not go there. Finn, can you pick up?

Finn Simons 
Hi, I'm Finn Simons. I'm a junior at Beacon High School and I do throwing for track and field and I'm also mildly allergic to kiwis, which I found out a couple years ago. 

Matt
Fantastic stuff. Are you throwing javelin? Shot put?

Finn
So I started in the spring season of last year, so like spring 2025. I did mainly shot put and discus with a little bit of hammer and I didn't actually throw javelin in any meets. But I do want to work on hammer and jav this spring. Actually I have a meet tomorrow, but there's only shot put for that. So yeah.

Matt
Very cool. I always forget about the hammer. Chance.

Chance Tangunu 
So my name is Chance Tanganu. I'm 16 years old and I'm a junior at the Poughkeepsie High School. A little bit about myself since I don't want to say a little bit too much. I play a lot of sports. My main sport is soccer. I'm also enrolled in indoor track this year. For indoor track, I'll be doing the triple jump throwing. I'm not exactly sure what I'm throwing. And the 300 meter dash and I play soccer as a midfielder. I actually have a camp tomorrow. So I look forward to that a lot. But outside of the sports, I would say I just like writing and talking if I'm being honest. Like I actually have an Instagram dedicated to just me speaking on what I believe, you know what mean? I don't post too much on it anymore since you know school, it's a handful but I definitely do want to get a little bit more into writing and a little bit more into the Instagram page that I had before where I could speak just a lot. 

Matt
Thanks, Chance. I mean, it sounds like we can almost feel the track and field team here. So the triple jump is distinct from the long jump, right? Those are two different events.

Chance 
Yeah, they're similar, but it's not the exact same.

Matt
Yeah, I don't, that's something that I don't know too much about. Okay, very cool. And finally, Devin.

Devin Suchite 
Hello, I'm Devon Suchite Rosado. I am also a junior from Dover High School. I like doing art and creating things, and I also enjoy reading and writing myself.

Matt
Thank you, Devin, and thank you, everyone. We are about to get started, but first, full disclaimer, we are not here as experts who are going to tell you what Frankenstein is really about. Instead, we're going to talk about what Frankenstein is to us and why we value the text or not. We are going to ground our readings and evidence from the text, but if we do a decent job, you should be walking away from this with more questions than answers.

We are also not here to summarize the text for you because whether it is a podcast or an essay, you should not spend your precious time giving your audience a literal summary of something that they need to read themselves. Read the thing, people. 

And so we're going to start with our context. There are very few people who have not, at some point, met Victor Frankenstein and his creation. So our first prompt is, where and when did you first meet Victor Frankenstein? Was it a film? Was it a theater or TV show adaptation? Was it a previous reading of Mary Shelley's text? So I'm interested in your context in terms of where did you all meet these characters and then how did that dialogue with your reading of Frankenstein in the Bard Sequence Program. 

Finn 
So I read Frankenstein for the first time in English class of sophomore year, but I mean, you know, like I think growing up in the United States, you kind of have some idea of like a green monster with bolts in his neck, like walking around like the countryside. But I was really introduced to Victor Frankenstein himself in English class.

I really enjoyed the book, but I didn't love the way that my teacher had us read it. Personally, I really enjoyed discussions while reading a book, and we only had two, like maybe 30, 35 minute discussions throughout the entire time that we read the book. Other than that, it was he would read it to us or sometimes we would read a couple paragraphs, and then sometimes we would have reading for homework.

And then we also switched between reading the 1818 text and a graphic novel version of it, which I felt kind of left out a lot of details, what with the like language and stuff. Although I did kind of enjoy being able to have like a visual.

Matt
Thanks, Finn. And just to follow up, have you seen the film adaptations? I know you mentioned, you know, the monster with the bolts and the green skin and things like that, but in general, have you seen many or few of the film or TV adaptations or other ways that Frankenstein and his creation have been presented?

Finn
I haven't seen any official film or TV adaptations, but a couple years ago my sister watched this children's show and it had young versions of lot of characters from Halloween type of things. So there was a young version of Frankenstein, but I don't think that really counts as a film adaptation.

Matt
Thanks, Finn. Devin, what's your context with Frankenstein?

Devin
I would have to say from my memory of way back in my life, it would have to be from a episode, I believe, from Scooby-Doo called Frankin' Creepy. I don't fully remember the episode or what happened in it, but I do just remember the design of the monster. But that's not really Victor Frankenstein, really. I found out about Victor Frankenstein, the actual guy from just social media and being around the internet and seeing people call him a mad scientist. But I fully read the actual text this year in my first year seminar class. And I would say it's very different compared to what the media portrays Victor Frankenstein as, as compared to how he is, at least in the 1818 version of the book.

Matt
Thank you, Devin. Chance?

Chance 
So in all honesty, I didn't really watch a Frankenstein film or really see anything regarding Frankenstein prior to this class. Like I watched Hotel, I didn't really watch Hotel Transylvania, but I know walking past my living room, I'm gonna see it on the screen. And that's the only real recollection that I have of Frankenstein. And just like Devon just mentioned right now, I think I might've seen Frankenstein in that same Scooby-Doo episode that she sold him out. But I had no expectations realistically going into the story other than I was a big green zombie and that's really is all I had to think about. But after reading this, story of Frankenstein, now like I didn't necessarily attribute Frankenstein to have any real morals, emotions, feelings. I just thought it was a creation and now it just, you know, walks around with his arms up just mad at the world.

So that's honestly what I expected, but to see that, you know, the supposed monster craved affection, craved family, craved love, had feelings, and it wasn't just, there was a method to its madness, you know what I mean? It wasn't just boring evil. So that's definitely what I would say is like the before and after of my view of Frankenstein.

Matt
Thanks Chance. And Rowan.

Rowan
Okay, so I'm actually in a very similar boat as Chance where I didn't really grow up with any real, I guess, Frankenstein adaptations in reach. The closest thing I probably grew up with was Coraline or Get Out. Love Jordan Peele, by the way. And I also can't stand horror, so I will usually watch video essays on them instead, especially the social commentary, horrors that Jordan Peele does. But the actual kind of first introduction to Frankenstein was through the author and her life, Mary Shelley and her husband. The first ever kind of interaction with her work came after I found the poem titled Ozymandias by her husband, or who would become her husband, Percy Blysse Shelley, and I fell in love with the poem. And I was like, my God, I bet his wife is also super cool and gothic and like they're both social outcasts. This must be like amazing feat of like human literature if it's still talked about today. And I mean, I would say that that's definitely lived up to the hype. And I just kind of guess it put me in a weird situation where it's like, yeah, I kind of knew about the hollow, like, you know, walk into a Halloween store. yeah, that's Frankenstein. When you see the green monster. But I didn't really like think much about it just because like I thought it was, you know, like most Halloween characters, they come from like super watered down characters of books, for example, Dracula with Bram Stoker's Dracula. And then like the books that came before it that inspired it and et cetera, et cetera.

Matt
Great, thanks to you all. So I wanna throw it open to some discussion now. What is something you heard that one of your peers say that you think is worth talking about a bit more with the group? 

Rowan
I guess a general question of, do you guys kind of believe in, or like kind of take it as just face value at Frankenstein or like Frankenstein's monster that we know as Frankenstein in pop culture? Did you take it at face value? Like, yeah, this is just mean old grumpy, character who hates the world and just kills people just because, or did you just? I guess kind of think about it more or not. I don't know, I just want to hear other people's opinions.

Chance 
So if the question is, did I think that of Frankenstein before I read the Mary Shelley writing? 100%. Like I thought, like we all had the same image with the green monster with his brains a little bit hanging out his head, just walking around with two straight arms. So there's not really much else to think about that character, you know what I mean? Except for the fact that it's just an evil murder machine. But if the question was more about Frankenstein as we read it in the story, despite it still being a big green murder machine. Now I at least know before it turned into that big green murder machine, it was more so, like there was a quote that said, monsters are typically made from neglect and not born evil. So like that's what my image is now of Frankenstein, but it still is a big green killing machine. But now I know that there's some reason behind it at least.

Devin 
Me personally, the way I've regarded Frankenstein, the monster, the creation, I originally only saw it as the green beast who's scary and wants to hurt people and killed its creator for being brought to life. But over the years, even before the class, I read the actual Frankenstein book, I've seen interpretations of Frankenstein, the monster. To me, it just shaped my view on what it meant, but I never really fully understood that he could be emotional in the way of an actual person as compared to as you see in the book, because people typically flanderize his character to be more of a mindless monster because they see that as scary and more profitable, I suppose, rather than him being a thoughtful being.

Finn
To kind of build off of like what Devon said about him being a thoughtful being I think like my idea of like the creature before being introduced to him I don't know. I think I kind of just had this idea that he was just this completely like no thoughts just like his only instinct is you know to wander the countryside and kill people, but I think I kind of like, cause I mean I was introduced to Frankenstein through like, pop culture and media, I think very minutely because I don't know, I never really watched like, some sort of like classic Frankenstein movie. But I think that like, posing the creature as something that's more human and more emotional, I feel like that would kind of make it a little bit more difficult for an audience to either sympathize with the creator or sympathize with the monster because you know on one hand I think the monster it quote-unquote monster does go around and kill Victor's family but I think it also it craves love and Victor completely abandoned it so I think it would kind of like I guess make it a little harder to decide like like who's the bad guy and who's the good guy, which I think is a big part of media now. We need like one bad guy and one good guy.

Rowan
Actually, I feel like we'll get into this conversation a bit more later, but I did want to mention this now. Something that I found really fascinating with at least the time period that the initial movies surrounding Frankenstein and his creation were created. I think the original one was created in 1931. So around then would have been the start of what is called the Hays Code, which essentially was set of moral codes that restricted what could and couldn't be put on TV. And I find it really fascinating how these really morally gray books like The Little Mermaid, Frankenstein, Dracula, I feel like there's a few more, but those are the ones that come to mind at the moment, are just really boiled down to this conflict of good and evil because they don't want to, I guess, set this morality crisis to their viewers, which I find really fascinating with how like, we talk about how America and Europe is supposed to be a place of, there is no lack of freedom of speech, but in a way, there are still censorship, even in times where they were saying that they had the most freedoms after World War I and then later World War II.

Devin
I just want to ask this really quick, Rowan, do you believe that because of the Hayes Code, this led to a more flanderized idea of what Frankenstein was, or do you think it would have happened regardless of the Hays Code?

Rowan 
I feel like it would have happened regardless, however, I feel like it wouldn't have happened as severely, but I think as a society, sadly, we just tend to kind of, I mean, like when Frankenstein originally came out, it was seen as grotesque. There was a lot of people who saw it as like abhorrent. I mean, we talked about this in class.

Shelly published it anonymously so that she wouldn't be receiving backlash. But then when she revealed that she wrote it, she received even more backlash because she was a woman at a time when women didn't usually write it. And so I feel like it probably would have happened regardless. However, I feel like it kind of got ingrained into our pop culture as much because of the Hays Code and because It was just so consistently spewed out in a way that it wouldn't have been as prevalent in our pop culture if we didn't have codes like the Hays code that caused us to have this, guess, morality crisis around characters such as the Creation or Dracula or the Little Mermaid. I hope that answers what you were asking.

Matthew
Great, thanks to you all. Yeah, I mean, the early films, definitely do simplify, right, what is in Shelley's text. And they often explain the creature as having some sort of abnormal brain or when creating, you know, his creature, you know, that Victor Frankenstein accidentally uses the brain of a serial killer or the brain of an insane person. So it's very kind of conveniently explained in that way so that larger questions about human nature are not really raised in the film and instead it's really about a mad scientist who puts this deranged brain into his creation and so the audience you know understands pretty easily that that's why this thing is is not turning out correctly and then they don't have to think more deeply about some of these questions about human nature and what it means to be human and if it were you know, possible to do this thing, to create life from, you know, the body parts of corpses and things like that. What would that life actually be? They wouldn't have to think about human generated life in that way. 

And I do think the reason we are seeing some of these Frankenstein adaptations lately is because a lot of people are worried about artificial intelligence and what it will mean when people give or if people give birth to general AI, will general AI become something like Frankenstein's creation that we won't be able to control it and it will, you know, choose to kill people and things like that. So, I think the early films, you're all correct, they do present a much more simplistic and kind of simplified narrative about what's going on, about science, about morality, and certainly all of those kinds of things. 

Okay, so thank you all. We're gonna move on. Our next prompt is to engage with the professor version of the podcast. So we did a version of Frankenstein on this podcast with a few professors from the various Bard Sequence programs and you all gave that a listen. So I'm really interested to hear what you took away from that. Is there something from that podcast that you agreed with, disagreed with, thought was worth highlighting? What did you all hear when you listened to the professor version of the podcast? 

Devin
I'm going to start off the stuff that I fully remember. It was about the sexuality aspect of it, the homosexual relationships and how that's scary for people then and even now. Because I forgot which professor who talked about it, but they were saying about how it was something scary for people back then and stuff like that. I'm doing it.

Matt
So you're probably thinking of Dr. Ben Bagocious, who is one of our sequence professors who works in Washington, DC.

Devin 
Yes, because I want to bring up something I remember hearing about recently. It's the fact that the idea of cutting out a woman in the relationship, the idea of having a relationship with a woman is just wrong back then for some reason, in some form or way. It's like you can only have relationships that are strong or something with the same sex, but then that causes more problems because then that's more so homoerotic stuff and people would get angry at that and then that would lead to more problems later on and stuff like that. It's just so strange to me that that was such a big issue. And you can definitely tell through the text, I suppose.

Rowan 
Yeah, I actually, because this is also the part of the podcast that I kind of tried to dissect a bit. So I'm going to try, I guess, interpret your nothing burger into what I was also thinking. So what I specifically found fascinating through, I don't want to mispronounce his name, Professor Bagocious. I really found his commentary on, instead of it being like Clerval, who was seen as like a queer allegory, instead talking about Walton as a queer allegory, and instead in talking as Walton as society, which is really fascinating because it kind of opens up a whole new realm of interpretations that can be considered if you take Walton as a allegory for society, or I guess more perfect society. One that has, I guess, restraint in how they are ambitious in what they do, but also in being calmer towards what I guess I think what I remember him describing as non-normal relationships, because Walton was very calm about Victor talking about all these insane happenings and he was just like, okay, continue your story. And he listened through the whole entire, what would become the novel. And I think it just puts in another lens of, I guess, how Shelley thinks society should have been listening to, I guess, queer stories and how informative and while they might be stories of trying to warn people, it also is important to listen to those warnings because I guess in a way to bring it to modern day is that the minorities are going to be the people who are going to tell people who are going to be like the canaries in the coal mine about like different issues. 

 And also how they talked about Victor and Elizabeth's relationship but that's kind of a different thing but I also found that really fascinating and it kind of reopened a whole lot of interesting talks about the text that I don't really remember and then kind of remembered because of this and the fact that their relationship is a whole nothing burger in it of itself and that's for reason.

Chance 
Something that I, it wasn't really one of the more major talking points that they had, but I forgot her name, but. So someone mentioned how the story of Frankenstein was written by Mary Shelley during a time where a lot of corpses were being dug up. And not even necessarily just the fact that she wrote a story about corpses being dug up, but the entire point of a horror story, movie, anything like that. It's supposed to relate to a fear that someone genuinely has. You know what I mean? Like, it's a lot harder to get scared of something that I don't actually fear myself. Like, for example, if you made a horror story about public speaking, I wouldn't necessarily get as impacted by it than someone who had, you know, a lot of anxiety. Right? So that's why I think that, you know, it really was done on purpose. 

Because another story from the time that I actually came across, I forgot when exactly. But it was written by Charles Dickens and it was called A Tale of Two Cities. And it just further reinforces my point because it's another story about resurrection. guess what? It was done through digging up someone's corpse. You know what I mean? And that's how he was brought back to life. And it came after Frankenstein actually. So I think it might have been influenced by Frankenstein as well. like I said earlier, I think Mary Shelley wrote about this because this might be a fear of her own, just like the people of her time. And just overall, it would appeal more to her time period because this is a real and genuine, I think it actually happened too, you know what I mean? So it was a real and genuine issue at the time and just overall, yeah.

Matt
Thanks Chance. And Finn.

Finn 
It was like it was very early on in the podcast, but think it was professor Doyle he had kind of discussed how the creature like embodied this like human experience of feeling like left out and just like not a part of everything good that life offers and I thought that like his note of how this experience is so human. I thought that was very interesting because I think Shelly kind of goes back and forth between like is the creature? Human is it something else? And I think like, the creature kind of experiencing this like very like human feeling of like wow like all of these people have this one thing that I can't have, it helped me I guess like kind of sympathize with the creature and being like wow like this is really why he became so like quote-unquote villainous and I think like getting insight into that was one of my favorite parts of the book itself. But I just think really that like how his experience is so human, but at the same time, it's so far away from being human. I just thought that was like, I don't know, like it felt very interesting to me.

Matt
So in terms of what chance brought up in terms of the corpses being dug up and such, I mean, yeah, that's how modern medicine developed. Which is to say that before modern medicine could figure out what was going on inside a living human body, they really needed to perform autopsies and they needed to dissect dead human bodies down to the minutiae. And back then, you know, there was still a fair amount of taboos around this stuff, and it was generally considered to be creepy work, and you certainly didn't want to advertise that you were doing it. But you have these doctors who are starting to really break those taboos around human dissection and really get in there and figure out at the very, you know, smallest level what's happening in the human body, but also how some human bodies differ from others and how there's a diversity in our anatomy. But the way that they were doing that sometimes was they were going to where, you know, criminals were executed. And then they were basically carrying off the corpses and taking them back to their labs or having their students do it for them. But that's kind of how we know what we know about the human body and the nervous system and the circulatory system and all of these sorts of things. That's how that knowledge was acquired. I mean, there's no other way to learn that kind of stuff. So that is something that's quite fascinating to me. 

But in terms of further discussion, I do want to talk more about this idea of what this text says about humanity and what it means to be human, which I heard a few of you talking about. And then anything that you really strongly disagreed with on the podcast, I know that typically when I ask this prompt, people don't want to come out and say, I heard something I didn't agree with. I didn't like whatever. So I'm interested to hear what you heard about humanity in that podcast and also if there are any kind of sharp criticisms or critiques of what was said.

Chance
If I had to say a real critique necessarily,  one of the wonderful ladies who were on the podcast, she made a comment about how earlier in the story, like in the story of Mary Shelley's story of Frankenstein, Frankenstein was considered to be this grizzly character. And that's how Mary Shelley was trying to portray Frankenstein. And I would say in society, that I lived in, you know, since I was born in the 1800s, like in the more modern adaptations of Frankenstein, then I would consider, you know, Frankenstein to be considered, you know, this evil, grisly, just heartless character. But I think Mary Shelley deliberately tried to humanize Frankenstein inside of the story of Frankenstein. And yeah, you know, he still killed a lot of people. But it's almost as though she was trying to make it sympathize for him, on why he killed all these people. Like, starting from, you know, when he was in the cabin just watching the family, from when he was, you know, ranting to Victor about being abandoned, when he had, he just wanted some company to have, you know, a female Franken... a female monster. I think that all was a deliberate attempt from Mary Shelley to humanize Frankenstein and have us be like, I think there's enough demonizing of Frankenstein after the story was written to really consider the story being written with the purpose of trying to dehumanize Frankenstein and whatnot.

Rowan
I have a small kind of thing I noticed when I was, just looking through and kind of trying to think of something. I remember when there was a point where they were talking about Walton and they mentioned that he was the only one to kind of reach out for support and connection. And I feel like that's something I disagree with. I mean, I understand that through the letters, he was technically gaining connection to his sister. However, it feels like at least at the mental state he was in then and at the end of the book, he was kind of doing it to just kind of show off to his sister like, you know, I'm fine. You're worrying didn't really matter as much as you thought it would. And I feel like there still should be a little bit of consideration to where Walton stands as a man who does consistently put down his sister's worries and kind of makes himself "woe is me." And I feel like, like I said before, Walton is a stand-in for both kind of society as it was and society as it could be as someone who is an observer of the events of Frankenstein as a novel. And I think that there could, there's a bit more nuance to the fact that then he is just, he's completely like the best male character because he listens, he actually listens to his sister and doesn't go to the Arctic Circle like Victor says. Rather he, I mean like they're all flawed characters. I think it's just, there's a little bit more nuance than he is the one that's reaching out rather than he is the one who is initiating contact because he wants to prove something to someone else because of his own ambition.

Matthew 
Thanks Rowan. I think that's more of a standard interpretation of Walton in terms of his ambitions framing why he's there. 

Finn
I didn't really have anything that I disagreed with a whole lot while listening to the podcast, but I think after hearing what Rowan said about Walton being the only character who maintains a relationship, I think what Rowan said, it's not as much that he's maintaining a relationship, because I think we don't really get both sides of the relationship. I think we get the letters from him, but we don't get any sort of response from his sister, Margaret, and I don't know, I just think that like what Rowan said, it kind of turns into him, you know, and it's like, my gosh, like there's all this like stuff going on in my life, but I feel like it kind of ends up from what I saw, at least it kind of ends up him being more like talking at her about like all of the cool things that he's doing like up in the Arctic Circle and less like kind of like a like and how are you doing and like I hope that everything is okay and whatnot I think it kind of ends up just being him kind of like bragging about himself I guess kind of like like what Rowan said

Rowan
And I think it is fair to say that this is a bit more of a standard interpretation, but I don't think that's a necessarily bad thing. I just think if you take it into perspective as Walton is kind of like the way in for society, he stands on the precipice of being completely far gone one way and completely far gone the other way. And I think they kind of push him a little bit to one side too much, and I guess this is just the student's way of saying, is also, mean, popular interpretation also is sometimes not the best interpretation, but it's also the most popular for a reason. 

Matt
Great, thank you all. But enough about what the professors had to say, let's get to the most important prompt, which is what you have to say. So what is your take on Mary Shelley's Frankenstein? What makes this text relevant for you? What are the parts of the text that you really focus on when you read it? 

Finn
So when I read the text, I kind of like I interpreted it as like a critique on society's treatment of women and I think like throughout her novel, think Shelley kind of puts in like all these like snippets of her life and sometimes they aren't snippets because I mean like she was kind of surrounded by death like her mother died shortly after childbirth and she had multiple children who died and then Victor and the monster are both kind of surrounded by death and loss. But I think she kind of really put in this whole thing because she was like, you know, I mean, she was a woman in writing, which at the time it was a like respected authors at the time were all men. And we can really see, I guess, like a lot of aspects of the story that kind of talk about how women are treated by society.

I think that she kind of creates three major female characters that represent the different aspects of womanhood in the early 19th century. I think the quote-unquote perfect woman is really represented by Elizabeth's character. Victor describes her as having some sort of attractive softness and being quote-unquote the most fragile thing in the world. And he goes to just like all of these lengths, like likening her to animals, and I think that kind of shows that at the time the perfect woman was just some sort of docile creature and like a sort of pet that would be willing to bend to the will of men in society. And I think Margaret's character kind of represents how women are like overlooked in society. 

And we really see this in, I guess, how like Walton writes his letters to her. He mentions their shared relatives as their brother and sister, but he words them as specifically his. I have a quote here on learning that my father's dying injunction had forbidden my uncle to allow me to embark on a seafaring life. And, you know, he's referring to their father and their uncle as my father and my uncle. And I think that it really shows how much of the societal focus at the time and still to this day is really on the works of men and how Margaret's experience and just her possession of these relatives being hers as well is just completely looked over. And I think the creature's bride kind of represents not only the lack of autonomy of women, but also the threat that a powerful woman had to society at the time. Like she had the potential to be created because men wished for her existence. But when Victor destroyed her, it was because he realized that she posed this like really huge threat. And even though the creature had sworn to like leave humanity alone after his bride's creation. I have another quote here. "She had not and she who in all probability was to become a thinking and reasoning animal might refuse to comply with a compact made before her creation." So the bride, I don't think she just poses a threat because, you know, she's capable of doing everything that the creature's already done, but she's also a woman unbound by any societal agreements or laws, and this is very scary to society at the time. So I think like that's my take on Frankenstein.

Devin 
To what Finn said, yeah no definitely, the women in the story, are cast aside and I think the word would be gentrified, but the men are at least in Victor's eyes because he was raised that way and stuff like that, the whole patriarchy and stuff like that, which doesn't excuse his actions, it just gives I suppose like a reason for why, but I believe like that's the purpose of like them being in the book and like how they're perceived. The way they're treated, it's like to show or to at least criticize the very things that Shelley probably faced herself as being like a woman in like the 1800s, as well as like being a writer as well, which is like even more of a taboo subject or topic than if she were just to be like a bit more of spunky woman because she would actively be against what a woman should be during that time. She's actively thinking, she's being intellectual and stuff like that, which is unheard of for them. Well, not really unheard of, but more so something to be stigmatized and stuff like that. especially with characters like Justine, who Victor pushes aside and he's like, my woes right now are worse than hers when she's going to be executed later on because he feels like he is like, at a worser moment than her because all he can think about is himself and regards these women as objects. He even refers to Elizabeth, who's supposed to be the love of his life, as a summer insect, which is to show how people, or least men during this time, viewed women and how they regarded them. And I would not be surprised if Mary Shelley herself had been regarded that way before and she felt the need to be writing about it, to make it clear. Even if back then people didn't pay attention to it. It's just so interesting to me. 

Matt

 Thank you, Devin. Chance or Rowan?

Rowan 
I'll jump in first. I guess I want to kind of move away a little bit from actual characters and talk a little bit about the amount of nature descriptions that she has in her book. I mean, there's a bunch of different ways to read this. And this is just one I found quite interesting, specifically with the duality of creation and destruction surrounding the creation and Victor in kind of paralleling ways.

One of the most interesting things or interesting scenes in this book to me was when the creation was describing his first interaction with fire. When he was like, you know, going near the embers and was trying to touch it and then it hurt him and going through the emotions of something. How could something so beautiful harm him? And then using that same fire, not like actually, but the thing of fire to then burn down the DeLacy's house when he was cast out by them. And I think in some way that and like one other scene that I'm going to mention later were kind of like the nails in the coffin to make the creature what Victor would eventually describe as the monster because through most of the book, Victor does not describe the creature as a monster. It is only after I wanna say the end of volume two that he does get into that. And I find that really fascinating. And then in a kind of parallel way, Victor usually describes, for example, before he meets the creature, he is up in the mountains and is describing how beautiful it is, specifically in a snowy setting, which is essentially the antithesis to fire. And in a way, kind of, and then he eventually is found nearly dead in the snow, which I think is really fascinating with how it links to his own life and death. And then the creature is the one who's creating the life and death in a way with starting a fire, but also killing it in a way or killing Victor in a way because of forcing him to go out on the ice. And I feel like it's just kind of really cyclical and I feel like I could go into a whole kind of ramble about that, but I just find there's a lot of really fascinating nature allegories for specifically the relationship of Victor and his creation with the story.

Matt
Thanks Rowan. And that probably does come a lot from Romanticism, from that particular literary movement that Shelley and her husband and Lord Byron and many of these other folks in that social circle were, were very much a part of and interested in, and this idea of nature as the sublime, as a window into beauty itself and things like that, but also in Gothic romanticism, you can also focus on what is sometimes the bleakness of nature and its power to also annihilate and destroy, whether it's fire or the Arctic circle or things like that. But that's really cool that you were picking that out as you were reading the text. I think that's something that often students will kind of pass over or skim over as they read. So that's really fascinating. Chance?

Chance 
My personal takeaway, it really was two things. The first one being the connection from Mary Shelley's real life to the characters in the story. And the second would be the ambitions of Frankenstein originally being similar to, you know, many ambitions that I have and I'm sure all of us have as well. But to start off with the connection from her real life to the characters in the story, we all probably have a little something about the gender roles and the sexism that was going on at the time of her writing the story. And I feel as though it just couldn't be any better exemplified, not only through the plot of the story, but through the characters as well. 

For example, this was a time where a lot of these things are now contrary to what we have today. But the perfect girl was quiet, timid, by to yourself, pretty much the exact description of Elizabeth Lavenza. And how she was described as, know, playful, soft, docile, old, just things of that nature. And I think there's real deeper meaning to that, especially since during this time, like how I believe Rowan mentioned it, women weren't even supposed to necessarily be writing stories in the first place. So to see how a quote unquote, imperfect woman who's doing something she's supposedly not supposed to be doing would just describe what a perfect woman is to her. That really intrigued me personally, because I was like, I think that's on purpose as well. And also, because she wasn't necessarily supposed to be writing, that's probably why she wasn't claiming the work as an author when she originally wrote it. And the author was anonymous before she eventually came out and claimed the story, right? And that reminded me of how Frankenstein, Victor, he didn't want to claim the monster either. You know what I mean? So I think it's literally the same thing because not only, well, I guess, you know, Mary Shelley's book didn't, you know, kill a lot of people, but I think it was reflected in Victor not wanting to claim Frankenstein. And I think that was intentional as well, especially because she included the letters before the story and the introduction as well. I think it was all done on purpose, really to just help us make that connection ourselves. 

But in terms of the ambitions of Frankenstein, resembling many ambitions of our own, know, Frankenstein at the start, he was like, like when he first got into science, like for example, I remember when I first got into art and it, you know, the drawing, it didn't motivate me to create an eight foot monster, but it motivated me to be like, you know, I'm going to be the best artist in the world. I'm going to make all these pictures. I'm going to do all these things. And you know, I went and spent $90 on markers and pencils. Horrible decision, because I don't even use them. But I guess Victor's version of spending an absurd amount of money on markers and pencils was making a monster, you know I mean? Out of his own scientific ambitions. And it really does really relate to my life, I'm being honest, instead of saying the ambitions of our own. Because my dad warned me too. He was like, are you sure you want to be spending all of your birthday money on this, because I think it's gonna blow over. And I feel as though him telling me that actually motivated me to spend the money more. You know, like almost in a sense to prove him wrong. So I think Victor, especially with the hostility, like the hostility that he reacted with when people told him, these old books that you were reading, like when he was reading, I think it was called, Albertus Magnus and like the old stories, when he was, you know, met with criticism, especially from his professors, I definitely do think that motivated him to pursue science even more. 

And the last little connection would be how the creature was isolated and just reflecting the same feelings of loneliness that Mary had for herself because she was born without a mother. And I feel as though the depth, especially of the isolation that Frankenstein had to endure, not Frankenstein, that the monster had to endure. You can't fake that, you know what I mean? Unless you went through something similar, I don't think it's possible to write in the same depth and whatnot that Mary was able to, especially because she lost her mom and Frankenstein didn't have anybody at all. And it was probably just a craving for affection and just connection that really motivated Mary to write a lot of these things. 

Matt
Thank you, Chance. Rowan, I cut you off a bit when throwing it over to Chance there. I want to give you the opportunity to jump in. I apologize for cutting you off there.

Rowan 
No, it's all good. I was gonna mention something about, I just really love descriptions of nature, but I also did wanna mention how absolutely real that is of you hance to have spent 90 bucks on art supplies and then never use it. I have definitely done the same. And I also just wanted to mention something, because I think it's a really important aspect of the story that sometimes gets overlooked. I think it's just the impact of motivation when it comes to mental health. I mean, they definitely didn't have as much, I guess, research on this or any, like, guess, big ideas as we do now. But I feel like in a way, once Victor finished his creation, he kind of just fell into what we, I guess, we could see as a depression because of the fact that he did what he set out to do. And then he was completely done with it. He didn't know what to do with himself. And he threw himself into the care of Clerval or Clerval threw himself into caring for Victor because he was so sickly because he wasn't actually taking care of himself. And I think that also just speaks really true to a lot of people who have dealt with academic burnout, with creative burnout and just the fact that it's a super cyclical cycle that sounds redundant, but in the way that you can't ever escape it. in a way, Victor kind of just sets himself up for failure because he is just so ambitious. And then he's, but he doesn't find anything else to connect himself with so therefore, once he finishes one thing, his, I guess, perception of reality is completely gone because he has completely based it all about creating this creature and therefore he doesn't have a life outside.

Devin 
Can I just say, I had the thought just now of maybe Mary Shelley, she herself, was scared of the idea of turning out like Victor. Of course, not going on and digging up dead bodies, but just the idea of getting so caught up in her own work in some form of way. Because my personal, my general take of Frankenstein, it's about hubris and stuff like that, about people being ambitious and not knowing when to stop. And I feel like maybe that was her own fear, that her writing this book might be her undoing, especially if all the tragedy that had already followed her life. She was already taking this big leap of publishing a book as a woman, and she was likely terrified of it, as well as the possibility of her child ending up like the creation or the monster, of resenting her for essentially like, bit, like, I don't know, giving the child, like, this life of, having their mother be someone who's, a promiscuous figure of some sort, or, like, some scandalous figure who did something that wasn't supposed to be, like, done by women and stuff like that.

Rowan
I have a really quick thing to add on to Devin's and then I will shut up. But I did want to mention that that's kind of what Shelley went through. She, I feel like, resented her mom to at least some sort of degree because one, she died before she was ever able to really get to know her and two, she left her with this huge legacy to fulfill. And also, like, kind of, she was infamous because her mom was infamous. So she couldn't really, even like before she was even, I guess, really conscious of her life, she was already perceived as someone who would be quote unquote promiscuous because her mom was so outspoken and so was her dad.

Matt
So I am going to move us forward because a number of the things we're talking about are covered in our later prompt. And I think if we keep talking about that now, we will exhaust our opportunity to do that prompt. So I'm going to move us forward. And the next one is our close reading. Zoom into the text, pick a word, phrase, passage, that is really important or interesting from the text and tell us why that word, phrase, or passage is worth reading really closely. What do you get out of the text by reading this particular part of the text closely?

Rowan 
This is kind of similar to what I was talking about before with kind of the word choice of creation or creator and monster. And this is kind of the antithesis to this because this is a quote from the creation himself. And this is when I believe Victor refuses to, like fully refuses to create the monster, or sorry, not create the monster, but create him a female companion. And he says, "You are my creator, but I am your master. Obey." And up to this point, from what I can recall, the creature has always referred to Victor, even though he didn't like him in some sort of venerated way. He believed that he was capable of good, that he would see that he is eloquent, that he is able to express himself and show him that he has been through wars, so therefore he must owe him something because he gave him this life. And in this moment, Victor finally says, okay, I don't want to have any part of this. You are a demon, be gone, foul beast, all the nasty things. And I feel like this is a major kind of power shift, though it might seem kind of minute. It's kind of the part where the creature finally snaps and in is finally able to realize that he has the strength over Victor in this moment. And even though he is still technically outcasted, he still has the ability to take or give what Victor wants. And eventually, what Victor kind of fears about him is the fact that he'll kill Elizabeth and in this way the creature does essentially become his master because he is hanging this I guess not fate but that's the only word I can think of right now, over his head. And I think it's just a really fascinating switch from the power dynamics between the two and how it kind of just snowballs for the rest of the story where the creature is finally freed from this feeling that he is indebted to Victor instead Victor is indebted to him because he is allowing him to stay alive for a good portion of the rest of the novel.

Matt
Thanks Rowan. Devin, what's your close reading?

Devin 
It would have to be the part of when he is clinging on to, I believe the old codger's name was Old Man Delacey or something. "This I thought was the moment of decision which was to rob me of or bestow happiness on me for forever." It's just the fact of how the creation is so tunnel visioned on like trying to get these people to like, I guess care for him because it's just he desires so deeply for this care that he has not been getting at all. He has been rejected thoroughly throughout his entire existence. And like the only way he's felt like some form of acceptance was hiding away in some like essentially like the shed of someone's house and doing them like acts of services which they don't even recognize as like another person possibly being just rather as like an act or like a sign of like a god of sorts and it's just the deep and great need for like care is just like there and just like such an interesting idea to me. He feels empty about it I would say and like that's his whole thing is like to desire this, but unfortunately, the world doesn't see him as deserving of it because they see him as a terrifying monster because they cannot see him for more than what he is. They only see what they see as terrifying being that's all stitched together and has lifeless eyes and is barely able to talk properly. It's a horrifying thing, but at the end of the day, he still has a desire, a need for comfort. It's just unfortunate that he was like led down this path and became the way that he did.

Chance 
I decided to choose one quote and then really expand on it, because I feel like it encapsulates a lot of the book inside of this one quote. And it reads, "I had feelings of affection and they were required by detestation and scorn. I was benevolent and good. Misery made me a fiend. Make me happy and I shall again be virtuous." And those are words of, you know, as you could predict, the monster. It just really taps into the isolation theme of the book. And ever since the monster got brought into the book, I think that's really what the entire point was. And it kind of goes back to what I said in the last question and how Mary Shelley, you know, being born without a mother, she felt isolated. You know what I mean? She felt alone. And that's really what this quote was really speaking to. So the monster, he's saying that he was originally here with feelings of affection, you know. He wanted he wanted love, know what I mean? And like I said earlier, monsters are made by neglect not born evil, right? And the monster himself is saying that his feelings of affections were required by detestation and scorn and I think it matters because when a lot of people actually they have innocent or you know not evil just loving like, you know, intentions, but when they're met with evil, it kind of like builds resentment inside of a person. 

And that's what ends up turning the person into the monster that we view them into. So this is literally the monster himself saying this, and it kind of taps into just, you know, the central idea of the whole novel. So that's why I really decided to choose this quote. And I really do think it matters because we see it in real life and the entirety of the story is almost, you know, dedicated to this exact same thing. And it's kind of the same thing with Victor himself, where he originally wanted to just be, oh, this great scientist. He was interested in, I think his name was Agrippa, Albertus Magnus. And then he was just met with constant, know, this constant detestation, just constant, nah, that's not true. Or this constant, oh, you can't do that. And that's what built the resentment in him to go and do something crazy, which is the same thing in his own monster, where all this detestation and the scorn that he keeps facing, it turned him into the monster that we see him as. So that's why I chose this quote and I thought it was pretty interesting.

Finn 
So I chose a quote from like right after Victor creates the creature and then you know he's kind of like wow like I selected like such perfect beautiful like features for him like why does he look so funny? And so the quote I have is "I had selected his features as beautiful" and then there's like a big break in the text between that part of quote in the second part "Now that I had finished, the beauty of the dream had vanished and horror and disgust filled my heart." And I think it was really interesting, his mention of the beauty of the dream had vanished. think at this point in the story, think young Victor, I think he's very cocky, he believes in himself a lot. And I think he kind of has this hubris where he's like, you know what, I'm doing this. So it must be like a really great thing to do because I'm just like, I'm really smart and I'm really gifted and I'm trying to prove something and I'm going to succeed at that. And I think like he's very full of himself, but I think he almost admits that he's overly ambitious here. Cause I mean like his creation of the creature in itself was a huge ambition. And like, it was a dream, and it wasn't very well thought out. He did it for fame, and he did it to prove something, but he didn't really think about any like negative repercussions that it could have in the future. He only really thought about, I think like, what good could come out of it, because he only thought that a good thing would happen. I think he didn't think about what could go wrong. And I think through him like, you know, talking about like, why, like, why does a creature look this way? Like, I thought he was going to be so perfect and just a strong, good-looking science creature. He's admitting that he made a mistake. And I don't think he doesn't do that a lot. And I think it's really interesting that here in the story, he's admitting that it was just this huge, unrealistic idea of his that he really just wasn't able to achieve.

Matt
You all focused on some element of Victor or his creation here. So I think I definitely want to get into that a bit more. I'm hearing how things like loneliness and isolation really shaped both of these characters and the misery that they felt from these various social forces acting on them. I'm also hearing things about a kind of master slave dynamic developing between Victor and his creation. So I'm gonna throw it open to some more discussion about Victor and his creation here in terms of the forces that shaped them and that led them to act the way they act. And as always, I'm interested in the question of how responsible you find them for your own actions, given the context of the story. So for example, you know, do you kind of let the creation off the hook a bit for some of their actions? What about Victor? Do you find Victor to be just a terrible person who's overly ambitious or do you find something redeeming in him? Do you see him also as a human character that you can identify with or not? So let me go ahead and throw it open to you all. Victor and his creation.

What do we think?

Devin 
I feel like they're both responsible for their actions, like the harm that they cause people. For example, like Victor creating a monster therefore harms the people in his life. And also him going through periods of not talking to people, which is sort of on his responsibility. It's also sort of on the responsibility of the people who should be reaching out to him, like his family and stuff like that. And then there's the monster, or the creation of where he's responsible for taking the lives of people. Because he felt unloved, because he started to have the idea forming in his head that he couldn't be loved, and so he decided to take that anger out on innocent people who didn't know better, I suppose. Yes, they rejected him, but that doesn't give him the right to kill people because they don't accept him or are related to the person that had hurt him before.

Finn 
I think that they're both responsible for their own actions, you know, being that they are individuals. But I think that they're also like partially responsible for the actions of each other. I mean, I think like with like Victor's actions impacting the monster's behavior, I mean, I think that kind of goes without saying, like Victor completely neglected his creation. And I think that really caused the creature to have this like, I guess kind of warped sense of connection. And I think it kind of speaks to how like, if you don't have somebody to look up to, then you really don't know what you're going to become. And you don't even know what you want to become because you don't have anything to base it off of like you don't have a role model. But I think at the same time, Victor's reasoning for you know, kind of running away, it's like it's because he was scared, which is like I mean, I think it's understandable, you know? I mean, if I made some sort of like creature out of parts of corpses and it like, you know, and I like caused it to be alive, I think I would be pretty scared too. 

And then I think in the case of the creature, I think I understand why he did what he did because, you know, if your like whole existence is kind of just put in this really strange place of you don't know where you belong and you kind of live in between all of these different types of worlds, between life and death and human and non-human and if you're able to place the blame on one person, which I think in a way the monster is able to do that, I think it's understandable that he would want to take it out on his creator. But at the same time, think like what Devin said, it's unfair of the creature to hurt like innocent people who like, not only did they not know any better, like they didn't know, they didn't know that Victor had created this like monster. And I think like, I don't know, I think they're both very flawed in, I guess, like their execution of displaying their feelings. I think they both struggle a lot with kind of being able to like deal with these feelings of like, don't know what to do or I feel very stuck and then they end up taking it out either on other people or they take it out on themselves by shutting everyone else away.

Devin
I would also like to state of how like, they sort of said it in the Professor's podcast of how both Victor and the monster like sort of feed off each other in a sort of way. They both kind of needed each other even like if they hated each other and they both wanted each other like dead, they both needed each other to keep going down this path and without like Victor, the monster, I guess, sorta gives up from what we can tell. It depends on how you read the ending, but it's just like... This toxic need for this person that you hate so you can keep going on with yourself because otherwise you wouldn't know what to do anymore. Devoting yourself to something this horrible to take responsibility in, as well as the responsibility aspect of Victor. He typically does not take responsibility. He just doesn't, as I said earlier, with Justine, he feels like his woes are worse than hers. And it's like, dude, you could just make this all better, but instead you're running away from your problems like you did before with the creation. You were scared, but you're still running away from your problems.

Rowan 
I guess my take in a nutshell would be that, Victor and the creature are definitely, they have, I mean, they're count, they have to be accountable for their own actions. I mean, they had control over them. However, the creature more than Victor had less control over his situation and how his reaction was to said situation. For example, I mean, he... while all this whole story is going on, he's like, well, I can understand less than a few years old. And by all considerations, he would be super, extremely well developed as like a toddler. However, because he is unable to exist in, I guess, would be considered moral society, he would never be able to learn what is right and wrong or how to interact with people. And because of this kind of, like you mentioned, Matt, this kind of focus on natural beauty and the sublime, the creature is kind of like this antithesis to it because of the fact that he is manmade and also what they consider ugly. 

And Victor, on the other side, is, I mean, yes, kind of. He's more of a product of the fact that he was given no restrictions by a family that loved him and he was super invested in what he wanted to do. And however, that kind of turned into his downfall because of the fact that no one decided to ask him and kind of turn him away from the total extreme of what he wanted to do. So I feel like in a way, I mean, like at the end of the day, they both should be held accountable for their actions and they are responsible for what they did in the story, however, I feel like in certain circumstances, is arguable that the creature did not have as much context to how life should be compared to Victor and therefore isn't as, shouldn't be held as responsible for how much destruction it caused.

Chance 
In terms of who's guilty, which isn't really the question exactly. But between the two, I would definitely say the creator is always gonna have a role of responsibility in what the creation does. Because if I created a plane that had a few malfunctioning parts, then the plane inevitably crashes. As a creator, I definitely did play a role in responsibility because Frankenstein didn't have to be eight foot, fast, strong and all these things. And Victor didn't have to neglect the creature despite like how the creature outwardly appeared. I feel like Victor could have still stayed inside of the creature's life because I don't think that the creature was originally like from the start, like this evil being who just wanted like the creature said it himself. He had feelings of affection, but they were put to the side because of how he was treated, which made him this monster that we see him as today. So I would definitely say out of the two victories, definitely the one that's more guilty, but the monster still didn't have to go kill people. You know what I mean? So I think they both, just like how I think Finn said, they both had partial guilt, especially when it comes to Victor creating the creature in the first place and not giving the creature the affection and care that it deserves.

Matt
Thank you, Chance. And thank you, everyone. We can, you know, again, also keep this discussion rolling into the next one as well. So the next one is our student prompt, which was suggested by Rowan. So thank you for that, Rowan. 

And so the prompt is that Mary Shelley comments on a number of themes that are still being discussed today, including things like gender, sexuality, science, and ambition. Does Mary Shelley handle these themes in ways that are relevant today or has this text become very dated and no longer relevant? What do you think ultimately about Frankenstein? Is this text highly relevant for young people to read and talk about today or has it become very dated? 

Devin
I remember hearing the phrase, the more things change, the more things stay the same. I feel like that sort of applies with Frankenstein, like the novel. I feel like it's still relevant whether people want to read it or not. People will read it and like they might feel a connection to it. I do think she like the themes that she wrote about sort of still uphold to this day just because the issues that she wrote about sort of still live on through this day. It's why people still go back to it, think. Especially with movie adaptations, this year there's a new movie adaptation of Frankenstein. People are still adapting it because they feel like it still relates to the modern day and the modern age and the relevant feelings of people of today.

Rowan
I kind of want to be a little bit of a devil's advocate in saying that it is still pretty relevant, but in ways that I don't think a lot of people really take away from the book is at least my take on that issue. I mean, for example, the fact that it's set in a time that is very different from ours now. I mean, it's been over over 200 years since the original version came out.

However, I feel like a lot of the themes and even just looking at how society reacted to it then and how people are still reacting to it now and how it influences the different versions of it, I think is very important. For example, like the subtext about homosexuality, about women's rights and autonomy and also just how people are ostracized for some things that they can't control. And I mean, the book was taken in a way that was very negative initially and Shelley, as many of the authors of her time that are well known now, usually didn't really end life in a whole bunch of fame. It was usually, like for example, Oscar Wilde, he died destitute in the middle of Italy. 

I think the issue is that people nowadays, especially with the onslaught of social media and AI is the fact that people aren't reading between the lines and taking what is relevant to us now and actually interpreting it and kind of trying to apply it to their own lives and rather taking it at face value as still the stereotypes of the monster became evil and is trying to teach Victor a lesson by forcing him to follow him this through like the Arctic rather than the fact that it's a commentary on power dynamics of what you owe to the people who raise you or don't raise you in the fact that the blood of the covenant is thicker than the water of the womb, which I think is a really fascinating, I guess, saying that we kind of lack in context because we just say blood is thicker than water when in reality it's very different. 

Finn 
I mean, I think like when I saw this prompt, I think it immediately kind of made me think of AI and how in a way AI is kind of our Frankenstein's monster. I think I mentioned earlier that from what I understood from the text, Victor Frankenstein creates this being kind of in an attempt to like something or to gain some level of recognition and I think we kind of created AI as a stepping stone to this absolute level of knowledge and not to say that AI is going to be the downfall of humanity because obviously I hope that it won't be, but I think that the way that Victor kind of like abandoned the monster and kind of let it gain this power. I think it kind of speaks to the way that like we're not abandoning AI so much as that we're feeding it with, you know, I mean like information and all that stuff that helps it become so human-like in a way. I mean in the past couple of years, AI has just become less robotic, I suppose.

I don't know, just, think that it like, I think it really kind of applies to like how we still have to be careful with the things that we create because we really don't know how they could go and I think, you know, I mean like you understand everything looking back but I think it kind of speaks in a way that it's like you need to kind of look forward more when you're exploring new territory. 

Rowan
I really quickly want to make a comment on what you said, Finn, about how AI is kind of like the modern day Frankenstein's creation in a way that I think there's a big difference in the fact that AI is super social and it is, I guess, based on the fact, and it's very out in the open. It's not like it's being shunned. A lot of major companies are.

I find it really fascinating that I guess in today's world instead of I guess fearing this change especially I guess bigger corporations are taking it willingly and are even willing to take away artists and writers and people who would have been like Shelley I guess back then and take away livelihoods because of this Frankenstein's monster that we've created because we feed it off of, I mean, like creations that humans have made. And yeah, it's just because it's basically just cobbled together by even some dead people who can't even, give any, consent to having their work used in AI.

Finn 
Yeah, I think you're absolutely right. think, I guess saying that AI is like our modern day Frankenstein's monster, I guess that's a poor choice of words because like you said, AI isn't being shunned. But yeah, I mean, I think like what I said, I think Frankenstein kind of serves as this cautionary tale to be aware of what we're putting out into the world. And I think I really see that with the things that we're using AI for and how I think people have become more not necessarily dependent on AI, although I think in some aspects some people have, but I think how we're incorporating it into things to such a huge degree.

Matt
I'm gonna jump in here a little bit and step outside a little bit of my role as moderator and suggest that I think one of the differences here is that we need to factor in the profit motive. There are a lot of people shunning AI, there are a lot of people who hate it and who call it slop and things like that. I am among them, I don't like AI in general, I really don't use it. I'm worried about it and things like that. But in terms of those people who are embracing it, I think we need to look at whether or not they stand to profit from it and whether or not they see them or they believe that one day they will profit from it. I think a lot of AI companies right now are actually losing money, but they're predicting a future in which they will eventually profit off of it. And so I think that probably will account for some of those differences that we're seeing here. 

And we can even bring it back to what Chance was saying earlier, which is like, why did Chance buy a $90 art supply set? And the reason is probably that that set was advertised as you will become a great artist if you buy this. In a similar way that, you know, basketball shoes, for example, are advertised as like, well, why is that guy a great basketball player? Well, he's got the best shoes, obviously. If you bought the best shoes, you would also be a better player, right? If you had the paintbrush, you would be a good painter and so on. And so I think the profit motive and the way in which a lot of companies are sinking a lot of money and expecting a lot of profits from AI, I think that probably has a lot to do what we're seeing here in terms of some of those differences. 

And I do think in Shelley though, we do see the beginnings of something like the fame economy that we do have today. And Victor is trying to become this famous scientist, the most famous scientist of all time, the one who created life from death, right? And that is his kind of motivator there. And again, you have some CEOs today who are hoping to give birth to the AI for similar reasons, but also for the profit motive and because it lines their bank accounts. So normally as moderator, I don't jump in with those sorts of things, but I don't know. The itch was kind of scratching me. So don't forget, we live in a profit driven society. I guess this is my addition here. With that, I'll step back out.

Chance 
I think we did appreciate you stepping in though, Mr. Matthew. So, but just to, I guess a little bit deviate away from the entire conversation of profit. I think, I guess profit does tie into it a little bit, but I think the issues of gender, sexism and ambition will most likely never end, in all honesty. And I feel like profit played into the issue of ambition as well, like, people have ambitions to be rich billionaires and whatnot, which led to the creation of the AI and led to a lot of the things that we see today that's bad and good, you know what I mean? But particularly the issues of gender in today's society, I feel like gender and like issues like, for example, racism as well, it's always going to be different compared to older times because of all the progress made to bring it to as far as we came today. 

Like for example, back then if a woman even, you know, just wrote a book and you know how many female authors we have now, then back then it would have been like all over the news like you won't believe what this lady just did. But today, if a woman like have we seen with the, you know, the not to get too political, but with the election, when a woman tried to run for office, which which also shows how much progress we made as well, because she was able to get that many votes. But even still, there was a lot of people who said, I can't vote for a woman to be president. You know what I mean? And so I think that this third was not only to show like a comparison between then and now, but also to further emphasize how much progress we made as a society and as a world. 

And also, sexism in general, because Mary Shelley definitely wasn't a perfect woman according to her day's standards. I think that, you know, sexism and gender, like they both tie hand in hand, like the things that women weren't supposed to do or that they could do and the things that, you know, men were supposed to do and could do. But I think I already spoke enough about that as well. But I think when it comes to ambition, like how we were speaking about earlier with AI, ambition will always live in everything we have and who we are as people. In seminar, I'm writing for our paper, I'm writing about discontentment. And I feel like ambition and discontentment, you know, they go hand in hand because you can't have ambitions for something you already have. And I feel like with discontentment, it's just the driving desire to get something that we think that we don't have already. So I feel like if you do go hand in hand, but it's dangerous. Like both of them are definitely dangerous.

For example, AI, like, yeah, it's, you know, this helpful thing or whatnot, but it's still, at the end of the day, it's really easy to get dangerous. We have like a million movies about, you know, the robot apocalypses to show the exact, you know, risks that we're facing. Ask people who use AI and ask people who use robots and whatnot. like I said, these stories is always gonna be relevant, just in different ways. Victor's ambition led to him making a, you know, a murder machine monster We can see our own ambitions and where that's gonna get us if you pick if you're picking up what I'm putting down, but that's really all I have to say. 

Devin
I mean, another aspect of this is just like, it's the fact that a lot of these things are enduring issues. And like Chance said, these things are still here. They just take on different forms as things go on. And it's just like, unfortunately, it's something that's happening. It's just like, we're able to have these texts that still remain relevant, which I'm pretty much thankful for, I guess. Because people can at least put their own meaning to them, at least try and make them more so for like modern times for modern audiences to try and understand it. Like yeah, some themes will be like lost in like the context of it, but at the very least it's something rather than like nothing like people getting nothing of substance for like to challenge their ideas at the very least.

Rowan 
I just really quickly wanna jump in and piggyback off of what Matt talked about earlier with profit and how that's really changed perception of society, especially now. And I guess I just wanna pose a question that doesn't have to be answered, just guess something to stew in, is would Frankenstein's creation in our day be ostracized or used as this, I guess, way of, I guess, promoting eternal life. Would he be ostracized or would he be celebrated? Because they are able to profit off of it and because there's just so much wide, the ability to spread news so fast is super rampant today, especially with the internet and, yeah, I just wonder, especially with the fact that a lot of medicine, or not medicine, but I guess medicinal inventions such as the incubator for premature babies came around because of people able to profit off of things that were seen as weird. That specific example comes from, I think it was just a person who worked in the circus and took premature babies and was able to put them into incubators and show them at the circus and raise money so that they could get care that they needed and therefore make incubators a common place in hospitals for preemie babies.

Devin 
I think it would really depend on who would get to him first. If you were to be shown on social media, I feel like the internet would be more than divided because there's a bunch of people who are really against things that are different. And malicious people who want to profit off of things, because we can see this even in modern day, of where people profit off of people who are strange. For example, guess we can use an example of lolcows, I guess, of where people gain entertainment of making fun of people, regardless of even if they did something bad or not, because they are being funny to them in their eyes and they're someone they can ridicule. But I really feel like it's more so depends on who would be interacting with him first, who would socialize him, and what... It's just a complicated thing, I suppose, because the media is just like a big conglomerate with a bunch of people who have different opinions and are all shouting against one another.

Finn 
Yeah, I mean, I think like what Devin said, I think it really depends on who gets to him because I think, you know, on one hand, if you see some like eight foot tall guy who looks dead, but he's walking and like talking, I think you would be like, what is this? Why is he here? He's obviously very different from me. And that's kind of scary. But I think on the other hand, there would be people who want to like take him to a lab and to study him. Possibly for like decades because I mean, you know, like I said, it's an eight foot tall dead guy, but somehow he's not entirely dead. And I think people being people and with much of the world, you know, being like a society that runs based off of how we can profit off of things, I think people would use, like I think that people would study him in order to profit off of him like how can we make this into some sort of like what Rowan said some sort of eternal life thing like how can we tell people that like when you die we can take your brain and put it into something else and then we can like shock you back to life and you'll be a little different, but you'll still be back so I think it really depends on who gets to him And then I think that would impact what they do and how they would profit off of him.

Matt
Thank you all. When I die, I don't want to come back. Leave my brain alone. I'm just going on the record for that one. 

With that being said, let's move on to our final prompt, is the Hollywood treatment. So I asked everyone to think about casting their own version of a Frankenstein movie and to think of just a few people that you would cast into the most important roles and/or the director slot. So, I do want to hear who you've casted. And then there's a second part to the prompt, which was suggested by Devin. So thank you, Devin, for that one, which is, you know, in all of these film adaptations, the directors change a whole lot from Mary Shelley's text to make a film. And so I'm interested to hear what you think in terms of, how accurate should film adaptations of an important text be? Should a filmmaker just try to entertain people and should they play very fast and loose and take whatever they want from the text but put other things in there? Or do you feel like filmmakers should be more accurate to the original text in terms of representing what the author actually wrote. So let's go ahead and just start with your castings and then we'll close with a discussion of film adaptations and what a filmmaker either does or does not owe to the author of the text. 

Finn
So I'm going to be completely honest. I don't know a lot of actors by name or the ones who I do know by name. I don't always know them by face, but while reading Frankenstein, I kind of I had this idea of like I don't I don't exactly know how to put this but I think like like very like sharp features and I was actually looking through young male actors in their 20s and 30s and Timothee Chalamet came up and I was like, you know what? Yeah, I think from what I see in Victor in what he looks like, I think yeah. But then also, I kind of hate to admit it, but I was introduced to Timothee Chalamet through the film, Call Me By Your Name, which is a queer film and that kind of made me think of Victor and Clerval's relationship. And I think for me that kind of set in stone the Timothee Chalamet thing. But then for directors, I also don't know a lot of directors, but I immediately thought of Tim Burton specifically because of his claymation film, The Corpse Bride. I think he creates this character, Emily, who kind of balances, and he also creates another character, Victor, who, and they both kind of balance like, existing between these two worlds and wanting something that they're not entirely sure that they can have. And I think it also grapples a lot with kind of like walking on the fine line between not only life and death, but between like having what you want and knowing that you can't have it. And I think also in a lot of his films, he plays into very gothic elements and I would love to see the gothic elements that are already very present in Frankenstein kind of delved into more, I guess, in a film production of it.

Matt
Thank you, Finn. Chance, who do you have?

Chance 
So personally, if I made my own adaptation, I would cast Andrew Garfield from the Amazing Spider-Man series as Victor because to me he gives off an impression of I guess innocence and a bright heart. Like he has good intents and a bright heart, but it just doesn't go good. You know what I mean? Which is perfect to Lee encapsulates the character of Victor in my opinion. So that's why thought he would be a good person to choose for it. And he just seems like someone that make a drastic mistake, like, you know, an eight foot murder machine. 

But to cast someone for Frankenstein, that's just not possible in my opinion. Unless you guys happen to know someone who's seven foot in approximately 400 pounds lean, you know, I don't think you could really cast someone for his position. So I think my friend named greenscreen, I think he would do a good job for it, but, I would say when it comes to decorating his costume, I would make sure that each part of his body, like each part was like in a fragment kind of, like someone's, you know, literally what happened. Someone stitched together a bunch of pieces together and each part is like different colors. And I don't think I would, I think I would try to make his head look like kind of presentable. So that way when he's talking and when he's saying these things that are actually intelligent, like how he does in the story, you wouldn't see like something that it's just not even possible for them to say something of that nature.

Matt
So we basically have a Cubist Frankenstein, is very interesting. Devin?

Devin
In my eyes one thing I feel like that would be like interesting idea is like Victor He was like more portrays a younger face like maybe around the ages of like 20 at the start of like the like him telling his tale and then like later on in the film like he gets like he gets aged so like at least have like an actor who's like able to like pull off sort of like that as well.

Rowan
Okay, so I just want to take a quick moment to make note. Chance, I think you would be pleasantly surprised by the, I'm gonna completely butcher his name, but Guillermo Del Toro's Frankenstein, the one that recently came out and that we watched a little bit in class. Jacob Elordi, who plays the creature and who I absolutely love. He is such a cool guy and he loves his dog. He is six foot five and he does a wonderful job and kind of really encapsulates how he described like thinking of the creature as. And also the makeup and costume design for that movie is absolutely beautiful. And there's also a reason why I put him as, I picked three possible directors and he is one of those three. I kind of focused a bit more on like people who I think should direct it or could quote unquote, because as with most other people, I am not very good with actors and I would want people who are a bit less known to probably do this movie because I feel like when you get to those people who have been in the industry for very long, you get this edge of like fakeness to their acting.

And I feel like this movie is so raw that it really needs a lot of energy that I feel like younger, not younger, but newer actors bring. I feel like for the more sage roles, for example, like the professors that Victor kind of speaks to and he meets like Professor Krempe, I don't know how pronounce his name, and the other one whose name I'm blanking on right now.

I feel like it could be more interesting, however, I think it would be really cool to see less well-known actors cast in such a movie. The two other directors that I... I guess we'll go over both, all three of them. So, Guillermo del Toro, I thought he did a wonderful job on his movie just from a very artistic aspect. However, I feel like it's a very good homage to the original story, however, it is its own story and it and it can't be exactly considered a faithful adaptation because of that. It leaves out a lot of stuff with the conflict with Justine, Clerval, and with a lot of other things. However, it does hone in a lot more on different aspects and stuff that think Del Toro was more comfortable dealing with, which I think paid off in the end because it made for a really beautiful story. And also you could just see that there was a lot of passion put into it. 

As for my next director that I would suggest, Henry Selick, he is known for his book adaptations. He adapted Coraline. He's the man who directed that, and I absolutely love it. He also directed Nightmare Before Christmas. It is actually based off of a poem that Tim Burton made, but then he's the one who actually directed it. He also adapted James and the Giant Peach and most recently he made a movie for Netflix called Wendell and Wild with Jordan Peele. And I think that he might also be really interesting to have as like a producer. Jordan Peele, think, does a lot of very good social commentary stuff, especially modern, so I think he would be very good to add onto the production team. Henry Selick, I just really like his style. He also has a very gothic kind of feel, more morbid, especially because he also does a lot of stop motion animation. I feel like, this kind of movie, feel like could be really good in stop motion if done correctly. 

And then finally, I have Wes Anderson. I haven't seen a whole bunch of his stuff, but I really like how they kind of do this narrative kind of snapshot style where it's usually there's some sort of narrator and then there's like a narrator with a narrator. And I feel like he would be very good at adapting such a story to the screen. And also, he's well known for his color symbolism for how he shoots things and I feel like it could be really cool to kind of dissect that which with such a director for this book 

Anyway, that's my like five minute shveel on that. That went really long. I'm so sorry

Mat
No, you're good. appreciate someone who has a passion for directors. 

Any final thoughts on adaptations to film and what a director or filmmaker owes to the author of a text? Do they owe them a certain level of faithfulness to it? Or should they just make what is good entertainment for the people?

Devin 
I think there comes a point of where you change a text so much it becomes its own thing. I feel like people need to recognize to what extent they're changing a text or a concept before they decide to put a brand name of the concept or idea on it. Like as we can see with the green Frankenstein, that's different than Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. Like that's a completely different concept. They're based off the same idea of being a dead person brought to life, but they're both very different beings. They would be their own persons if they were to meet one another. Maybe they could relate to being brought alive to their creators, but they would be two very different people. One of them kills because they just can, and the other one kills because they went through a life of trifle and had come to the conclusion from what they knew was that the only way to get what they want was to harm the person that hurt them back. And back to like films and stuff like that, I feel like you should at least have respect for the original material if you're gonna make an adaptation and just make sure like you respect it and like, you can't really make like a perfect adaptation like in like a movie for like a novel the size of Frankenstein and like what it is, but at least keep some of the core themes in it and I think it's fine so long as it's based off of it and respecting Mary Shelley and her work, I think.

Finn
Yeah, I think I agree that like there it kind of like there gets to be a point where like can you really say that it's based off of whatever. Like something that I really noticed during the Because when we watched part of the new Frankenstein movie in class I think something that I noticed because it said that it was based off of the 1818 text but there were so many parts of it that were just like, nothing like from what I remember and maybe they did take some parts of it from later texts because I know that when she kind of revised the book later it became a lot darker as her life grew darker through the loss of like her children. But I really think it like they kind of took out, I mean from what little I saw, they took out so many like very crucial characters and kind of replaced them and I don't know I just think like can you really consider it based off of the 1818 text if you take out these crucial points of the story?

Devin
Also quickly to note, they changed Victor's family life and I feel like him having an enabling family is very important to his character because enabling to that extent could at some point become like abuse or neglect at the very least because you're letting them do everything they want and not telling them no. And that's the reason why Victor became the way he was. was like, he was hubris, he had hubris and no one stopped him. But in the film, specifically Guillermo del Toro's film adaptation, he had a neglectful father and his mother died previously because of what he believed was his father's fault. And I feel like that changes Victor's character in a way, but it's still like fits the theme of family issues, I suppose, in some form or way, but it's just made blatant, I suppose, that it's maybe my issue with it, whatever, it's a movie.

Matt
Yeah, and Del Toro also casts as Victor's mom, Mia Goth, the same actress who later plays the love interest. So I don't know if you caught that, but it is the same actress cast as his mom as the woman who marries Victor's brother and who Victor himself is lusting after. And so there's some interesting kind of Freudian politics there about young Victor and feelings he had towards his mother, which are interesting and which I don't necessarily want to get into here but yeah if you do re-watch it you'll probably clock this time that it's the same actress playing the mother and also the person that he later lusts after so that's a thing. That was a choice that was made which is interesting. Anyway. Rowan I'll let you have the last word

Rowan
Okay, thank you. Sorry. I feel like I've been yapping so much, but I do want to mention that I found that really fascinating and I really like that choice for the I mean, I guess that movie specifically, but otherwise just for generally I really do do agree with what Devon says about like there is a degree that you kind of owe to the author if you're going to say that it's an accurate, like faithful, adaptation to a book. However, I feel like that's mostly usually the internet that does that, like saying it's faithful or not faithful. And therefore, it's kind of subjective at the end of the day, I just feel like, specifically with the most recent Guillermo del Toro's version, there was just a lot of major characters who were lost. And therefore, I feel like it really did kind of suffer from a loss of original direction and that's like my major issue and I also just really miss Clerval and I think I really miss the fact that they got rid of a lot of subtext because of that and therefore they got rid of a lot of, I don't know, very interesting, like I guess food for thought from the original book and I feel like it could have brought it to a lot more audiences and I feel like in a way, even though feel, think Del Toro was trying to avoid it in the end he did kind of fall into the trap of good and bad in the fact that he got rid of a lot of the original text. So I feel like that kind of, it's a very slippery slope at the end of the day. And it's just a movie. It's a movie. People will enjoy it regardless.

Matt
Thank you so much to all of you. This has been really just a wonderful conversation. I really, really appreciate you all. I hope you enjoyed it. I hope this was meaningful for you all.

Rowan 
Thank you so much for having us. This was a lot of fun.

Chance 
Thank you as well, Mr. Matthew. 

Devin 
Yeah, thank you, and this is like really nice.

Finn 
Yeah, thank you so much. This was such a great experience.