Diana did a read-along!

Here are Diana's thoughts on Frankenstein. Enjoy!

"I agree with many of your sentiments about the book. I admit that on a second reading, I found the pace a little slow, and had to drag myself through a number of the scenic interludes, where Victor traipses here and there through mountains and various European countries, trying to feel happy but NEVER succeeding (woe is me!). The parts where we do have conflict and confrontation, though, are so taut and emotional. The monster is so eloquent, and listening to his prose made me pained that he couldn't find a way to improve his appearance, as he did his intellect, in order to integrate into society. He has everything else Victor could have hoped to endow him with: compassion, kindness, intelligence, but his frame is too large and his face too inhuman. Before reading this I had never conceived of Frankenstein's monster as a pathetic or pitiable character, but his inability to connect with anyone and to suffer, isolated, his entire creation, broke my heart. Mary Shelley's original work has so much more pain and subtlety than any subsequent versions, and while later retellings center on the destruction and horror wreaked by the monster, Shelley's original really looks at the horror of the monster's creation itself, and how creating something he wasn't ready to take RESPONSIBILITY for ruins Victor's life. It's more about the father/son relationship between the creator and the created, and takes a fairly heavy-handed moralizing stance. Certainly, though, you can see why the idea has remained fascinating and terrifying for centuries."