What the Story's About Depends on Who's Telling It

Professor Wes Chapman of the English Department just sent this along for posting...

Warning...spoilers ahead...read the novel before continuing...

Frankenstein's monster has become a powerful symbol in our culture of the dangers of scientists' poking their noses into things that might better be left alone, things that humans "aren't meant to know."
Frankenstein's own words support this view of what the novel is about:
"learn from me...how dangerous is the acquirement of knowledge, and how much happier that man is who believes his native town to be the world, than he who aspires to become greater than his nature will allow" (31).
But _Frankenstein_ the novel consists of three main narratives, not just one, and only one--Frankenstein's--is about the dangers of science.
Moreover, the other two narratives ought to make us question whether Frankenstein really knows what he's talking about.

Walton's opening narrative is largely about the importance of friendship. There is little here to contradict Frankenstein's tale directly, at least until after we have read the whole book through, but we should at least question whether Walton's desperate need for an educated friend might make him portray Frankenstein more favorably than Frankenstein deserves.

The monster's tale is much more complex, and a much deeper indictment of Frankenstein. The monster does not care, and at first does not know, that he is the product of a scientific experiment. What he knows is that, thrust as he is without guidance or aid into a state of nature, he is cold, hungry, and miserable. He quickly learns that people judge others on the basis of their appearance, and that because he is ugly they will attack him even when he has just saved a life. He learns more slowly that society values wealth and high social status above all, and that those like him who have neither are destined to be miserable.
Eventually he learns to hate, and to seek revenge, not (he says) because he is the product of science, but because he has been mistreated: "I was benevolent and good; misery made me a fiend" (66).

In short, where Frankenstein sees the theological implications of science as the crucial issue, the monster sees as crucial the social implications of injustice. These views cannot easily be reconciled, or even brought comfortably into dialogue with one another. In this way, the novel is less about the dangers of science than it is about the difficulty and importance of agreeing upon a moral and conceptual framework within which to judge science (or for that matter anything else).

Wes Chapman