This book is one of the many inspirations to my passion for writing. It's why I love characters with fatal flaws. It's why I love moral ambiguity - TRUE moral ambiguity.
It's why I love creating characters that are unreliable, imperfect.
It's why I love gothic horror so much. (11/11)

That's also why I abstain from most film adaptations, because making the Creature like every other cookie cutter monster out there proves that they have missed the point of the material. Victor is not as blameless as he likes to pretend he is at the start of telling us his own life story. (10/11)

Victor Frankenstein is an unreliable narrator. He is a man with an obsession that consumed him. He is an egotistical person with a god complex.
There are so many layers to the story than the surface level premise. It is such a quintessential pillar of the gothic horror genre. (9/ 11)

Victor created him. The Creature is his responsibility. But he refused to reckon with the consequences. And the Creature never wanted to let Victor forget that.
He wanted to make Victor suffer for it.
"You wanted to play god? Fine. This is what your creation can do." (8/11)

His lack of nurturing at the time of his "birth" was the catalyst that made him realize just how cruel the world would be to him. He knew he was a mistake. He knew that the world would never see him as an intelligent, empathetic *human.* All he would ever be seen as is a monster. (7/11)

The Creature is not blameless, but the difference between him & Victor is that he doesn't just acknowledge it. He forces Victor to reckon with the fact that this path he chose is just as much his fault as it is his own. He forces him to never forget it. The Creature never asked for this life. (6/11)

Victor ran away from the consequences of his actions, thus kickstarting every misfortune and tragedy. But he frames it as "I created a monster." "the monster is doing this to me." "It is ruining my life." "It destroyed everything I loved because I refused to make him a companion." No, sir. (5/11)

The Creature telling Victor what happened to him after he was abandoned is why I love this book so much.
It shattered the narrative. Victor was not the only one that was harmed by his obsession, FAR from it. And the Creature confronting him with that fact reminds us of that. (4/11)

On its own, that makes this story like every other penny dreadful at the time Mary Shelley wrote this. But this story is so much more than that. And it's proven to us, the reader, when Victor tells us his encounter with the Creature.
She could have had the Creature be simple, but she didn't. (3/11)

Victor's obsession with wanting to play god is the ultimate cause of his downfall. But he tries to frame his circumstances to Robert Walton (and the reader) as a tortured soul that spent many sleepless nights making the impossible possible, and lost more loved ones in the process. (2/11)