The 24th Annual Book Report Competition for secondary school students
Class: 4C
Student: Tsang Nga Yi, Afra
Title of the Book: Frankenstein
Author:
Mary Shelley
Publisher:
Black Cat Publishing
Many people think horror stories are direful. They believe that horror stories
can only scare children and the stories are superstitious. However, some of the
horror stories can be meaningful. Frankenstein is one of these stories.
Frankenstein is a celebrated Gothic horror story. It was written by Mary Shelley
and first published in 1818. Frankenstein was also rewritten for many films,
such as The Bride of Frankenstein, Ghost of Frankenstein, The Horror of
Frankenstein and Frankenstein: The Real Story.
The author of Frankenstein, Mary Shelley, was a famous writer. She was born
in 1797 and died in 1851. She was the daughter of Mary Wollstonecraft, a
famous feminist. Her father was the philosopher, William. Besides this book,
she had also written ‘Valperga’, ‘The Last Man’, ‘The Fortunes of Perkin
Warbeck and Lodore’.
It was a story about a Swiss student who created a living creature. Then he
abandoned the creature and caused some serious problems.
Victor Frankenstein is the main character of this story. He was born in Geneva
and had a little brother called William and an adopted sister called Elizabeth.
Victor grew up with them and spent his day with them. When Victor was in
seventeen, Elizabeth became ill with scarlet fever. Victor’s mother nursed her
slowly. Elizabeth recovered, but his mother caught the illness from her and
finally died. Victor fell in sadness.
Few days later, Victor went to a university in Ingolstadt and studied modern
chemistry. He was studious. He became very interested in the human body
and creation of life. In order to study well, Victor worked day and night in the
room and did not contact with his family. Victor decided to create human
beings. He spent the summer on his creation.
Victor finished his creation in winter. When Victor saw the creature made by
him, he felt horror and disgusted. He left the monster alone and went back to
his homeland to live with his family. At first, Victor’s family was happy because
Victor was returning home. However, when Victor was in the journey to go
home, his brother, William, had been killed. At the same time, the people at
there thought Elizabeth’s servant, Justine, was the murderer and arrested her.
Soon, the monster appeared and Victor realized that William was killed by the
monster.
The monster asked Victor to create a new monster as its wife, but Victor
refused to do that. Therefore, the monster started to kill Victor’s family and his
wife. At first, Victor didn’t think that it would really do that. It was because the
monster could not be discovered by other people. Victor went back to his
hometown. Victor and Elizabeth then got married. However, Elizabeth was
killed by the monster during the night they got married. Since the monster was
not known by other people and Victor could not let the people know what the
made things he did, he was not able to tell people the truth. Even though Victor
knew who the murderer was, he could not ask the police to arrest it.
As Elizabeth was dead, Victor’s father felt upset and became ill. Few days later,
he died in Victor’s arm. At that time, all Victor’s family members were all dead.
All his happiness was gone.
I think this is a sad story. All the dear ones of the main character, Victor
Frankenstein, died in the story. In addition, they all died when they were young,
except Victor’s father. It is interesting that the things Victor had faced were
similar to the things happened on the writer, Mary Shelley. The chronology
about what Mary wrote in this book shows that Mary’s mother died after she
had given birth to her. Besides, Mary’s two sons died when they were young
and her husband died before her. This made Mary knew how precious family
was. Hence, the monster in the book chose to kill Victor’s family members
instead of killing Victor. It was because the writer thought family was more
important than other things.
In the story, Victor started to be interested in the creation of life after the death
of his mum. I think he could not accept it. He wanted to find the way to create
lives and therefore, no one would die in the future. However, in the process of
life creation, he forgot the people he loved and things that were beautiful.
When he had finished his work, he realized the things he did was horrible. So,
Victor chose to escape. He forwent the monster he created and went back to
his homeland to stay with his family. When Victor was living with his family
happily, did he consider about the monster?
I think both Victor and the monster were poor, but their misfortune was caused
by Victor. He should think about how to take care of the monster after creating
it. Although Victor might think about it before, he finally abandoned the monster
because of its appearance. If the monster were not ugly, would Victor abandon
it? I think he would not. By referring to the book, Victor was happy and excited
about the creature before the creation of it.
In chapter eight, there was a meeting between Victor and the monster. It was
their first meeting after Victor had created it. In the meeting, the monster told
Victor what had happened to it.
At first, the monster was kind and polite. Even though it wasn’t a human, it tried
to learn the language and the culture of human. It spent a lot of time of it.
Nevertheless, no matter how hard-working it was, people still repelled it just
because of its ugly face. It was usual for the monster to take revenge since no
one wanted to treat it generously even its creator.
After reading the monster’s narrative, I find the people whom the monster met
only judged people by appearance. They were friendly to their villagers but
rude to the monster. In the village, the monster stayed there. There was a blind,
old man. One day, the monster went to the old man’s house when his son went
out. The monster had talked with the blind, old man until his son came back. If
the old man wasn’t blind, I think he would be afraid of the monster. Therefore, I
think most of the people in this story only judged other people by appearance.
Nowadays, many people are analogous to them.
The monster later asked Victor to create a new creature for it as its partner
since no one wanted to talk with it. Nevertheless, Victor refused to create
another creature for the monster because the monster had killed his brother.
Victor should think about the monster. Even if the monster was not a human
being, it wanted to be a human and lived with a partner. If Victor were the
monster, he would not want to live lonely too. I think Victor should help the
monster. Besides creating a new creature, he could also live with the monster
and take care of it. The creator, Victor, could be called ‘the monster’s father’.
How could a father abandon his son?
After listening to Victor’s answer, the monster felt angry and decided to kill the
family members of Victor. The monster would not be happy after the
vengeance. It was because it only wanted to have a mate to live with him. It
didn’t want to kill people.
If I were Victor, I would try to make its appearance to be better looking or live
with it and take care of it. Victor should forget what the monster had done and
forgive it in order to have a fortunate life. When I was reading the story, I felt
Victor regretted the things he did. He had spoken that knowledge was
dangerous. If he had a chance to choose create or not to create a living thing, I
think he would not choose to create it. Do you think so?