The Book Club: Frankenstein by Mary Shelley with Gina Bontempo | The Book Club

This episode of The Book Club is alive! It's alive! I'm Michael Knowles, and this month we are covering Frankenstein by Mary Shelley. But first, before we get to that, you know it's very tough to make reading a priority these days. Well, at least it used to be. But at thinker.org, what they do is summarize the best in new and noteworthy non-fiction. So, actually you'll get some classics, like Dale Carnegie's How to Win Friends and Influence People, and you will get modern classics, like Jordan Peterson's 12 Rules for Life. If you want to challenge your preconceptions, that's good. If you want to expand your horizons, that's good too. But most important of all, if you want to sound smart at cocktail parties, go to thinker.org. T-H-I-N-K-R.org. No E. There's no time for that. Start a free trial and put your mind in motion. All right, we are alive. My mind is in motion. My wonderful guest, Gina Bontempo's mind is in motion. Now, we must put this episode, much like Frankenstein's monster, into motion. Gina, thank you for being here. Thanks for having me. I am so pleased that you made me read this book. Somehow, I never read it. No teacher ever assigned it to me. I never picked it up. And it is so tremendous. But the story of Frankenstein, and actually, I don't want to omit the subtitle, because I think the subtitle is very important. Frankenstein or the Modern Prometheus. We'll get to that in a little bit. But the story is very different. When we think of Frankenstein in the modern culture, we think of some zombie type guy with two bolts sticking out of his neck. Could you briefly, before we get into the real profundity of this book, can you tell us what happens, just nuts and bolts of the plot? Sure. And it's a tough one to summarize, because it's a story within a story within a story. But we start out with Robert Walton, who is a captain that is commandeering a ship to the North Pole. And he and his crew get into a little bit of trouble. They get stuck between two large sheets of ice. It's quite dangerous. They're not really sure what's going to happen. And as they're stuck there, they see a man who's out in the snow and the ice with a dog sled, with a couple of dogs around. And this man is obviously not in good shape. So they rescue him. They bring him on board. And as they're nursing him back to life, he starts to tell his story. And that man is Victor Frankenstein. And so the remainder of the book is him telling his story about how, you know, starts out with, like all horror stories do, a very peaceful, beautiful, idyllic life with a beautiful family. And living in Switzerland. Yes. Yeah. Beautiful scenery with, you know, lovely father and a cousin who was like a sister to him. But a life that's marked with tragedy. So his mother dies at quite a young age because she's caring for her, you know, sort of stepdaughter slash niece that she adopted. And is caring for her when she has scarlet fever, dies. And so, you know, this life that's marked with tragedy, he then goes on to school and he has a singular obsession with science. Yes. Which is, you know, one of the main themes of this book. And he becomes obsessed with creating life. And he wants to create life out of nothing. And long story short, he creates a monster. And the funny thing is, in the book, as soon as he creates this monster, the monster awakens and scares him so much that he flees. So he runs out of the house and he says, oh my goodness, I can't handle this. And he starts walking around the town square. And then the story is kind of interrupted there when his best friend from home, Henry Clerval, comes to study at the same school that he's at. And then it sort of goes off where he doesn't see the monster for a while. He goes back to his home. You know, he sees his family. And then tragedy strikes again. And this time it's the monster who killed his younger brother. And then the rest of the story goes on where the monster kills his younger brother. And then that leads to a trial where a family friend, Justine, is framed for his younger brother's murder. And then she dies. And then later on, the monster kills his best friend, Henry, and then kills his wife on his wedding night. And the wife is... When we say that the... So the wife is the cousin, you know? Yes. They're theoretically not... Either they're not very closely related or, in this edition, they're not related at all. They're not related. It's not that creepy. It's not a true cousin. Very, very close to one another. Yes, they grew up together. From the age, I think he was five years old, that the daughter was adopted into the family. So, you know, he called her her cousin. So they ended up getting married. And as the monster promised, which I'm sure we can get into soon, the monster promised, On your wedding night, I will be there. And Victor thought that he meant he would be there for him. He would be there to kill him on his wedding night. So he steps away from his bride for one moment. The next thing you know, he kills her on the night of their wedding. And then after that, you know, he just dives deep into madness and into so much grief. And then his father dies shortly after. So, you know, the book is, of course, marked by all this tragedy because he creates this monster. But what's so interesting is that in the middle of all of this, he encounters the monster for the first time. And this is after he kills the younger brother, William. And the monster, another story within a story, the monster recalls to him what he's been through over the last several months when they've been apart. You know, when Victor went off with his family and sort of tried to forget that the monster even existed. And he tells this sort of sweet story about how he finds a cave to live in. And he starts watching this family that's living in poverty in a cottage. And the monster has so much affection and has such a connection to this family. And he teaches himself how to speak. He teaches himself how to read. And he observes this family for such a long time. And what's funny, and I think that's why it's interesting that a woman wrote this book because there is so much heart in this horror story, right? There's so much heart in this monster that he becomes so attached to this family, all he wants is companionship. He just really wants to be a part of this family's life. And he wants to see them smile. And he leaves wood in front of their doorstep so they can build a fire every night. And then sort of the saddest part of this book, of course, other than the tragedies, is he appears to this family. And he approaches the blind father. And he tries to develop a relationship with him. And they are so terrified by his appearance when they see him that they drive him away. And so that's what's so interesting is that there's so much heart in this book, especially with the monster. Yeah, and then to round out his story, he then begs Dr. Frankenstein to make him a companion. Just wants a lady friend. So they can go away. And Frankenstein says, well, I'm not gonna make another one of these crazy monsters. And so then the monster kills all of Frankenstein's family and friends. And then Frankenstein pursues him all the way up to the North Pole. So now Frankenstein is pursuing the monster on these dog sleds. And then the book ends where it begins, on this boat. That's right. Okay, so that's a very, I think, thorough summary of what goes on. But what does it all mean? I'm struck by something here, which is Frankenstein, we think of as the name of the monster. Of the monster. But Frankenstein is not the name of the monster. The monster has no name. The monster, we just call him Frankenstein's monster, or the wretch. Or demon. Or demon, yes. I think it's interesting because I do wish that the monster had a name. And I think that's the whole point, right? Is that as you're reading this, you actually feel so much more for the monster. I mean, I get annoyed by Victor during the book. At some point, I'm like, okay, so you create this monster, and then you can't face your creation, so you just run away. And there are so many times in the book you get upset because he doesn't even tell anybody. He knows who really killed his younger brother. And he knows what actually happened. And he let Justine die. And he still doesn't tell anyone. And he's marrying the love of his life, Elizabeth. And he knows the monster is gonna come on his wedding night. He doesn't say anything to his wife. There's so many times you get- But you know who he says killed his brother and ultimately killed his wife and killed Justine? He says- He himself did it. Because he, in this fit of pride, in this desire, he says it explicitly, to be like God, to create a race. He wanted glory. Yeah, a new creature that will adore him, a new race of creatures to adore him. He has unleashed this evil on the world. And so he takes responsibility for it. And it would seem to me that part of the reason the monster has no name, one is that the creator, unlike the real creator of the world that creates Adam and who gives a name to Adam, this creator hates his creation. Unlike God, he doesn't love his creation. And also that there seems to be a closer connection here between Frankenstein and his monster. A duality in that both of these beings sort of make up one person, don't they? I think when we pursue our ambitions and pursue our glory, something that Dr. Frankenstein says at the end, he says, do not do this, friend of mine on the boat. Please do not pursue your ambitions. Do not pursue knowledge. Don't do these things. It can unleash a real dark side of you and this shadow, this darker part. And so I think when Frankenstein is blaming himself for the deaths caused by the monster, he's absolutely right. Right. And then on the other side of that, what does the monster want? What are his greatest desires? It's connection. It's companionship. He wants a relationship. And so that is the two sides, right, of the same person. And I find that to be so interesting because you are rooting for the monster, weirdly enough. I mean, you want him to have a lady friend because in a way, because he says to Victor in the book, he says, if you create a female companion for me, you will never see me again. We will go off. We will live in the mountains. We will leave you alone forever. And in a way you believe him. You really believe that's what he wants. When you think back on it, you say, I don't know if I believe. But in the moment, you certainly do. That's right. And so you've got this guy, Frankenstein, who is brilliant. And he's interested in science and the powers of science to remake the world, to make men as gods. He could be a really great man. He becomes a very wicked man because of what he's unleashed. The monster is eight feet tall. He's very strong. He's very fast. He's very adept at learning. While observing this family in the cottage, he picks up languages. He reads books. He crucially reads Paradise Lost by John Milton, which I think factors in here. Frankenstein's monster could be this really great, but he's a wretch. His creator hates him. He's made to look so hideous in such a way that the human senses cannot overcome them. And there's this line in here, which Frankenstein realizes. He says, to be a great and virtuous man appeared the highest honor that can befall a sensitive being. To be base and vicious, as many on record have been, appeared the lowest degradation, a condition more abject than that of the blind mole or harmless worm. This, and this is the monster realizing this, that man can be so great. But you know, the greatest saints of history could have been the worst sinners. And the worst, they just have these talents. They have these capacities, but they can be turned to evil if man oversteps his nature and runs away with his vices. And I think that is the warning, right? About this singular obsession with ambition, with this obsession with glory and trying to play creator and play God in a way. And I think that of course is the warning tale of this story is that when you, and this is something that I had mentioned to you earlier, is that you notice that the further and further the victor goes away from his family, right? The less that he speaks to his family, the less connected he is to his family and the more isolated he is. And the more he goes towards this, this, you know, obsession with glory and wanting to really chase his ambition, that's when he turns to the most evil side of him. And the more he falls away from the people that love him, because I mean, and something that I also mentioned to you earlier is that the character of Elizabeth, there's a lot of critique about her because they say her character's not formed enough and that female character should be, you know, should be more interesting and there's not really much depth to her. Well, I think she's actually a light in this book. And I think that she is an anchor for Victor that he should have listened to. And he really should have thought more about what Elizabeth represented to him, represented light. Notice she always talks about nature. She's always encouraging him, look at the scenery, look at the mountains, look at the sunshine. Even when they got married and they're traveling, he said, she says, look, Victor, look at this beautiful world that we're in. And she's constantly reminding him of his humanity and trying to bring him back to that goodness. And I think she's actually a wonderful character for him in this book, but he chooses to ignore that. And the more that he ignores what she brings to him, the more he gets obsessed with his ambition, that's when he really falls into that evil side of himself. And the context of the book is that we're in the Romantic era. Obviously, Mary Shelley is married to one of the great Romantic poets, and she's hanging out in a cabin in Switzerland with another Romantic poet. And so they're running in these circles. But we've come off of the Enlightenment, this revolution that man can liberate himself, that the new wielding of science to overcome nature. And then you have this kind of romantic fascination with nature. And here, the downfall of Dr. Frankenstein is that he goes off to college, does things in college he shouldn't do, just like a lot of people do. The wild days. The way so does wild oats. I think what I did wasn't so great, but at least I didn't create any literal monsters. Demons. But one does create sort of demons. One does create sort of monsters. When one pursues knowledge or ambition unmoored from the moral order, what the modern Prometheus does here, Prometheus, of course, is the titan in Greek mythology who creates man out of clay. And he gives man fire. And Zeus gets very upset about this and has an eagle eat his liver every day. And then it regrows at night, and then he keeps eating the liver. And so you have this modern Prometheus in Frankenstein to quote so many movies from the 90s and 2000s. He spent so long wondering if he could. He never asked if he should create this monster. But he does in the flash of the moment when he actually creates the life here. He sees for the first time the horror of what he's done. He's been in this manic, crazed mode of just trying to do it. He realizes that he should not have done that. And he has committed a sin so great that it will haunt him as our sins haunt us. It will haunt him for the rest of his life. And I want to go back to the character Henry because it actually, it's a sort of other parallel to that. This is Frankenstein's good friend. Right, Frankenstein's best friend who was also murdered by the monster. I don't know if you remember, but Henry's father did not want him to go study. Henry's father did not want him to go to the university. He wanted him to just go into business. Yes. Don't learn about these highfalutin things. He thought that the obsession with knowledge was a waste of time. And in a way, there's something about that, right? There's something about Henry's representation in the book and what Henry really was for Victor. Just like Elizabeth, he was somebody that kept trying to pull Victor back. And especially right after he creates the monster, who does he run into? He runs into Henry. And it is a breath of fresh air because right before that, he's not eating. He's emaciated. He's deep into isolation. He's obsessed with creating the monster and the monster turns out to be hideous and ugly. And you're reading this and you're like, I feel kind of ill reading this. This is not fun. This really feels like a horror story. But then he runs into Henry and Henry is a breath of fresh air and he brings light into his life. And so I think it's really interesting that Henry is that person whose father did not want him to pursue knowledge that much. Because what they're learning in the university, it's not trade school. They're going there and they're learning the liberal arts. They're studying how to liberate oneself. And so traditionally speaking, the liberal arts, as opposed to say the mechanical arts, is the education that we have to become free. Because we're born, we have all these base passions and desires. We have to learn to suppress them. We need to cultivate higher reason. We need to discipline our will. Then and only then can we really be free. And in this period of time, this definition of liberty is starting to break down. And some new more radical theories of liberty are coming out. This idea of liberation that I'm going to break, not just the bonds of say some convention or the bonds of my ignorance, but I'm going to break the very bonds of nature, which is exactly what Dr. Frankenstein does. And there everything falls apart. This problem for the wretch, for the monster, is perhaps it's that the humans won't love him. And he doesn't have a companion. And his creator hates him. Okay. He is outside the chain of being in his words. He has no place in this world. Because his very creation is a violation of nature, he cannot be happy. He has to be miserable. And he has fury against the world. He wrecks this guy's life. The wretch is more advanced in many ways than Frankenstein, not just physically, but even mentally. He educates himself. He learns language. He's reading all these great, great poets. And the more conscious he becomes, if you have a sort of Clairvaux who's not all that conscious, and then you have Dr. Frankenstein, and he's much more conscious, right? And he's making himself more and more conscious. Then you have Frankenstein's creation, this wretch who is so aware of him. He hates when he looks at himself in the mirror. One of the reasons that Frankenstein won't make a companion for him is he says he'll abhor the creation, just as he abhors himself. That's right. And there's a really famous line in here where the monster says, when he realized his nature, he said, evil thenceforth became my good. Urged thus far, I had no choice but to adapt my nature to an element which I had willingly chosen. The completion of my demoniacal design became an insatiable passion, and now it has ended there as my last victim when he kills Frankenstein. This is a line that is clearly inspired by the lines of Satan in Paradise Lost. And the monster points this out. He says, I could have been an Adam, but I felt more as a fallen angel, as Satan. He does say that. He says, I could have been your Adam. He says that to Frankenstein, yeah. And then you also have to think about what Victor almost pushed him to do. Because he despised that monster so much, because he hated the way he looked, and because he wanted nothing to do with him, what would the monster turn out to be if maybe Victor had treated him differently? What would the monster had turned into? If he had recognized that he was not merely entitled to tinker around with nature, as we do when we pursue science. But he also had a responsibility in that act. When he created this new Adam, when he acted as the modern Prometheus, he had a responsibility to his creation that he instantly denied and ran away. Wouldn't even give him a name. Tried to hope that it would never come back to him. And by shirking that responsibility, if you look around our modern culture perhaps, when we only pursue our liberation, our ambition, and we ignore all the duty, all the obligation, all the things that we owe, things tend to go awry. Yeah, that's why we always talk about how liberation does not mean just chasing after your human desires all the time, right? And so this idea, our modern culture, right? We talk about how freedom is sleeping around, freedom is selling your body online, freedom is taking off more clothes, right? And we're selling this package, especially to young women. And it's so destructive to them because there is no freedom in that. There is no liberation in that. In fact, that's bondage. It's a complete opposite. It's actually a slavery. It's a type of slavery to be a slave to your own human flesh desires. Right, right, of course. And we once understood this as a culture. You know, this was essential to the founding of our country and to the classical and Christian understanding of liberty and that seems to be breaking up kind of right around this time. So the monster is now being pursued by Frankenstein. This is the very end, right? Frankenstein is going to kill this guy. He's going to get his revenge and the monster wants him to get his revenge. The monster never just leaves Frankenstein alone. Why? Would seem to me, if I may. Yes, please. I ask rhetorically. It would seem to me because creatures have a natural desire for their creator. We, whether we want to admit it or not, whether we want to acknowledge the God-shaped hole in our hearts, we are naturally inclined toward our creator as is even this wretch and pursues him to the ends of the earth. Yeah, I think there's something to that because what I was going to say is he is, he's so, he's so upset that his creator has not, has not given him what he thinks he deserves, right? Or at least has given him any sort of affection or attention, right? He's so, he's so deeply upset and so deeply hurt by that that he cannot leave Victor alone. And I also think about how, you know, Prometheus, his fate was to have his, he was chained up and to have his liver eaten, which is quite dark if you really think about it, have his liver eaten every day and it would regenerate and his liver would be eaten again, it would regenerate. It's sort of similar to how Victor, he just kept losing the people in his life that were most important to him. He lost somebody, he lost somebody again, he lost somebody again and it was like every day something was being eaten away at him. It is worth noting for the context here, if people are confused as to why it was the liver that was always being eaten out of Prometheus, it's because it was widely believed at the time that that was where the emotions were. You know, that was sort of the center of passion and emotional life and so his emotions always being tumult. It ends at the North Pole. Frankenstein dies. The monster says, what, now I'm free, now I'm gonna go have a good life? No. No, of course not. Well, before that, I also have to say that Victor actually asked Robert Walton to avenge him. This is the sailor that refers to. Right, this is the sailor, right? So this is the captain and it's funny because, you know, when we think of Frankenstein, we never really think about Robert Walton, but he's actually a very interesting character. You know, it starts out with him and it ends with him and he ends up having a very, a strong friendship with Frankenstein and they have a lot of similarities. They're actually both obsessed with glory, right? Walton wants to get to the North Pole, even if it means risking the lives of his crew. And Walton has a similarity to the monster in that all Walton wants is a friend. He writes this in letters to his sister. I've always just wanted a friend and I never got one. Yeah, he wanted companionship. Frankenstein begs Walton to avenge him. Please look for the monster. Please keep going and look for the monster. Thankfully, Walton doesn't have to do this. Nope, he just- He turns around. Yeah. As he is pursuing exploration with his crew, the crew sort of has a mutiny and they say, we want to turn around, take a vote. And he turns around, he pulls back. All of the pleas in the novel are to say, don't go there. You don't know what you're dealing with and you might unleash actual demons on the world. And then he turns around, he sees the monster. And what I find to be so interesting about how it ends is that the monster kills Frankenstein and then what does he do? He doesn't just go off and continue living and try to find more people. It's as if he cannot imagine living without his creator alive. Right. And that's how it ends, right? He throws himself into the fire. He cannot imagine living when his creator is dead. Yeah. Yeah, he calls him a generous and self-interested, I think. Self-interested. It's such an interesting, generous and self-interested, self-focused. Yeah. Because I suppose he is both of those things. He does generously give him life, but it's a life that the wretch wishes he did not have. So we should just trust the scientists, right? Is that the takeaway from the book? Trust the science. Trust the scientists. That's right, yes. It's a really wonderful book to read now as we have fallen further, perhaps, than we even were in the 19th century into this religion of scientism. Also, just as an historical aside, it is worth noting that Frankenstein is the first science fiction novel. So it's very interesting, I think, that the first science fiction novel written by a woman. Yes. Yeah, I think so, too. Because like we've been saying, it has so much heart. And there's so much heart to this horror story. And when you think about some of the other famous sci-fi novels, something like Brave New World, it just feels so sterile and it feels cold. But the very first sci-fi novel done by a woman has so much heart. It's so much about human connection and relationships and companionship. And that has lasted. It's timeless. And it certainly relates to our present time, all these years later. I think it was James Poulos at the Claremont Institute who had an interesting observation on this. We might read this and think, gosh, are we becoming like Frankenstein? Are we giving life to these new? But I think it was him. If not, he can take credit for this brilliant idea, which is that perhaps we are Frankenstein's monster. Perhaps the big tech regime that we're living under is engineering us in a way. Perhaps they are manipulating our behavior. And that seems to be an even scarier thought. It is absolutely frightening. I mean, if you really think about it, the level of consumerism that we're at right now, we're constantly consuming and consuming and we're being programmed. We forget there's more than science. There's more than science to think about. There is philosophy, there is theology, there is politics. I don't mean politics in the shallow sense of Republican versus Democrat. There's politics of the public matter. There's so much more to think about than science, which I think is very relevant. It's a very relevant read today because we are seeing the religion of science and the obsession, the singular obsession with science. And as we're still living through these lockdowns that were purely just on the science and where has it gotten us? And I think we must ask that question. Gina, on that note, we'll have to leave it there. We could spend much more time on Frankenstein, but perhaps we'll have to come back and revisit some other Gothic novel or maybe something a little bit lighter with a happy ending. I hope so, yeah. Maybe not a horror. Hopefully we might find a happy ending in our culture. One way to do that is to read the warning signs. I will see you next time on The Book Club. In the meantime, I'm Michael Knowles. Happy reading. Thank you so much for watching this episode of The Book Club on PragerU. PragerU is a 501c3 non-profit organization, so we rely on donations from viewers like you to keep this content on the air. Please consider making a tax-deductible contribution today to help keep this content coming. Thank you very much.