Daily writing prompt

What’s a book that completely surprised you?

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For most of my life, I thought Frankenstein was the silly monster in the Abbott and Costello movies that I watched as reruns on TV as a kid. They would be on Sunday afternoon, and I would laugh and be scarred at the same time, thinking that he was just a monster that was for my amusement. This impression was augmented by loving Young Frankenstein by Mel Brooks, and watching it over and over again.

For the last four years, I have been reading through classics in literature and biography. I made plans to read Edgar Alllan Poe, Bram Stoker, and then Mary Shelley. Out of the three, Shelley was most compelling so I checked it out at the library and made my way through it. The story was so different then I expected. The monster was a creation, not a resurrection. The creator was arrogant, flawed, and filled with the expectation that his creation would be his child and have special gratitude focused back on him. The created was isolated and alone, and without a companion. Frankenstein refused to create again, and the created became a monster that descended into its vices.

It’s hard not to see the story as a sort of dark upside-down of the Christian world view: God creates creatures, but gives them companionship, and then redemption and love. In Frankenstein, the creator leaves the creature alone, without hope, and only a road to disaster in the future. He abhors his creation, and ultimately hunts to destroy him. There was no love there and no attempt to anticipate unintended consequences.

Shelly wrote on the brink of a time of massive social upheaval, where the creations of people would change the world, change government, spark change for the good and for the bad. The 20th century saw the greatest disaster that has ever come upon the human race in World War II and the fear of a nuclear armageddon that led to the crash of communism. The world survived.

Now, I feel we sit on a new beginning this century, where the themes of this revolutionary work can again be seen as prescience. Again our creative abilities are changing the world. Will we wake up to the rise of artificial intelligence as the new monster which we created to serve but in the end rises to destroy its self-obsessed creator? Will the fuel we burn to power our technology warm the earth beyond its ability to stabilize, and subsequently drive our extinction? Something to think about, and I’m thankful for Mary Shelley for speaking across time to our lack of insight and wisdom in a time of unrestrained creation.