‘for Me, the Story Is Less a Horror…Than a Larger Than...

‘For me, the story is less a horror†¦than a larger than life gothic fairytale’ (Kenneth Brannagh) How far and in what ways do you agree with this description of the text? Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein is a novel which forces the reader to question whether it is a simple horror story or whether it is a gothic fairytale of many depths. Frankenstein is considered by many critics as the first modern horror story ever written, and it opened a whole new world of ideas for novels and has inspired many similar works since its publication in 1818. As we see by the prelude, Shelley’s first ambition is to horrify the reader as she describes wanting to ‘awaken thrilling horror - one to make the reader dread to look around, to curdle the blood and†¦show more content†¦For many readers, Frankenstein is much more than a simple horror story, it is a story about family, abandonment, the consequences of the quest for knowledge, and many other themes which influence the path of the story. One of the most notable themes within the novel is the idea of good versus evil. This theme adds extreme depth to the text, as the reader is left to decide w hich character is good and which is evil. Shelley’s use of intertextuality in the novel emphasises her point, especially with the inclusion of the strong influence that Milton’s Paradise Lost has on the monster. I am thy creature: I ought to be thy Adam, but I am rather the fallen angel, whom thou drivest from joy for no misdeed. From the moment he is created, we, like the monster question whether he is Adam, or the fallen angel, and therefore wonder whether it is he or Victor which is the creature of evil. The tale of Frankenstein leads the reader into the logic of creation and of the mind, and through her thoughts on good versus evil; Shelley also forces the reader to look even further beyond the horror of the novel to the idea of the doppelganger effect. In the National Theatre’s production of the novel, the two main characters switched the roles of Victor and the monster, emphasizing the point that both characters could be in fact