Year 8 Wide Reading Task
Richard Yang
44/9-17 Eastbourne Rd
Homebush West, 2140
25th July 2013
Dear Mary Shelly
I am an enthusiastic reader and a fan of your classical gothic novel, Frankenstein. I didn’t really liked reading science fiction books until I read Frankenstein. There are several factors which made me so interested in it, including its imaginative ideas and thought-provoking plots.
Frankenstein is one of the most imaginative book that I have ever read, there are many ideas that people back then never even thought of. For example, the unnatural way of creation of life is just fantastic – creating a human being by digging up dead body parts and joining them together, it can been seen as cloning in nowadays. However, your book was first published in the 1800s, which was 200 years before cloning was first introduced.
Besides, another very imaginative point written by you in the novel is that, this violation of the natural order is associated with danger, which I didn’t even think of happening at first. The creation, which is the monster, revenges his creator, Victor Frankenstein, bringing danger and horror to him and his family. Normally, creations should thank their creator for bringing him to life, but in your story, this turned out totally in the opposite way because of many reasons, mainly because Victor was shocked by the hideousness of his creation and abandoned him. This rebellion lead to the tragic conclusion of your book, which is after murdering most of Victor’s family members, the monster killed Victor Frankenstein and then killed himself. Personally, I think it is a very satisfactory and effective ending, while it reflects the monster’s thoughts and its character and the result of not considering about the consequences of creating new races of humans. Yet, some readers might not like it as they much more prefer a happy ending or an ending where both main characters stays alive so that they can imagine what might happen next and make up their own story.
Moreover, you have included countless thought provoking plots in Frankenstein, which grabs my attention a lot. Most of these plots reflects the characters, where you applied characterisation. For instance, many plots demonstrates what Victor Frankenstein is like, such as his braveness, for entering unknown scientific lands and completely falling into it. Because of such amount of events that happened, your novel leaves readers with contrasting interpretations of Victor. The reason for Victor bringing the hideous monster to life as shown in the text is because of his desire to attain the godlike power of creating new life, in other words, meaning that he’s doomed by a lack of humanness, but at the
