Frankenstein question

Cafe Society
1

Hey, I’m just reading Frankenstein for the first time and am noticing that there are things that I wasn’t expecting.

I knew the monster wasn’t called Frankenstein, the creator was, and I knew the monster was lonely and then ran around the arctic, but there were things I expected that didn’t appear. I was expecting the monster to be composed of cadaver parts. I was honestly expecting a lackey named Igor who got a criminal brain accidently.

The criminal brain part is iffy, but I was definitely expecting Igor. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a Frankenstein reference that didn’t include Igor. Igor has entirely pervaded the pop culture grasp of Frankenstein.

So my question is, where did this whole Igor silliness start? Same time as the criminal brain, or after? How did it become such a powerful idiom?

(I’m about a third of the way through the book, so if Igor appears later, don’t tell me. Make something up.)

2

I think he popped up in the first movie - the Boris Karloff one (?). Someone will correct me if I’m wrong. That’s when all the ubiquitous changes from the book happened.

3

Yeah… and wasn’t the Igor character actually named Fritz?

4

Wait’ll the monster learns to read. Hooooboy, that’ll test your suspension of disbelief. No more spoilers than that: you woulnd’t believe me if I told you.

5

I think this also marked the first appearance of the sport coat in Frankenstein stories. :slight_smile:

6

Dr. Frankenstein: - Would you mind telling me, who’s brain I did put in?
Igor:--------------------- And, you won’t be angry?
Dr. Frankenstein: - I will not be angry.
Igor:--------------------- Abby-someone.
Dr. Frankenstein: - Abby-someone. Abby who?
Igor:--------------------- Abby-normal.

    • from Young Frankenstein.

Actually “eyegore” does not appear in the first 2 Frankenstein movies. He does not appear in Mary Shelley’s book. The Ygor like character of the first Frankenstein movie was named Fritz:
http://www.ravecentral.com/frankenstein.html

Ygor (the correct spelling) first appeared in the third movie: Son of Frankenstein
http://www.dvddrive-in.com/sonoffrankenstein.htm

Here is a good web site dedicated to the book and the movies: “the ultimate frankenstein web site”
http://members.aon.at/frankenstein/

7

I thought Ygor appeared in Son of Frankenstein, but as a broken-necked shepherd…

8

I believe “Fritz” was included in the movie mainly so that Frankenstein could have somebody to talk to/interact with while he was getting everything ready, so that the audience wouldn’t have to watch him fiddling with machinery in silence. Then, of course, he’s the one who gets the criminal’s brain accidentally, which is why, in the film, the monster is evil.

9

I’ve read the original Frankenstein 3 times now. I’m left with a question that hurts my brain-how did this piece of crap become a classic?

 I shall attempt to avoid spoilers-

1 Victor faints and/or becomes deathly ill at the drop of a hat. While this is in keeping with the Romantic tradition in literature, it’s not behavior you would expect from a man sturdy enough to raise the dead.

2 He notices only upon animation that the creature is hideous? How do you miss that your creation is 'watery eyed, has skin like a mummy, has muscles that threaten to burst the skin, etc' during all the months you assemble it.

3 How is it that Vic fails to see that all his creation needs is love?

 I recommend The Frankenstein Diaries by H M Venables. I've read this 5 times, and it gets better every time. It adresses many of the failures of the original. WITHOUT SPOILING-The Creature is handsome when brought to life. But, it is only barely alive. Subsequent operations to keep it alive and make it healthy result in a hideous appearance. Victor, rather than a fainting romantic, comes across more as a manic depressive. The passion and determination that drive him are matched by despair and depression. There IS an Igor. He is an actual character rather than a standard cardboard-cutout hunchback. While Shelley makes it clear that the Monster would be good if only he was loved and that it is Victor who is responsible for all the Monster's evil, Venables makes things much more complex. Is the Creature evil or Victor insane? Or Both? It's a marvellous book. To top it all off, Venables maintains that he is not the author and has only translated the actual diaries of Victor Frankenstein.
10

It’s possible that the inclusion of Fritz, the hunchback assistant in FRANKENSTEIN (1931), might have something to do with the success of Universal Picture’s DRACULA earlier that year. Victor Frankenstein was not of the aristocracy in the book, but Henry Frankenstein becomes a Baron in the film (well, actually he becomes a Baron in the sequel BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN after the death of his father) – just like Dracula was a Count.

Dracula, of course, had a loyal servant named Renfield, so perhaps Universal thought that Frankenstein needed one too. Both characters were played by the same actor, Dwight Frye.

Replying to the original post, I’m not sure that Igor is really such a powerful pop idiom; rather, he’s a familiar cliche. He had resonance for audiences in the early '30s because World War I had left lots of war veterans crippled and deformed (which perhaps also fueled the successful career of Lon Chaney in silent movies). Now the hunchback assistant is just something we expect because we saw it on the late show.

Curiously, when Hammer Films made their Frankenstein movies in the '50s and '60s, they completely reimagined the concept of the assistant, dropping the aspect of physical deformity. The new assitant was the moral conscience, the one able to recognize the apalling aspects of Frankenstein’s work, while the Baron himself remained blind to them.

And DocCathode, Mary Shelly’s novel became a classic, to some extent, because it spawned a classic movie; at least, that has a lot to do with why it is remembered and read today. As for the plot holes you mentioned, they are indeed there, but the novel surmounts those because the underlying themes are rich and engaging. I think perhaps the problem for you is that the action is driven by the metaphor, not by realistic characterization. If Victor accepted his creation and avoided all the tragedy, there would be no story about the perils of hubris, so he behaves in a way that makes Mary Shelly’s point.

Steve Biodrowski
http://www.thescriptanalyst.com

11

Thanks for the replies, everyone.

As for my take on the book, I agree with the DocCathode. It’s a miserable reading experience for me, I’m glad we don’t have a writing assignment for this book, just in-class discussion.

The characters just fall apart under scrutiny. Robert Walton’s letters, Elizabeth’s letters, Frankenstein’s father’s letters, and the narratives: what do they all have in common? They sound like they’re all written by the same person. It’s hard for me to get into the reading when the characters aren’t identified by their individuality, but by the names inserted into that particular paragraph.

The entire effect, to have the plot take shape by the needs of the author’s message, is really hollow to me. It’s like a lecture on morality designed to be more digestable by throwing in sock puppets. No wonder I compared her to Ayn Rand at the beginning.

The women have no distinct personalities, quiet and virtuous, sacrificing and loving. Their personality doesn’t differ from the personality of the men all that much, except the men travel and get more page time in the book.

Reading this book is like watching a bad horror movie for me. I’m screaming “No, don’t go into the basement, you stupid virgin!” when I should be tremulously wondering what’s going to happen next.

12

I’m reading The Annotated Frankenstein now, as I’ve noted earlier in another thread. If you can get your hands on this, or on The Essential Frankenstein, I think you’ll find it well worth your while. The Annotations fill in a lot of the blanks, although it still leaves tantalizing gaps.

I’ll agree that the “voices” of the characters do sound the same, but I’m still impressed that a teenager put this amazingly literate book together.
On other issues:

–I’ve felt for a long time that the 1931 film Frankenstein owes a lot to Fritz Lang’s Metropolis. The creation of the Monster and the “reshaping” of the robot are similar in form, and I suspect that Whale borrowed a lot of the imagery. In addition, Rotwang in Metropolis has a dwarf assistant, as if he were a medieval king. He’s glimpsed only briefly in the surviving prints, but that might have been enough to plant the seed of a twisted assistant in the mind of Whale, Fort, and company. (Although the screenplay is supposed to be based on Peggy Webling’s play, there doesn’t seem to be a hunchbacked assistant in the Webling play. I haven’t been able to find a copy of this, but I’ve seen photos from it and a copy of the playbill. Webling’s play was a period piece, and they seem to have jettisoned almost the whole of it.) Since Dwight Frye had played Renfield, who was combined with the insane guy for the screenplay of Universal’s Dracula, they might have latched onto him as an easy way to plug the character into Frankenstein (as ScriptAnalyst suggests). Besides, a hunchbacked assistant, like all screen companions and assistants, is a useful character – it gives the main character someone to talk to.

– Stephen Jay Gould wrote a pretty good piece on the book Frankenstein vs. the Movie. It’s in one of his later collections.

–I’m constantly amazed at the route between Shelley’s book and comedies like Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein or Young Frankenstein. The book is one of the most uniformly depressing pieces even written. Almost everybody comes to a bad and depressing end. Even characters only peripherally connected with the main story (like the guy who is the father of Victor Frankenstein’s mother) have downright tragic histories. By the end of the book there is suffering and misery galore in a crescendo of grief. This is fit matter for a comedy? The link is the way that Universal so completely and grotesquely twisted its subject matter around to fit the mold of early 1930s Hollywood entertainment. The film even has a happy ending! They tried to take care of that in Bride of Frankenstein, where Colin Clive’s Henry (Henry?) Frankenstein is supposed to get blown up with everyone else in the castle, but they wimped out a second time.

13

I definitely agree: pick up a copy of THE ANNOTATED FRANKENSTEIN if you can find one in a used book store. As Leonard Wolf says in his introduction, “As a novel, FRANKENSTEIN, i tmust be admitted, is not mighty; on the other hand, it is a work that offers us a powerful and enduring vision.”

Steve Biodrowski
http://www.thescriptanalyst.com

14 
  Yeah, I'd say that's a problem. Shakespeare's plays are filled with examinations of human nature, the universe, and many other things. But, I've never seen one of his characters do anything simply because the plot requires it. Macbeth is, among other things, an examination of free will vs predestination. But every thing Macbeth does and says, is consistent with his character. If you can't write believable characters, stick with essays.
        To have a character do something only because it is necessary for the plot, is to admit your failure as a writer. Meticulous, obssessive-compulsive, mad scientist do not forget crucial details of an experiment. A man terrified by his creation runs a lot farther than the next room before sleeping.

    Melville is a fine example of making a statement but having a story filled with people instead of plot devices that talk. The events of Frankenstein often happen despite the characters(one of many examples-After working so hard to animate his creature, Victor doesn't take measures to confine it. Even Mel Brooks has his Frankenstein strap the monster down before attempting to bring it to life.). The events of Moby Dick happen * because* of the characters. Replace Ahab with a man who is less obsessed or less able to captivate the crew, and the story falls apart. Replace Starbuck, with a man whose ethics allow him to kill another man in cold blood, and the book falls apart. Yes, Moby Dick, has a few problems. In one chapter Ishmael is on the Pequod telling us of actions and dialogue on a ship that is thousands of feet away. A few scenes are written almost like the script of a play. But, the characters are individuals with minds of their own.
15

Except for Fedallah, of course, who is merely “part of the stage setting in the drama of Ahab’s quest,” according to Charles Child Walcutt.

As for FRANKENSTEIN, it’s a mistake to take a fever dream and try to make it logical. That’s what went wrong with the Kenneth Branagh film – too much time wasted trying to “justify” the plot points that Mary Shelly took for granted. Her novel is far from perfect, but it does not require the Freshman Lit virtues (believable characterization, logical plot development) to make it worthwhile.

Steve Biodrowski
http://www.thescriptanalyst.com

16

It makes it readable. I have to force myself to finish the thing, and it’s a miserable reading experience. If it were short, like a Greek fable, then it wouldn’t be so bad. It strikes me exactly as the heavy-handed silliness of Greek legends. “Then Zeus came down from Olympus and turned himself into a mortal man. Then he slept with a mortal woman. Zeus knew this would make Hela, his wife and half-sister jealous. The mortal woman sensed this and ran away. Then Zeus turned into a snake and pursued her. He bit her on the calf, turning her into a spider. And that is why we have sad spiders.”

“Frankenstein solved the mystery of life and created a monster. Then he was punished for his transgression and the monster fled. Frankenstein wept and fainted a lot and the monster was lonely. Lots of people died. Was Frankenstein the monster, and not the monster?” I don’t know the ending to this particular fable, but you see where I’m going.

What I’m really tired of is the monotony. The dialogue is exactly like the descriptive paragraphs, but with inverted commas around them. It’s like listening to a fortune teller with a severe speech impediment. Sounds interesting at first, but the slobber and sputtering prove distracting so you wander to the next tent.

17

And if Frankenstein were written like a fever dream, I wouldn’t bring it up. It may have been inspired by a dream (possibly due to laudanum), but it’s presented as a story. It’s hard to apply the usual literary standards to “Finnegan’s Wake” which is written as a fever dream. I also find the morals of Frankenstein to have been cliched even in Shelley’s time and patently obvious.

Scurvy-I know I’m nitpicking on a subject you’ve said you don’t care about but, Hela is from Norse mythology. Zeus/Jove was married to Hera/Juno.

18

Whoops, what an embarassing mistake. Thanks for pointing it out.