# What kind of monster was Frankenstein's monster? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [March 2, 2010, 2:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-kind-of-monster-was-frankensteins-monster/530946 "2010-03-02T02:00:15Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 13\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Sailboat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sailboat/32/461_2.png) [@Sailboat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sailboat)\ **Post date:** [March 2, 2010, 4:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-kind-of-monster-was-frankensteins-monster/530946/21 "2010-03-02T16:12:02Z")
> [@WotNot](#): > > No indeed (and neither was his creature ;)). > > Really, I think it’s doing Mary Shelley a disservice to try to equate her creature to anything from folklore. Right. In fact, the entire question of this thread is missing the point, in a way: as I understand it, Frankenstein’s Monster was specifically conceived to be a _new_ kind of monster. The novel grew from a “game” of sorts that Mary Shelley and her husband, Percy Bysshe Shelley, played while visiting with Lord Byron and another writer, John Polidori, at a villa in Switzerland during an unusually cold, rainy vacation. (In fact, it turns out the weather was uniquely horrible because the volcanic eruption of Tambora had thrown ash into the atmosphere and blocked a lot of sunlight. That was the famous “year without a summer.”) See [the Wikipedia summary](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frankenstein#Composition) for more details. Confined inside by the weather, the vacationers read ghost stories, and apparently it was Byron who proposed they should each write a new tale of the supernatural. My understanding of this part of the story is that either the challenge was specifically to create something new, or else Mary Shelley, keenly aware that she was regarded as the minor player among the literary heavyweights present, specifically set out to create something _new_ and different. Frankenstein’s monster is _intentionally_ not one of the old tried-and-true monsters, but a new idea (or as new as any literary concept can be, anyway). At any rate, the monster breaks with the nearly universal tradition of being something _before_ mankind’s coming or something created by a god to test or oppose mankind, and instead is something we have brought on ourselves, using the new and questionable practices of Science (which must be pronounced as if capitalized in this usage!) but the entire project is fatally flawed by the ancient Greek concept of hubris. It was a brilliant conception that brought together many of the fears of the day (surgery was crude, dismemberment was much more common, science was poorly understood by the general public, there was a not-unrealistic fear of being buried alive, and in general, society could feel that change was coming, not all of it controlled or intended). The monster, of course, is no more subject to control than Science, society, or history were turning out to be. If the game was a competition, Mary Shelley won it hands down, as it is her new creation that is remembered vividly and is indelibly part of our pantheon of fears even to this day. Frankenstein’s lonely monster, bitter at his creator’s betrayal, lurks in the Arctic cold at the end of the book, but he lurks deep down in today’s stem cell debate too. Interestingly, the other great concept (although not so new) to spring from that “game” is the association of vampires in the public mind with romance and sexiness. Prior to this point, Romanian folklore had conceived of vampires as animated corpses that sucked blood, but they were decaying and mindless, much like our current conception of zombies. Byron’s effort in the “game” was only a fragment, but based on the Balkan vampire stories. One of the other guests present, John Polidori, expanded that fragment into [The Vampyre](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Vampyre), explicitly romanticizing the vampire as a figure of mystery and swoon-inducing sexual tension. This had a huge impact in the fiction of the day, and remains with us still, leading eventually, but directly, to horrors like the _Twilight_ series. ---
**Author:** ![Bearflag70](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/8e7dd6/32.png) [@Bearflag70](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bearflag70)\ **Post date:** [March 2, 2010, 4:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-kind-of-monster-was-frankensteins-monster/530946/22 "2010-03-02T16:25:32Z")
Here’s one person’s take on [De Niro’s Frankenstein](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GSIFqGJD5ow) ---
**Author:** ![bienville](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/4bbf92/32.png) [@bienville](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bienville)\ **Post date:** [March 2, 2010, 6:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-kind-of-monster-was-frankensteins-monster/530946/23 "2010-03-02T18:31:08Z")
If your mother was a vampire and your father was a Frankenstein, how come you are a werewolf? ---
**Author:** ![Lobohan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lobohan/32/79_2.png) [@Lobohan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lobohan)\ **Post date:** [March 2, 2010, 6:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-kind-of-monster-was-frankensteins-monster/530946/24 "2010-03-02T18:42:32Z")
> [@bienville](#): > > If your mother was a vampire and your father was a Frankenstein, how come you are a werewolf? [Cut to a scene of a Werewolf Mailman walking up the steps to deliver a letter, hearing that and turning around.] ---
**Author:** ![jackdavinci](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jackdavinci/32/3259_2.png) [@jackdavinci](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jackdavinci)\ **Post date:** [March 4, 2010, 7:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-kind-of-monster-was-frankensteins-monster/530946/25 "2010-03-04T19:20:00Z")
Sometimes called a revenant… ---
**Author:** ![WotNot](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/e19b73/32.png) [@WotNot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WotNot)\ **Post date:** [March 4, 2010, 7:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-kind-of-monster-was-frankensteins-monster/530946/26 "2010-03-04T19:32:09Z")
> [@jackdavinci](#): > > Sometimes called a revenant… 😕 What is? ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [March 4, 2010, 7:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-kind-of-monster-was-frankensteins-monster/530946/27 "2010-03-04T19:46:34Z")
He was a [dancer!](http://www.lyricsondemand.com/onehitwonders/monstermashlyrics.html) ---
**Author:** ![Lumpy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lumpy/32/446_2.png) [@Lumpy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lumpy)\ **Post date:** [March 4, 2010, 7:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-kind-of-monster-was-frankensteins-monster/530946/28 "2010-03-04T19:52:54Z")
> [@Alessan](#): > > Something between a golem and a proto-android. Especially if you remember that originally the SF concept of android was closer to “synthetic human” than “robot”. In many early stories androids are spoken of as being constructed from artificial analogues of biological tissues and organs. Ash and Bishop from the **Alien** series are examples. ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [March 5, 2010, 3:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-kind-of-monster-was-frankensteins-monster/530946/29 "2010-03-05T03:02:13Z")
> [@jackdavinci](#): > > Sometimes called a revenant… A revenant is a sort of undead, brought back by a spirit of revenge on those who killed him, etc. In RPGs, he is sometimes portrayed as the one sort of undead that isn’t evil, _per se_. ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [March 5, 2010, 3:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-kind-of-monster-was-frankensteins-monster/530946/30 "2010-03-05T03:57:27Z")
> [@Lumpy](#): > > Especially if you remember that originally the SF concept of android was closer to “synthetic human” than “robot”. In many early stories androids are spoken of as being constructed from artificial analogues of biological tissues and organs. Ash and Bishop from the **Alien** series are examples. Aha! I wonder now if this was the reason why the simply animated Marvel TV show of the 60’s (Shown in the 70’s in Central America) translated “The Incredible Hulk” as “El Androide Increíble” (The Incredible Android) in Spanish. I guess that translators thought that since Hulk was created in an artificial way it means that he is an android. :dubious: ---
**Author:** ![jackdavinci](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jackdavinci/32/3259_2.png) [@jackdavinci](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jackdavinci)\ **Post date:** [March 5, 2010, 7:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-kind-of-monster-was-frankensteins-monster/530946/31 "2010-03-05T07:27:31Z")
> [@DrDeth](#): > > A revenant is a sort of undead, brought back by a spirit of revenge on those who killed him, etc. > > In RPGs, he is sometimes portrayed as the one sort of undead that isn’t evil, _per se_. Yeah revenant is more applicable to stories like The Crow. But it is in the general family of the revived dead… ---
**Author:** ![MrDibble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrdibble/32/114_2.png) [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)\ **Post date:** [March 5, 2010, 12:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-kind-of-monster-was-frankensteins-monster/530946/32 "2010-03-05T12:36:15Z")
> [@Lumpy](#): > > Especially if you remember that originally the SF concept of android was closer to “synthetic human” than “robot”. So [were](http://davidszondy.com/future/robot/RUR.htm) [robots](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R.U.R._%28Rossum%27s_Universal_Robots%29).😉 ---
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [March 5, 2010, 1:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-kind-of-monster-was-frankensteins-monster/530946/33 "2010-03-05T13:20:22Z")
> [@Lumpy](#): > > Especially if you remember that originally the SF concept of android was closer to “synthetic human” than “robot”. In many early stories androids are spoken of as being constructed from artificial analogues of biological tissues and organs. Ash and Bishop from the **Alien** series are examples. Another would be the Vison from Marvel comics; they refer to that kind of android as a “synthezoid”. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-kind-of-monster-was-frankensteins-monster/530946.md?page=1)