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Discussing adaptations of Victorian craziness
English 101 section 29
Our English 101
Discussing adaptations of Victorian craziness
7 comments:
I believe one of the major themes is that no one should try to be god and try to recreate life.
One theme that I noticed is the idea of where evil comes from.
An issue that is present in the film, Frankenstein, is the desire to be accepted. The monster feels unwanted and only desires to be accepted by his creator. Because of the failure to do so by Henry, the monster feels compelled to act horribly just as Henry treats him. That's why he is referred to as a monster and not a magnificent creation.
In the book I thought there was a big theme about the negative effects of secrecy, however in the film this isn't portrayed at all. I agree that they focus on where evil comes from, which is really shown in the scene where frankensteins assistant steals the brain. The movie really focuses on stealing the abnormal brain which in turn makes the monster evil. I feel as though the movie doesn't really have themes that pertain to life lessons as much as the book. They really changed the story a lot to make it fit the horror film category and changed it to make what the director believed to be more entertaining. But I do agree with Michael and I have noticed this theme in a lot of different novels. This film is one of the first examples of people playing trying to play God and create life, and now in present day we see a lot of controversy that is applied to this theme, such as cloning and abortion.
I think that the biggest theme of Frankenstein is the issue of creation and whether people should attempt to play god. I believe the entire story really highlights creation and the negative consequences that can come if humans attempt to play god with creation and life.
A theme that is constantly addressed both in the book and movie, but moreso in the movie, is power, and how the use of it can easily turn terrible. This is shown in many aspects of it. Henry Frankenstein gives himself power when he creates his monster. At first he feels proud of his creation, but it soons turns around when the monster begins his evil acts and he realizes he made something which is hurting those he cares about. Once the monster is created, Henry's igor tourments him because it gives him power over something, when he has always been at the bottom of the totem pole, so to speak. However, in his case, the power which he feels as though he should have over the monster backfires on him and ends up getting him killed. The monster has physical power which comes with his size and strength, but he was never shown the extent of or how to use his power, so he sometimes doesn't realize what he's doing [like when he throws the little girl in the lake--he had finally found someone who accepted him and something he enjoyed (flowers) and by throwing the girl into the lake, it showed that he also liked her, he did not mean to hurt her, he just didn't know what he was doing.]
Power is good to an extent, but it easily corrupts those who do not use it wisely.
One of the biggest themes i noticed in the book was the building of relationships. In the movie i was disappointed to see little of the character development to show how close each character was to each other.
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