ABSTRACT
Charnel houses and churchyard cemeteries are the places where Victor Frankenstein begins his work and finds the resources for it. Progressing from reanimating dead tissue to infusing life into a corpse composed of multiple body parts, his initial excitement turns into horror. Shocked by the ugly, disfigured and monstrous thing that stares back at him he flees from the hideous creature he has made. Conceived in the convoluted caverns of his mind, the creature is an abomination of nature, a motherless monster abandoned by his “father.” The tragic plot of Mary Shelley’s story unwinds when the Monster promises to seek his revenge. The death that Victor would erase from life now haunts not only his life, but also our lives as death has mushroomed in its reach and intensity. From the slaughter of millions in the trenches of World War I through the Holocaust and the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki to the contemporary genocides of today, the increasingly destructive power of our technological god like abilities is realizing a prophetic aspect of Frankenstein’s dream to become a new creator god.
