ABSTRACT
In the turbulent times in which we live, Mary Shelley’s story is a cautionary parable. It is also a beacon of hope when her story is read from the Monster’s point of view. Created and then abandoned by Victor Frankenstein, the Monster is the other face of his maker and the prophetic shadow of his creator’s noble but flawed dream to be a new god who would use the powers of science and technology to erase the stain of death from human life. With the format of questions the Monster engages us as a living presence who haunts the margins of our world in the monstrous guises of the ecological, social, political and technological crises we face today. The eight questions latent in Mary Shelley’s novel and addressed to us by the Monster slow us down, make us pause and open a space for imagination to consider the crises born from Frankenstein’s denial of responsibility for the destructive and lethal consequences of his dream and his work. The questions also cultivate four seeds of hope present in a tale that has fascinated and troubled us for 200 years.
