I feel as though watching something happen versus reading about something happening provokes two different kinds of feelings. This is especially true for the two video clips and Shelley’s novel. As I watched the two clips, both sets of actors, involved in the creation of the Creature, were very excited, passionate and animated towards the birth of the Creature. It was clear in the first clip that the one actor had worked endless hours to create this complex and intense means of creating the Creature. In a similar way, in the second clip, the actor frantically shouts, “It’s alive!” when he sees that the Creature’s hand is moving. The actor feels a sense of achievement and pride knowing that he produced a living creature, noted as he compares himself to God. Both actors in the clips praise and glorify the birth of their creation. On the other hand, the novel portrays the birth of the Creature as a horrific experience for the maker, Victor Frankenstein. Victor emphasizes, “How can I describe my emotions at this catastrophe, or how delineate the wretch whom with such infinite pains and care I had endeavoured to form?” (P. 58) Victor is beyond frightened of his creation because of its atrocious appearance. He even hurries to the next room to sleep and he only manages to have terrible nightmares. He does not even want to look at the so- called “monster” and “catastrophe” he created. All he wants is for his creature to disappear, so he does not have to see its atrocity. All of Victor’s hard work and labor becomes meaningless once he realizes that this “horrid” creature is not at all what he had anticipated it to be.

Hannah McQuaid