Pieces of the original stitched together – A comparison of the 1931 film Frankenstein to the original book
Entertainment October 9, 2023, Comments OffFrankenstein, also known as The Modern Prometheus, was a book published in 1818 and was written by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley. It is a science fiction horror story about a scientist named Victor Frankenstein obsessed with creating life.
When he finally achieves creating life by stitching together different body parts stolen from graves of the departed, he realizes too late that he has made something not quite as human as he thought. He commonly compared it to a monster, a demon, and the Devil: only a few of the nicknames Victor gave to his creation. And so Victor’s monster was born.
Today, Frankenstein’s monster is a popular costume someone might see on Halloween. However, the design for the costume is not typically based on the book monster, but the 1931 movie adaptation of the play that is based on the book. I am unaware of how faithful the adaptation of the movie is to the play, but the book and movie couldn’t be more different.
There are familiar character names and the outline of the characters are there, however, someone might think they are watching the wrong movie at first since some parts of the movie are unrecognizable by how much they have changed.
First, the removal and implementation of characters. Robert Walton is an important and noticeably missing character from the movie that was essential to the book. The reader starts the story with Walton through his letters to his sister.
Depending how the reader interprets the book, Walton is a reflection of the other protagonist of the story: Victor Frankenstein. The character that people are most familiar with, or should be. If someone has only seen the movie, they might be confused about who I am talking about.
They could not leave the character the reader spends the most time with alone. They rename the protagonist Henry Frankenstein. Now, that would not be such a problem if the book did not already have a character named Henry Clerval, who is Victor’s best friend in the book. What was worse, they named Henry Frankenstein’s best friend Victor Moritz.
In the book, Frankenstein’s father is a loving and doting man; he cares a lot about his family. In the movie, he seems like a snobby rich man that doesn’t carry the same genuine care as his book counterpart. I do like that he is given a name in this adaptation. In the book, his father remains nameless and it’s a shame, since he is a recurring and important background character in Victor’s story.
The monster, the being often confused for Frankenstein since he never receives a name other than “the monster” or referred to as “Frankenstein’s monster”. Jack Pierce, the makeup artist that worked on the film created that iconic look of the monster. However, I wished he kept the long black hair he had in the book and kept his eight foot gargantuan stature. In the end, the movie created a terrifying monster so it was a success in their books.
As for the plot between the movie and novel, they could not be more different. In the movie, Victor—Henry—is in every sense of the word “protagonist.” We skip over the beginning of the story where Henry is digging up graves for body parts and go straight to the iconic “IT’S ALIVE!” scene, with an audience. His professor and family are witness to this of life, and they are either amazed or horror-stricken.
None of which happened in the movie and the creation part was not even a significant part of the book. To Shelley, it was the moments leading up to and the aftermath that was important. Frankenstein was horrified by his creation upon first look; he never wanted to see it again. He did not see him, until two years later, when his monster sought him out.
The monster in the movie is everything you’d expect as a “monster.” He is unintelligible and attacks and kills everyone he can. There is one scene where he actually throws a little girl into a lake after she was kind to him. However, he does not kill anyone in the movie that he kills in the novel. It’s almost like the directors were purposely trying to make it different.
There is a part in the novel that explains the absence of the monster and where he has been. The monster tells a story—he actually knows how to speak and read—to Frankenstein about where he has been. He tells him about meeting this family, the De Lacey’s, and he loved them until they saw him and rejected him.
The monster was humanized in a way that was not done in the movie. He loved, he wanted to be loved, and he was forever being rejected. He had no place in the world and there was no one like him. He was alone and miserable, until he finally decided to seek revenge upon his creator. It makes you feel bad for the monster; it made me want to give him a hug.
And the protagonist wins in the movie. They burn the monster alive, which is one of the most horrifying scenes in the movie. He scrambles and tries to yell for help before he perishes. Then Frankenstein, I guess, lives happily ever after with his wife, Elizabeth. It is what you would expect from a simple plotline.
There is much more depth and layers to the text. It makes you question: who really is the monster? Is it the monster itself or the man who made the monster?
There are horrifying parts in both the movie and the text, like the brutal murder of a child. In the book, the monster strangles Frankenstein’s younger brother out of revenge. The monster kills a lot of people in both versions, although the people themselves were different and the context was also wildly distinct.
Separetely, they are both great works of fiction. However, they are not at all the same. If you were to ask me which one I liked more, there would be only one reply: the book is always better.
Article by Rylan DeHaven and Maddy Bohman
Featured photo by Adobe Stock Images
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