Thoughts on Frankenstein

I have just finished reading Frankenstein for my son's Omnibus course, and was struck by the way that the monster "fleshes out" (sorry for the pun) the Biblical doctrine of man's depravity and slavery to sin. At the end of the book, he laments:

"I knew that I was preparing for myself a deadly torture, but I was the slave, not the master, of an impulse which I detested yet could not disobey."

And earlier, he confronts his creator with these words:

"Accursed creator! Why did you form a monster so hideous that even you turned from me in disgust? God, in pity, made man beautiful
and alluring, after his own image; but my form is a filthy type of yours, more
horrid even from the very resemblance."

And yet, not only is he a "filthy type" of man, he is, as Harold Bloom says in his afterword, "more human" than his creator. He is more intelligent, thinks and feels more deeply, has more appreciation for beauty, and when he falls, falls deeper. Bloom doesn't discuss the sin issue, but it is interesting to me that the creation of Shelly's imagination is still subject to the Fall. And because he is "more" of everything that we are, his fall is greater ("how the mighty are fallen").

There is no redemption in this novel; the only rest for Frankenstein and for his creature is in death. Why death would be any better than earthly life is not explained, except in portraying death as a "rest."

I really like it when I find nuggets of truth in unexpected places. In a novel such as Frankenstein, they seem more valuable because they weren't necessarily intended to be found.