Memorable Monday #9

Welcome to Memorable Monday! The purpose of Memorable Monday is to showcase an influential book read in the past that still sticks with you today. This fun Monday morning post is hosted by the lovely Becca at The Becca Files.

This week, I am featuring:

Frankenstein

by: Mary Shelley

Amazon

I absolutely love Frankenstein. I love that Mary Shelley wrote this at 19. 19!!! When I was 19 I was trying to navigate the halls of my new college and trying to figure out what I wanted to be when I grew up. I most definitely was not writing great literature. I think the fact that Mary Shelley wrote this stunning story at 19 makes me love the story all the more.

I also really love teaching this novel to my AP Lit seniors. At first, they hate the book because it’s written in 19th century Standard British English, and my students are more about tweeting in under 146 characters. But, after we get through Walton’s letters together, they begin to see Mary Shelley’s wit and intelligence. Then I start bringing in articles from current science and medical journals and show my students how everything Mary Shelley warned us about it coming to pass, and this book quickly becomes one of their favorites too.

If you have never read Frankenstein before, I highly recommend the read. To say that Shelley was ahead of her time would be a gross understatement. This book is terrifying to read now because of where we are currently in scientific and medical thought and practices. Unfortunately, we are where we are today because man gave up God in order to become gods themselves. Playing God is never ok, and that is the basic premise of Shelley’s novel.

About the Book

Mary Shelley began writing Frankenstein when she was only nineteen. At once a Gothic thriller, a passionate romance, and a cautionary tale about the dangers of science, Frankenstein tells the story of committed science student Victor Frankenstein. Obsessed with discovering the cause of generation and life and bestowing animation upon lifeless matter, Frankenstein assembles a human being from stolen body parts but upon bringing it to life, he recoils in horror at the creatures hideousness. Tormented by isolation and loneliness, the once-innocent creature turns to evil and unleashes a campaign of murderous revenge against his creator, Frankenstein.

Frankenstein, an instant bestseller and an important ancestor of both the horror and science fiction genres, not only tells a terrifying story, but also raises profound, disturbing questions about the very nature of life and the place of humankind within the cosmos: What does it mean to be human? What responsibilities do we have to each other? How far can we go in tampering with Nature? In our age, filled with news of organ donation genetic engineering, and bio-terrorism, these questions are more relevant than ever.

NOW IT’S YOUR TURN!

Share a book you’ve read in the past and explain briefly why it’s so memorable to you in the comments below.

If you would like to join Memorable Mondays, check out Becca’s blog site by clicking here. Scroll to a Memorable Monday post for info.