Beowolf's overBearing Boastfulness

Is Beowolf acting selfish by saving the lives of many and finally killing the monster who has wreaked havoc on the city? Absolutely not! If you consider what he has done as selfish then you might as well take the name "hero" from Superman. Like Superman, Beowolf came to Herot only to defeat the terrorizing monster, such as the villains Superman triumphs over. "What we did was what our hearts help Our hands to perform.." (Beowolf 958-959) Sure, Beowolf rose to the occasion and will receive great fame for it. Yes he is proud of himself, but I would be too. No other man or army has been able to kill Grendel; it was a defeat worth acknowledging, but Beowolf did not fight for this reason. 

The First Photo of the Fifth Child

In my opinion, the fourth cover is the best fit for this story. It may not physically show what a horror Ben is, but this cover lets you read the book with an open mind. The other covers portray him as a monster and nothing more; I am not belittling the idea that Ben truly is a demon, but you need to look at him with a less biased view. His mother, Harriet, gives the reader the impression that he is evil and not human; you need to have another perspective, Ben's. He is merely a child who lacked tender love and care from his mother. She has treated him like a monster since he was in the womb, it's no wonder he acts like one. The family isolates him from the rest of the world, including themselves, as this cover shows. They treat him like an outsider and that is not love. At one point, Harriet refers to him as a "Neanderthal baby." (Lessing 53). Ben never had a fighting chance to be normal. 

191 Years Later and the Monster Lives on...

"There's a bit of the creature in all of us." writes Stephen Whitty, a journalist for the Star Ledger; and he is absolutely right. His article describes how metaphorical monsters are and how they can be more symbolic than anything. Our fears are direct results from horror films, novels, or plain old society, no matter how unrealistic they may be. However, in Mary Shelley's "Frankenstein", she did not want how dangerous, or frightening, the monster was to distract you from what she was really writing about. Loneliness, suffering and grief are only few of her main points to get across through out the novel. Shelly knows first hand about loss, grief and loneliness, for she experienced several deaths in her life; all of them being people close to her heart and in her life. Everywhere she turned was death, it's no wonder she was able to create such a dark story. 

Many people can relate to the monster in her story because they know how it feels to be left alone, or abandoned; if not by your parents then possibly by your friends. The readers are able to sympathize with him and justify his behavior because they were there at one point in their life. I'm sure many have wanted to force pain onto others, but were able to refrain because they know of the consequences; unlike the monster. We all have a monster inside of us, just dying to come out.

Frankenstein Reaction (bum bum bumm!)

Frankenstein is not the least bit what i expected. Amongst all of the stories I've heard about Frankenstein, this is not one of them. This story is not just about a monster that wreaked havoc city to city, but an explanation on why he is even considered a monster, and the life he lead up to that point. I had assumed that Victor would be ecstatic to become the first human known to have created another life, but I was misled. "I had gazed on him while unfinished; he was ugly then, but when those muscles and joints were rendered capable of motion, it became a thing such as even Dante could not have conceived." (Shelley 44) Victor abandoned and left him with no other choice but to fend for his life on his own; but the creation was like a newborn child just learning to walk, he didn't even know how to speak before Victor up and left him. 

The horror that this monster had brought into Victor's life caused a great deal of stress and guilt. These characteristics, when combined with grief, cause such an illness that it is hard to recover from. Victor knows it is his fault that a few people have lost their lives, but in a way Victor was selfish. The monster made it clear what he was going to do if Victor did not make him a bride, and for Victor to just throw his work away was a mistake and disrespectful. The monster is Victor's responsibility and he needs to start acting on it. I did not expect the creature to have developed feelings and emotions towards others, but this only makes me sympathize with him even more. I'm enjoying the story line a lot more then i expected and i cannot wait to see how it ends.