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In Frankenstein, Mary Shelley stacks the bodies like cordwood. But you need to pay closest attention to three characters — Victor Frankenstein, Victor Frankenstein’s monster, and …
C‘mon. You didn’t think we were going to give it away without making you watch the Recap, did you?

Video Transcription:

Frankenstein is a story about an explorer and a monster … and a man who is both. Let’s take a look at Mr. Frankenstein himself—coming up.

Frankenstein is narrated by three characters: Robert Walton, the explorer, Victor Frankenstein, the mad scientist, and the monster himself.

But like I said: The man who really matters is Mr. Frankenstein. That’s because Walton and the monster are just extensions of the two very different aspects of his character.

Half of Mr. Frankenstein’s character is a man consumed by the desperate pursuit of knowledge. Frankenstein is an explorer. Like Walton, he wants to press the limits and discover new frontiers.

But in the same way that Walton gets himself in trouble by pushing the boundaries too far, Frankenstein’s knowledge leads him astray, too. It impels him to create the monster—and to discover the monster within himself.

That’s the second half of Frankenstein’s character. Self-hatred. Vicious loathing. An un-tempered desire for revenge.

Eventually, Frankenstein can only be characterized by his lack of humanness. He commits himself to an animalistic obsession with hunting down his creation. In the end, his monstrosity kills him—and, as though it really was a part of him, Frankenstein’s monster dies, too.