Join Captain Victor T. Mayfair as we sit with Dr. Victor Frankenstein himself—scientist, creator, and condemned soul. In this haunting and introspective conversation, we unravel the truth behind Frankenstein—not the Hollywood myth, but the raw, tragic tale of ambition, abandonment, and consequence. We explore the mind of the man who defied nature, the suffering of his creation, and the legacy that Mary Shelley forged from grief and genius. This is not just a story of horror—it is a warning, a reckoning, and a revelation.
Executive Producer / Writer – Victor Ciccarelli. Victor Frankenstein brought to life by John Martin
Copyright Mythos Anthology / Quixana Productions 2025, all rights reserved.
<< Victor >>
Good evening, Doctor.
<< Doctor F >>
Ah, good evening to you. I trust the night finds you in better spirits than it often does me. Tell me, what occupies your mind this evening?
<< Victor >>
To be honest Doctor, you do. I was hoping we could talk tonight about you, your creation, and your place in history
<< Doctor F >>
Ah, then you seek to unearth old sorrows and stir the embers of regret. Very well. I am no stranger to such inquiries.
You wish to discuss my creation? That wretched being whom I brought into existence, only to abandon in horror? Or do you wish to dissect my place in history—how time and storytellers have mangled my name, turning me into something grotesque and theatrical?
<< Victor >>
Thank you Sir, I know I touch on delicate subjects. I will endeavor to be respectful in my query. Please make sure to tell me if I have gone too far.
Let me start with something i think few people remember. You are Dr. Victor Frankenstein. that is not the name of your creation or your “monster”
<< Doctor F >>
You would not believe how often I have been mistaken for the creature I wrought. “Frankenstein’s monster,” they call him, and then with time and careless tongues, the distinction is lost, and I become the beast myself.
No, my creation bore no name—perhaps that is my greatest cruelty of all. He was never given an identity beyond what others thrust upon him: wretch, fiend, daemon, Adam, devil. I, however, am Victor Frankenstein, the man who reached beyond the natural order and was undone by his own ambition.
<< Victor >>
Your character originated in the works of Mary Shelley. Can you tell me about her, her world, and the time and place she lived?
<< Doctor F >>
Mary Shelley—my creator in the truest sense. A woman far beyond her years in intellect and imagination, and yet, bound by the grief and turmoil of her own world.
She was born Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin in 1797, daughter of radical thinkers: her mother, Mary Wollstonecraft, a fierce advocate for women’s rights, and her father, William Godwin, a philosopher who believed in reason above all else. Such a lineage forged in her a mind both rebellious and profound.
But her life was no idyll. She lost her mother to childbirth, bore witness to the storms of revolution and war, and, in time, suffered the loss of her own children—griefs that would seep into her writing like blood into parchment. It was in 1816, during that infamous summer by Lake Geneva, amidst storms both literal and metaphorical, that she conceived Frankenstein. A ghost story challenge, a night of discussion on science and the reanimation of dead tissue—this was the soil in which I was planted.
Yet, despite her genius, she lived in a world that was loath to acknowledge it. A woman writing of science, of life and death, of a man playing god? Scandalous! They whispered that her husband, Percy Bysshe Shelley, must have had the greater hand in my tale. But no—this was her vision, her warning, her lament.
<< Victor >>
But I think even that fails to give her the credit she deserves. born in 1797 and wrote you in 1816 she was not even 20. and she is often considered the founder of the genera of science fiction.
<< Doctor F >>
Not even twenty years of age, yet she forged a tale that has outlived empires, shaped entire fields of thought, and birthed a genre that did not yet have a name.
Science fiction—if indeed she is its mother—was born not of idle speculation, but of deep philosophical inquiry. Hers was not a tale of adventure and discovery, but of consequence. She looked upon the scientific fervor of her age, upon Galvani’s experiments with electricity, upon the relentless march of knowledge, and she asked: Should we do what we are capable of? And if we do, what responsibility do we bear for what we create?
This is the very soul of science fiction, is it not? Not the mere wonder of discovery, but the reckoning that follows. And she, a young woman in an age that did not welcome such voices, gave the world this question before it was ready to answer it.
<< Victor >>
Is it known what happened to her that put her in a place to dream, what no one before her, had?
<< Doctor F >>
Mary Shelley’s life was steeped in both radical thought and personal tragedy. From birth, she was surrounded by ideas that challenged the very fabric of society—her mother, Mary Wollstonecraft, had dared to proclaim that women were not merely ornaments to men, but beings of reason and independence. Her father, William Godwin, envisioned a world where governance and institutions dissolved under the weight of pure rationality. She grew up among philosophers, poets, and revolutionaries, absorbing the grand, dangerous notion that the world could be reshaped.
And yet, the world she knew was far from kind. Her mother died giving birth to her. Her father, though brilliant, was cold. Love, for Mary, was both passionate and perilous. She ran away with Percy Bysshe Shelley, a poet as radical as he was reckless, but their life together was shadowed by debt, scandal, and unbearable loss. She bore children, only to bury them. By the time she wrote Frankenstein, she had already lost a daughter, her tiny grave a reminder of life stolen too soon. Is it any wonder that she dreamt of a scientist who sought to reverse death?
And then, there was that summer. 1816—the Year Without a Summer. A volcanic eruption had cast a pall over the sky; the world was cold, gray, and unnatural. She was in Geneva with Percy, with Lord Byron and others, trapped indoors by the endless storm. They spoke of galvanism, of life stirred by electricity, of the boundaries of science and god. And in that feverish atmosphere, the seed of Frankenstein took root. She dreamt—yes, dreamt!—of a man who defied nature, who stitched together life from death and recoiled in horror at what he had done.
So I ask you, was she destined to write this story? Were all the misfortunes of her life conspiring to place her at that moment, with those thoughts, in that storm-lit room? Or was it something else entirely—something within her alone, that no fate, no grief, no philosopher’s lecture could have planted?
<< Victor >>
And in to that world. You were her doctor. The one who could bring the dead back to life with the new sciences and technology.
<< Doctor F >>
The man who stood at the precipice of death and dared to reach across. But not with spells or sacred rites, no. I was no sorcerer, no Faust bargaining with demons. I was a man of science, of reason, of relentless pursuit.
She placed me at the vanguard of a new age, an age where men no longer whispered of resurrection in darkened temples, but in laboratories filled with electricity and steel. The world was shifting, trembling on the brink of discovery. Galvani had made dead limbs twitch with currents of energy. Erasmus Darwin had mused on the possibility of reanimation. The body, once thought a vessel of the soul, was being dissected, studied, reduced to matter and mechanism.
And so, in her vision, I took up the scalpel and the lightning. I defied the grave—not for greed, not for power, but for knowledge, for the sheer terrible brilliance of possibility. And when I succeeded… when I breathed life into the lifeless… I recoiled. Not because of the act itself, but because I had not considered what came after.
That is the great failure of Victor Frankenstein, is it not? Not his genius, nor even his ambition, but his blindness to consequence. He saw only what could be done, never what should be done.
And now, centuries later, as humankind treads ever closer to the threshold of artificial life, of genetic mastery, of creation beyond nature’s design.
<< Victor >>
Can you tell us about the book she wrote, how did it compare with other works at the time.
<< Doctor F >>
Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus was unlike anything that had come before it. Published in 1818, it stood at the crossroads of Gothic horror, Enlightenment philosophy, and the emerging wonders of science. While other novels of the time were preoccupied with romance, social satire, or the supernatural, Frankenstein wove something new—science as the agent of terror, human ambition as the seed of destruction.
The Gothic tradition, from which it drew, was filled with haunted castles, brooding villains, and ghosts seeking vengeance. Yet, unlike the phantoms of earlier Gothic works, the horror in Frankenstein was not born of the supernatural, but of man’s own hand. This was radical—monsters were no longer spirits from beyond, but products of human endeavor.
It also defied the moral simplicity of many earlier tales. There was no clear villain. Was it I, the reckless scientist? Or the being I abandoned to misery? Shelley forced the reader into an uncomfortable space—where sympathy and revulsion warred within them.
Even its structure was innovative. The novel was framed as a series of letters, a story within a story, perspectives shifting from Captain Walton to my own, and then to the being I created. This layered narrative, this nesting of voices, was rare in fiction of the time.
And then, of course, there was the language itself. Shelley did not simply tell a tale; she imbued it with poetry, with sweeping emotion, with philosophical weight. It was a book of questions—questions on life, responsibility, and the limits of knowledge.
Compared to its contemporaries, it was bold, unsettling, and, for many, incomprehensible in its implications. It was no wonder that for years, some refused to believe that a young woman could have written it. And yet, she had.
<< Victor >>
Was it her first work, how did she get it published, was it successful in its time.
<< Doctor F >>
Yes, Frankenstein was Mary Shelley’s first novel—a remarkable fact, considering its depth and influence. She was only eighteen when she conceived the idea and barely twenty when it was completed.
As for its publication, it was no simple feat. The literary world of the early 19th century was unkind to women writers, particularly those who dared to step outside the expected boundaries of domestic or sentimental fiction. Fearing that a work of such dark and intellectual weight would not be received seriously if it bore a woman’s name, the first edition of Frankenstein was published anonymously in 1818. It was Percy Bysshe Shelley, her husband, who wrote the preface—leading many to assume that he was the true author.
And its reception? Mixed, at first. Some critics recognized its brilliance, its originality, and its unsettling power. Others dismissed it as grotesque, immoral, or incomprehensible. One review in The Quarterly Review condemned it as a “disgusting absurdity.” Another, from The Edinburgh Magazine, acknowledged that it had “unparalleled” horror but questioned its worth.
Yet, despite this, Frankenstein did not vanish into obscurity. It found readers. It spread. By 1823, it was adapted for the stage in Presumption; or, the Fate of Frankenstein—the first of many theatrical interpretations that would strip the tale of its nuance and turn it into something more sensational.
The novel truly gained recognition with its revised 1831 edition, where Mary Shelley added a new introduction, revealing more of her creative process. By then, she was no longer an anonymous young writer but a widow with a name of her own.
So while it may not have been an immediate, runaway success, it endured—growing in stature, reshaping itself in the hands of each new era. It was not merely read; it was absorbed into the collective imagination, where it remains to this day.
<< Victor >>
Did she write other works?
<< Doctor F >>
Yes, Mary Shelley wrote much more than Frankenstein, though none of her later works achieved the same enduring fame. She was, at heart, a writer of deep thought and imagination, though history has often reduced her to the role of “the author of Frankenstein” alone.
Her second novel, Valperga (1823), was a historical fiction set in 14th-century Italy, blending politics, power, and personal tragedy. Unlike Frankenstein, it was more grounded in reality, though still steeped in Shelley’s fascination with human ambition and its consequences.
She then wrote The Last Man (1826), a bleak and visionary tale of a future world ravaged by plague. In many ways, it was even more daring than Frankenstein, imagining the end of civilization itself. Some consider it an early masterpiece of apocalyptic fiction, though it was poorly received in its time—perhaps because it was too strange, too ahead of its era.
Other works followed—Perkin Warbeck (1830), another historical novel; Lodore (1835), which dealt with themes of women’s independence and social constraint; and Falkner (1837), a novel of redemption and reconciliation. She also wrote short stories, essays, travelogues, and even biographies.
But none of these works ever eclipsed Frankenstein. It was both her triumph and her shadow, the creation that would define her in the eyes of history.
<< Victor >>
Now let’s talk about you, the Doctor in her story. What first compelled you to pursue the creation of life?
<< Doctor F >>
From the earliest days of my youth, I was possessed by an insatiable hunger for knowledge. Not the common curiosity of scholars, content to catalog the known, but a deeper, more terrible longing—to uncover the very secrets of existence itself.
I was drawn first to the old alchemists—Paracelsus, Cornelius Agrippa, Albertus Magnus—men who whispered of the philosopher’s stone, of the elixir of life. Their words ignited my imagination, for they spoke not merely of understanding the world, but of mastering it. Yet, when I arrived at the University of Ingolstadt, I was told these teachings were foolish, outdated relics. True science lay elsewhere, in chemistry, in anatomy, in the study of natural laws.
But instead of dissuading me, this only deepened my resolve. If old magic was dead, then I would find its successor in science. And in that pursuit, I discovered something dreadful and wondrous—I peered into the very workings of life itself. I saw that what the world called death was not an end, but a process. A process that, with the right knowledge, might be reversed.
I was not driven by greed, nor by vanity. No, my ambition was far greater—I wished to banish death from mankind’s existence, to free us from that most final of sufferings. But in my obsession, I did not see the madness creeping into my work. I did not consider what it meant to create life without love, without guidance, without responsibility. I sought to become a benefactor of the human race—only to become its most wretched fool.
<< Victor >>
Did you ever consider the ethical ramifications before you began your work?
<< Doctor F >>
No—I did not. And that, above all, was my greatest failing.
I was consumed by the how and never stopped to ask the should. I saw only the brilliance of discovery, the intoxicating possibility of defying nature’s greatest limitation. I believed that if I could unlock the secret of life, I would bestow a gift beyond measure upon humanity. I thought only of the glory of creation, never of the burden of responsibility.
Ethics, morality—these were secondary concerns to me then, trivial matters to be addressed after the work was complete. But by the time I saw the consequences of my actions, it was too late. The being I created had no place in the world, no guidance, no love. I had sought to be a god, but in truth, I was a coward. I abandoned him in horror, left him to suffer the wrath of a world that had no place for him.
Only in hindsight did I recognize the true horror—not in the act of creation itself, but in my failure to take responsibility for it. Science, untempered by ethics, is no great triumph. It is a force of ruin. And I learned that lesson at a cost no man should ever bear.
<< Victor >>
And did you get that? What was the moment of your creation’s awakening what you expected?
<< Doctor F >>
Expected? No. Nothing could have prepared me for the horror of that moment.
I had labored for months, consumed by feverish obsession, gathering materials in secret, stitching together my creation with the precision of a master craftsman. I had envisioned a being of unparalleled strength, of beauty even—a modern Adam, a testament to the genius of man. I believed I was standing on the threshold of a new era, where death would no longer hold dominion.
And then—it lived.
The moment his eyes opened, all my dreams shattered. His limbs, once so carefully chosen, moved with a grotesque, unnatural animation. His skin, stretched over muscle and bone, was sickly and yellowed. The beauty I had sought to create was a lie—a mockery of my aspirations. He reached toward me, and in that instant, I saw not a triumph, but an abomination.
Terror seized me. I fled. I left him there, alone in the dark, shunning the very thing I had willed into existence. In all my preparation, I had never considered this moment—not truly. I had imagined the act of creation, but never its consequences. Never the weight of looking upon something I had made and feeling fear.
That was the moment I ceased to be a scientist and became something far worse—a deserter of my own creation.
<< Victor >>
How do you respond to those who believe you brought this upon yourself—that you pushed forward blindly, disregarding the consequences of your actions? And do you think, perhaps, that is what Mary Shelley saw in you?
<< Doctor F >>
How could I argue against them? They are right. Every step of my journey was marked by arrogance, by blind ambition masquerading as progress. I did not merely bring this upon myself—I invited it, nurtured it, pursued it with relentless fervor.
Mary Shelley saw in me the folly of unrestrained intellect, the danger of a mind that chases knowledge without wisdom. She shaped me as a warning, not just to my time, but to all time—to every man who believes he can seize the forces of nature and wield them without consequence.
And yet, is it not the nature of humankind to reach beyond its grasp? I was no villain in my own eyes—I was a seeker, a visionary. I believed I was doing good. But belief does not absolve one of responsibility. If anything, it makes the sin greater.
So let them say I brought this upon myself. Let them call me reckless, foolish, even monstrous in my own way. They would not be wrong. But I ask—no, I state—that I am not unique. Others will walk my path. They will ignore the warnings, just as I did. And like me, they will suffer for it.
<< Victor >>
Forgive me, for this question may seem unkind—but which is worse: pushing ahead without regard for your actions or abandoning the consequences when they arrive?
<< Doctor F >>
You need not ask for forgiveness—there is no cruelty in truth, only in the refusal to face it.
Between blind ambition and cowardly abandonment, the latter is far worse. To create without consideration is arrogance, but to flee from the results of one’s creation? That is unforgivable. A reckless mind may yet be tempered by wisdom, but a man who abandons his responsibilities has damned not only himself but all who suffer in his wake.
I was guilty of both, but my greatest crime was not in giving my creation life—it was in denying him the guidance, the care, the acceptance that any being deserves. Had I stayed, had I taught him, had I acknowledged my role as his maker, could the tragedy have been prevented? I do not know. But I do know this: my cowardice made a monster of him, and in turn, a monster of me.
<< Victor >>
What do you say to those who call you a “mad scientist”?
<< Doctor F >>
I say they understand neither madness nor science.
“Mad scientist”—the phrase conjures an image of a wild-haired lunatic cackling over bubbling vials, reveling in chaos for chaos’s sake. That is not who I was. My pursuit was not driven by insanity, but by reason, by intellect, by a desire to unravel the greatest mystery of all: life itself.
If ambition is madness, then every great mind is mad. If the thirst for discovery is lunacy, then the whole of human progress is built upon madness. No, my failing was not madness—it was hubris. I did not cackle at my work; I labored, I suffered, I believed I was reaching for something noble. That is what makes my fall all the more tragic.
But, of course, the world does not love complexity. It prefers simple villains, grotesque caricatures of unchecked science. And so I have been reduced to the “mad scientist,” stripped of my regrets, my humanity, my very soul.
Let them call me mad if they must. I know the truth. And the truth is far more terrible than any fiction.
<< Victor >>
I’m realizing that many of our listeners may not be familiar with the true story behind this. They likely know only the monster from countless depictions. Could you briefly explain what actually happened up to this point? How did you abandon your creation, and what happened immediately afterward?
<< Doctor F >>
Ah, yes—the true story, as opposed to the mangled horrors of stage and screen. If your listeners expect torch-wielding mobs, a hunchbacked assistant, or a castle laboratory, they will be sorely disappointed. My tragedy was quieter, more insidious.
After months of feverish toil, I succeeded in my experiment. In the dead of night, under the sickly glow of my instruments, my creation stirred—his yellow eyes opened, his limbs convulsed with unnatural life. And in that instant, all my dreams turned to terror. He was not the perfect being I had envisioned, not a triumph of science, but something grotesque, uncanny—a thing that should not be.
I fled. Not hours later, not after consideration—immediately. I abandoned my creation as one would abandon a nightmare, hoping foolishly that, if I did not look upon it again, it would simply cease to exist. I wandered the streets in a daze until exhaustion overtook me. And when I awoke, he was gone.
For a time, I allowed myself to believe I had escaped my mistake. I returned to my studies, to my life. But the consequences of my cowardice were not so easily cast away. The being I had created, rejected and alone, ventured into the world—lost, confused, desperate for companionship. And when he found none, when every hand turned against him, his loneliness festered into something darker.
I would not learn of his suffering until much later, when it was too late. But the first sign of my doom came soon enough. My youngest brother, William, was murdered. And though an innocent girl, Justine Moritz, was accused and executed for the crime, I knew the truth. I knew who had done it. Not a mindless brute, not a force of nature, but my own creation.
And so, my reckoning began.
<< Victor >>
Can you tell us about those deaths? Can you even now begin to understand what was going through your creation’s mind?
<< Doctor F >>
Those deaths weight upon my soul.
William, my sweet, innocent brother, was the first. He was but a child, full of light and laughter, with no knowledge of the horrors I had unleashed upon the world. My creation, wandering alone, came upon him. In his wretched existence, he had known nothing but rejection—scorn from every living being, curses from every mouth. And when he saw this boy, this symbol of innocence and love, he must have longed for kindness. But when William recoiled in fear, when he called him a “monster” as all others had, something inside him broke.
He strangled the boy. And worse—he framed Justine Moritz, our loyal servant, for the crime. He planted a locket upon her, knowing the world would turn its judgment upon the powerless rather than imagine the truth. Justine was hanged for his crime, and I, who knew the truth, remained silent. Coward that I was, I let her die.
It was only later, when my creation confronted me upon the icy slopes of Mont Blanc, that I came to understand his mind. He was not born a fiend. He had tried—tried—to be good. He had sought warmth, companionship, a place among men. And every door had been shut to him. Beaten, reviled, hunted like an animal, he had turned to rage. “I am malicious because I am miserable,” he told me. And in that moment, I could not deny the justice in his words.
But understanding does not erase horror. That was only the beginning of the destruction he wrought. When I denied him the one thing he begged for—a companion, someone to share his loneliness—he vowed to make me suffer as he had suffered.
And so he did. He took from me my closest friend, Henry Clerval. And then, on my wedding night, he took Elizabeth—my beloved, my last hope for happiness—strangling her in our marriage bed as I stood helpless outside.
Now, after all these years, I can begin to understand his mind. The agony of rejection, the unbearable solitude that twisted his soul. But understanding is not absolution. He chose to become what the world believed him to be—a monster. And I—I—made him that way.
<< Victor >>
These are parts of the story I never fully understood—planting the locket, returning on your wedding night. These actions took time, planning, and intent. Your creation was not the mindless creature we often assume him to be.
<< Doctor F >>
No—he was not mindless. Far from it. That is one of the gravest misconceptions about my creation, one perpetuated by crude adaptations that reduce him to a shambling, grunting brute. In truth, he possessed intellect—keen, articulate, even poetic in his suffering. And that, perhaps, made him all the more terrifying.
He was not merely reacting to the world—he was thinking, plotting, deciding. The locket was not dropped by accident; it was placed with intent, a deliberate act to shift blame, to manipulate human cruelty. The murder of Elizabeth was not a blind rampage—it was an execution, calculated to bring me the same despair he had endured. Even his first words to me, when we finally faced one another, were not the growls of a beast, but measured, reasoned speech: “I expected this reception,” he said, “all men hate the wretched.” He understood the nature of his existence better than I ever did.
This was not the work of a mindless monster. This was the work of a being who had been denied love, denied acceptance, and had chosen to embrace the role the world had given him. That, I think, is what makes him more tragic than any beast. He could have been more. He wanted to be more. But in the end, he became what he was made to be.
<< Victor >>
Wow, modern depictions of him often portray a mindless being, incapable of speech—reduced to mere grunts and sounds.
<< Doctor F >>
Yes. And in that reduction, they strip him of what made him truly terrifying—not his form, not his strength, but his mind.
The great tragedy of my creation is not that he was a monster, but that he became one. He was not born evil. He was not some drooling beast, lurching through the world without understanding. He read. He learned. He reasoned. He felt. When he spoke to me upon the glacier, he quoted Milton, likening himself to both Adam and Satan. He had read Plutarch’s Lives, Paradise Lost, The Sorrows of Young Werther—he did not just consume words; he understood them. He grasped philosophy, morality, justice, and cruelty.
And yet, time and again, he was met only with hatred. Cast out, hunted, denied any semblance of companionship, he turned that vast intellect toward vengeance. He made a choice—one born of suffering, yes, but a choice nonetheless.
Modern depictions reduce him to a grunting automaton because it is easier to see him as other, as an unthinking brute rather than a being who knows what he is and despairs at it. To look upon him as he truly was is to face an uncomfortable truth: the monster was not made by bolts of lightning or unnatural science. He was made by rejection, by cruelty, by abandonment.
And if that is the case—if a creature with the capacity for goodness can be driven to darkness—then what does that say about us?
<< Victor >>
Most modern stories depict his destruction just days after his creation, but your story unfolds over years.
<< Doctor F >>
Yes. My tragedy was not a single night of horror, but a slow, relentless unraveling over years. It was not a brief episode of terror, but a life haunted—by my creation, by my guilt, by the consequences I could not escape.
The modern retellings, where he is destroyed shortly after his birth, rob the story of its true weight. If he had died that night—if he had been struck down before he could speak, before he could suffer, before he could learn—then it would be a simple tale of a failed experiment. A mere cautionary fable about playing with forces beyond one’s understanding.
But that is not what happened. He lived. He grew. He became.
He wandered the world, trying to find his place in it. He watched families, longing for their warmth. He saved a drowning girl, only to be shot for his trouble. He approached humans in peace, again and again, only to be met with screams and violence. And only then—only then—did he turn to darkness. His revenge unfolded over time, with patience, with strategy, with a dreadful purpose. He did not strike in blind rage; he made me feel his suffering, made me lose those I loved one by one.
Had he been destroyed immediately, there would be no tragedy, only failure. But because he lived, because he suffered, because he chose his path, his story—our story—became something far more unsettling. Not a simple horror, but a meditation on creation, abandonment, and the monstrous potential that lurks in all of us.
<< Victor >>
And his ending—was it pitchforks, torches, and a vengeful crowd?
<< Doctor F >>
No. Nothing so crude, nothing so theatrical. There were no mobs, no flaming torches, no triumphant villagers striking down the beast. That is the invention of lesser imaginations—men who prefer their monsters to be simple, their stories to be neat.
His end was quiet.
After Elizabeth’s murder, after the final shattering of my world, I swore revenge. I pursued him across frozen wastelands, driven by nothing but fury and the need to see him destroyed. He led me ever northward, always just beyond my grasp, as if taunting me—or perhaps testing me, seeing how far I would go, how much I would suffer before I broke.
And then, at the end of the earth, on the ice-choked seas, I failed. Exhaustion overtook me, the elements conspired against me, and I collapsed. I was found, half-dead, by Captain Walton’s crew. It was aboard his ship that I told my story, that I confessed the full measure of my folly. I was dying. And so, in the end, my vengeance was denied.
But my creation returned. He came not in fury, not in triumph, but in sorrow. He stood over my lifeless body and wept.
He did not revel in his victory, for there was none. He had taken his revenge, but it had not brought him peace. “Am I to be thought the only criminal, when all humankind sinned against me?” he asked. But even he knew that justification was hollow. His vengeance had given him nothing. He was still alone. Always alone.
And so, he declared his own end. He would take himself into the icy wilderness, far beyond the reach of men, and there he would build his own funeral pyre. No torches, no mobs—only the quiet death of a creature who had been forsaken from the moment he opened his eyes.
That was his ending. Not as a monster to be slain, but as a being who had suffered, who had inflicted suffering, and who, at last, chose to leave the world behind.
<< Victor >>
Forgive me, but who was the true monster—you or him?
<< Doctor F >>
Ah. The question that lingers over my tale like a shadow. And you need not ask forgiveness—only the foolish fear such inquiries.
Who was the true monster? Him—the being of unnatural form, who murdered, who schemed, who exacted his vengeance with deliberate cruelty? Or I—the man who abandoned his creation, who denied him love, who set into motion every horror that followed?
I know what the world prefers. It is easier to call him the monster. His form is grotesque, his deeds violent. But if monstrosity is measured not by appearance, but by action—by choice—then tell me, which of us is truly damned?
He did terrible things, but he did not ask to be born. He did not seek to be wretched. I made him so.
I call him neither man nor beast, neither villain nor victim. He was both. And so was I.
There were two monsters in this tale. And I was the first.
<< Victor >>
Do you believe this is the true point of Mary Shelley’s story? Was this the message she wanted people to understand, or do you think her own grief made her wish for a different outcome?
<< Doctor F >>
Mary Shelley’s story is layered, filled with meaning that shifts depending on who reads it, when, and why. But if there is one truth at its core, it is this: monsters are not born—they are made.
She knew grief. She knew loss. She had buried children, watched loved ones fade, lived under the weight of death. Would she have wished for a different outcome in her own life? Of course. But in Frankenstein, there is no salvation, no redemption—only consequence. That is what makes it so powerful. It is not a story of punishment, nor of mere horror, but of responsibility, abandonment, and suffering that spirals beyond the control of its origin.
If she had intended to make a simple moral tale, she could have rendered it neatly—painted me as a madman, my creation as a soulless beast, and let the world rest easy. But she did not. Instead, she forced the reader into discomfort, into uncertainty. Who is to blame? Who is the villain? Can there be sympathy in monstrosity?
She left those answers unresolved because she understood something deeper than mere storytelling—she understood humanity. And humanity is never simple. It is flawed, yearning, hopeful, and cruel. It creates, it destroys, it loves, and it fails.
If she had a message, it was this: be careful what you create. Be careful what you abandon. Because in the end, your creations—your choices—will return to you. And they will demand reckoning.
<< Victor >>
Do you find it odd that the female characters in the book Elizabeth, Justine, Agatha, were all bound by fate yet given so little voice by an author who herself could have been one of them.
<< Doctor F >>
Yes. And it is one of the cruel ironies of this tale, is it not? That Mary Shelley, a woman who defied the expectations of her time, who gave me such depth, such voice, such torment—left the women of her story so silent, so bound by fate, so powerless.
Elizabeth, my beloved, existed only in relation to me. She was my promised wife, my last hope for happiness—and yet, she was given no agency of her own. She waited. She longed. And in the end, she died, not for her own sins, not for her own choices, but as a consequence of mine.
Justine, the innocent girl accused of my brother’s murder, had no real chance to defend herself. Society, cruel and blind, condemned her without question. Even as she accepted her fate with grace, there was no justice for her—only another life lost to my failure.
And Agatha, the young woman in the cottage, whom my creation observed from afar—she was kind, gentle, a symbol of the world’s warmth. But she, too, was powerless. When my creation revealed himself, hoping for acceptance, she did not speak for him. She fled.
None of these women had the luxury of control. They were not given the space to rage, to question, to fight back. They were caught in the machinery of a world that saw them as secondary figures—much as Mary Shelley, despite her brilliance, was often viewed in the shadow of the men around her.
And yet, I wonder—was this an oversight? Or was it deliberate? Did she write these women as silent because she knew that this is how the world would have treated them? Did she trap them in fate because she, a woman in the early 19th century, understood that their voices would have been ignored, dismissed, taken from them?
If so, then their silence is not just an omission—it is an indictment. A reflection of a world that did not listen. And perhaps, by writing them this way, she was holding up a mirror to her own reality, showing how easily women could be lost within the ambitions, the mistakes, and the tragedies of men.
<< Victor >>
I find it remarkable that a woman of her time could create something so grotesquely beautiful—much like your own creation, your monster.
<< Doctor F >>
Yes. And in that, perhaps, lies the most profound truth of all.
Mary Shelley, a woman in a world that sought to silence her, created. She took grief, intellect, fear, and vision, and from those raw materials, she shaped something that defied expectation. Something unnatural, something unsettling—something that the world, at first, recoiled from, just as I recoiled from my own creation. And yet, like my creature, her work endured.
Is that not the great irony? I, Victor Frankenstein, failed my creation. I abandoned him. I denied him his place in the world. But Mary Shelley? She saw hers through to the end. She gave him voice, gave him sorrow, gave him meaning. And in doing so, she ensured that neither he nor I would ever truly die.
Grotesquely beautiful, you say. Yes. That is what she created—a story that horrifies and yet compels, that disturbs and yet lingers in the soul. And though the world did not recognize the full brilliance of her creation at first, time has proven what I could not see in my own:
That which we call monstrous is often, in truth, extraordinary.
<< Victor >>
So, let’s fast-forward in time. The Frankenstein we know today is very different from the creature Mary Shelley originally envisioned. From 1930s horror films to 1960s sitcoms and 1970s comic adaptations, Frankenstein has taken on a life far beyond the original story. Could you highlight some of the most notable incarnations?
<< Doctor F >>
Ah, yes—the twisted afterlife of my story, where I have been reduced to a theatrical folly, and my creation has been stripped of his soul. If I had known that my tragedy would become a farce, I might have wept harder upon my deathbed.
The 1931 Universal film, Frankenstein, is perhaps the most infamous distortion. Boris Karloff’s portrayal—lumbering, mute, bolts in his neck—became the definitive image of my creation, though it bears little resemblance to Mary Shelley’s vision. Gone was his eloquence, his cunning, his depth of sorrow. Instead, he was reduced to a brute, a tragic but simple beast, feared more for his appearance than for the torment in his soul. And I—I!—was turned into the archetypal “mad scientist,” raving over bubbling flasks, laughing maniacally as I cried, “It’s alive!” Foolishness. I never uttered those words.
Then came the sequels, the parodies, the absurdities. Bride of Frankenstein (1935) transformed my story into a Gothic opera, and though it granted my creature some pathos, it veered further from its origins. By the time Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein (1948) was released, my tale had been reduced to mere spectacle.
The 1960s brought The Munsters, where my tragedy was transformed into family-friendly comedy. There stood “Herman Munster,” a bumbling, good-natured fool, far removed from the tormented being I had abandoned. And in comic books—ah, the absurdities! Marvel’s Monster of Frankenstein and DC’s Frankenstein, Agent of S.H.A.D.E. turned my creation into a warrior, a soldier, a creature of action rather than philosophy. The depth of his suffering was discarded in favor of spectacle.
And then, of course, there was Young Frankenstein (1974), Mel Brooks’ satirical masterpiece. A brilliant comedy, yes—but imagine my dismay to see my work turned into a musical number! “Puttin’ on the Ritz?” My grief, my horror, now a stage for laughter.
These are but a few of the countless reinterpretations, and I do not deny that some have merit. But what they all have in common is this: they take my story and simplify it. They strip away the moral complexity, the philosophical depth, the tragedy of creation and abandonment. They turn my creature into a monster, and me into a madman.
And yet, perhaps this too is fitting. My story was one of losing control—of a creation that escaped me, that became something beyond my intentions. And now, in the hands of history, Frankenstein has done the same. It no longer belongs to me. It belongs to the world, reshaped in their image, just as my creature was shaped by the cruelty of mankind.
Tell me—no, let me simply state this: history is often unkind to its creators.
<< Victor >>
Well said. But why do you think that is? Why did we feel the need to strip your monster of his intellect? And why do you think this version has become one of the most iconic characters in horror?
<< Doctor F >>
Because the truth is far more unsettling than the lie.
A mindless brute is frightening, yes, but simple. He is a thing to be feared, to be struck down, to be vanquished. He does not challenge us. He does not make us question ourselves. He does not ask for sympathy.
But my creation—the real creation—was something else entirely. He was intelligent. He was articulate. He was self-aware. He knew what he was, and he suffered because of it. He was not a monster by nature, but by experience. And that is a far more terrifying thought.
To acknowledge him as he truly was means facing the uncomfortable reality that we—not science, not lightning, not forbidden knowledge—we created the monster. That his suffering was not inherent, but inflicted. That his violence was not senseless, but a response to cruelty. To see him in his true form is to see ourselves reflected in his fate. And the world, I think, has never been eager to look into that mirror.
So they stripped him of his mind. They made him mute, shambling, easily feared. They took away his sorrow and left only his size, his strength, his unnatural form. They made him something one could simply run from—rather than something one might understand.
And as for why this version became so iconic? Because it is safe. Because it makes for good theater, for thrilling horror, for striking imagery. A groaning, lumbering giant with bolts in his neck is a spectacle. A being who speaks of his own wretchedness, who reads Milton and questions the cruelty of his existence—that is something altogether more disturbing.
The world has always preferred monsters it can see, touch, and destroy—rather than those it must reckon with.
<< Victor >>
And if you could do it again?
<< Doctor F >>
If I could do it again—if I could stand once more in that dim laboratory, hands trembling over my creation, the storm raging outside—what would I do?
Would I stop? Would I turn away before it was too late? Would I cast aside my ambition, let death remain undisturbed, and walk a different path?
Or would I still reach out, still grasp for that forbidden knowledge, still defy nature, believing—hoping—that this time, I would do it right? That this time, I would not run? That I would stay, face him, name him, teach him, give him the love he was denied?
I do not know. And that is the worst of it, isn’t it? Even now, after all the horror, all the loss, there is a part of me—a terrible, quiet part—that still wonders, what if?
But I know this: if I could do it again, and I did create him, I would not abandon him. I would face him. I would take responsibility. Because I have learned—oh, I have learned—that creation is not the sin.
<< Victor >>
As you lie on the table in Captain Walton’s ship. if you could have spoken to your creation, what would you have said.
<< Doctor F >>
If I could have spoken to him in that final moment—if I could have forced breath into my failing lungs, raised my voice above the weight of death itself—what would I have said?
Would I have cursed him, as I had so many times before? Called him fiend, wretch, abomination? No. No, I think not. That rage had long since burned to ash.
I would have said…
“I am sorry.”
Not for creating him—no, that was never the sin. I would not apologize for giving him life. I would apologize for failing him. For abandoning him when he needed me most. For allowing my own fear to shape his fate. For making him into the very thing I had always feared he would become.
I would tell him that I see him now—not as a monster, not as a mistake, but as what he always was: a being who only ever wanted to be accepted.
And perhaps I would ask—not as a creator, not as a master, but as a broken man reaching out to the only other soul who truly understands what we have suffered—was there ever a moment, even a single moment, where we could have chosen differently?
But it is too late. My lips are silent. My breath is gone. And he is left alone once more.
Just as he always was.
<< Victor >>
And if you could go back and sit with a 19 year old Marry Shelly as she sat at her desk, pen in hand, what would you say to her?
<< Doctor F >>
If I could sit beside her—Mary, not yet twenty, the storm still raging in her mind, her hand trembling over the page as she gives birth to me—what would I say?
I would tell her that she has done something no one else has done. That she has reached into the unknown and pulled forth something living. That her creation, her true creation—this story, this idea—will outlast empires, outlive even her name. That long after she is gone, long after her bones have crumbled to dust, the world will still speak of what she has written here.
I would tell her that they will misunderstand. That they will take her words, twist them, make them into something she never intended. They will turn me into a madman. They will make my creature a brute, rob him of his voice, his pain, his mind. They will forget that her story was never about horror for horror’s sake, but about humanity—its ambition, its cruelty, its longing for something greater.
And yet—despite all of that—her story will endure. Because some will see the truth. Some will read my words, my sorrow, my regrets, and they will understand. They will know that the true horror was never the act of creation, but what came after—the failure, the abandonment, the consequences left to fester.
Would she believe me? Would she even look up from her work, this strange girl with her strange mind, writing a tale that no woman of her time was expected to tell? Or would she simply smile that quiet, knowing smile of hers—because she already knew?
Perhaps I would not need to say anything at all. Perhaps she would only dip her pen into the ink, press it to the page, and continue.
<< Victor >>
It has been an honor and a privilege to share this time with you. Your story is one I’m grateful we could bring to the world. I know this wasn’t easy, but I sincerely thank you for your honesty and introspection.
<< Doctor F >>
The honor is mine. Few have sought to understand my tale as you have—to see beyond the crude horror, beyond the myth, and into the truth of what was lost.
If my story still holds meaning, if it still serves as a warning, then perhaps my suffering was not in vain. Perhaps, in speaking these words, I have done what I failed to do in life—faced my creation, taken responsibility, and, in some small way, made amends.
And so, I thank you. Not for absolution—no, that is beyond my reach—but for listening. For understanding.
May you, and all who hear these words, remember this: Knowledge is powerful, but without wisdom, it is ruin. Creation is not the sin—abandonment is. And monsters are not born… they are made.
Farewell.