Frankenstein Research Paper

Tyler Reidl Eich Dual Credit Humanities E104 21 March 2024 Mary Shelley, The Mother of Horror? The horror genre is very popular in movies and TV shows, and is designed to instill emotions into the viewer such as wonder or fear. The ways horror movies instill these emotions are commonly found within visual effects, such as jumpscares, incredibly fast flashing lights or how a character may look. Nowadays, these are seen as cliches, things you’ve seen a hundred times before, however watching your favorite horror movie and seeing cliches may get old, but they’re the basis of modern horror. How these cliches originated was from the book Frankenstein by Mary Shelley, in which the character Frankenstein’s monster acts in ways similar to characters

The monster wants to be loved and accepted, however when met with hatred, he decides to switch his values. Something that is unexpected, Shelley conveys through Frankenstein, “If I cannot inspire love, I will cause fear,” (Shelly 175). When Frankenstein’s Monster switches his agenda, it makes the reader worried about what might happen next. The reader knows the monster’s capabilities and due to this, they know what might happen next. Creating a feeling of fear and wonder is what the horror genre excels at, and it’s clear Mary Shelley successfully created fear through the monster due to his grotesque appearance and his sudden change in ideologies. In the book alongside the movie IT by Steven King, it is a shapeshifting entity that takes on the appearance of a clown. Terrorizing a town called Derry and killing children every twenty seven years. The reason Pennywise is a scary creature is due to his appearance. cbr explains, “Throughout the on-screen adaptations, it actually transforms into a bunch of different things,” (cbr.com). Due to being able to shapeshift, the entity often takes the appearance of a clown because it’s scary to

Frankenstein is an inhumane looking creature whose identity was shown in small bursts during the scene. Since it’s the beginning of the movie, it’s a mystery what the creature is creating this sense of fear. In Frankenstein, the Monster is perceived as an empathetic evil, someone who did terrible things to people, but you understand why he did the things he did and can sometimes even relate to him. This idea from Mary Shelley is seen in the horror movie Saw directed by James Wan, where a man takes people who have made a mistake in their life and locks them in traps, which can kill them. John Kramer is the main antagonist in the Saw movies, being the puppet master behind all the elaborate traps. In the first movie, it’s revealed that, “After a suicide attempt, John becomes more valuing of life and becomes obsessed with forcing people into deadly scenarios, which he refers to as "games" or "tests." The victims are forced to inflict pain, or mental suffering, upon themselves or others in order to escape a locked room or building,”