Tyron Hoisten Professor Bean 29 October 2015 Analysis of “The Workshop of Filthy Creation” When I first read Warren Montag's The Workshop of Filthy Creation, I was not certain if I agreed with his assertion or not. Montag assertion is that the creature is “not so much the sign of the proletariat as of its unrepresentability”. In reading, I found that the sometimes difficult to follow narrative layout of the book was the principal base for much of his interpretation: For example, Montag says that the absence of technology and science in the book, specifically in the scene where the monster is created, is a clear example of the monster’s isolation, and the thus the reduction of all modernity “to the absolute singularity of Frankenstein’s creation”. …show more content…
The bias, in my opinion, is only present to draw emphasis to the bourgeoise, and I had difficulty identifying with Montag’s use of similar ambiguities to make a point about the proletariat. This confusion is a result of the “unrepresentability” of the proletariat—though it is a sole entity, embodied by the monster, the contradictions of the character make it impossible to give it a single identity. Montag says that the monster is “monstrous by virtue of its being artificial rather than natural; lacking the unity of a natural organism, the monster is a factitious totality assembled from the parts of a multitude of different individuals, in particular, the poor, the urban mass that, because it is a multitude rather than an individual, is itself as nameless as Frankenstein’s …show more content…
Its fall and the victory of the proletariat are equally inevitable”. I was curious then about who should be looked at the conqueror of this story, if there even is one. It appears that the absence of control that comes along with the having no identity is a natural side effect for the Victor and for the monster—and with that being said, it appears that there is no real conqueror. Once Victor passes, the monster follows a chilling reflection of history, as mention by Montag: “It was widely felt, even by those sympathetic to such experiments, that the mass mobilization necessary to destroy the old order effectively blocked the creation of the