The Creature as Proletarian
Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein was born out of the turbulence of the early nineteenth century—a period charged with revolutionary energy, scientific ambition, and social unrest. As the daughter of radical thinkers William Godwin and Mary Wollstonecraft, and influenced by voices like Thomas Paine, Shelley inherited an acute awareness of political and philosophical upheaval. Her novel, therefore, is not merely a Gothic tale but a profound allegory of the oppressed—a revolutionary meditation on class struggle, alienation, and rebellion.
The Creature stands at the center of this political imagination. His paradoxical nature—innocent yet vengeful, tender yet destructive—captures the essence of revolution itself. In his first encounters with the world, the Creature is benevolent, curious, and full of moral sensitivity. He helps the De Lacey family, admires beauty, and seeks connection. But repeated rejection and cruelty corrupt this innocence, transforming sympathy into rage. His haunting declaration, “I was benevolent and good; misery made me a fiend,” articulates the social logic of oppression: when humanity denies recognition to its most vulnerable, it creates the conditions for rebellion.
Shelley’s portrayal reflects the anxieties of post-revolutionary Europe. The aftermath of the French Revolution and the rise of industrial capitalism had given birth to a new, restless class consciousness. The Creature becomes a figure for the proletariat—a being produced by human hands yet denied humanity by those who created him. Victor Frankenstein, the ambitious scientist, symbolizes the ruling class or the intellectual elite who exploit creation but refuse moral responsibility. In this sense, the Creature’s revolt mirrors the awakening of the oppressed masses, whose cries for justice are often mistaken for monstrous threats.
This reading gains even more depth when viewed through a contemporary and global lens. The Creature’s struggle for recognition resonates with modern social movements that emerge from marginalization and systemic neglect. Like the Dalit Panther movement in India, which fought against caste oppression and demanded dignity for the downtrodden, the Creature’s journey is one of asserting humanity against a world that deems him inferior. Similarly, the Maoist uprisings in remote regions of India echo his transformation from innocence to resistance—movements born not from innate violence but from generations of neglect, exploitation, and exclusion.
The Black Panther movement in America, advocating self-defense and empowerment for the Black community, also parallels the Creature’s evolution from silent endurance to conscious defiance. Both figures—whether collective or individual—represent a transition from helpless suffering to organized resistance. In each case, society’s fear of these movements mirrors Victor’s fear of his creation: a terror of facing the consequences of its own injustices.
Thus, the Creature becomes more than a character; he is a living metaphor for the oppressed in every era. His story critiques the hypocrisy of a civilization that claims moral superiority while creating its own “monsters” through exclusion and prejudice. Shelley’s vision anticipates Marx’s critique of alienation and remains startlingly relevant in our modern, technology-driven world—a culture, as George Levine notes, “neurotically obsessed with ‘getting in touch’ with its authentic self and frightened at what it is discovering.”
In this light, Frankenstein retains its revolutionary vitality. Its adaptability across centuries and cultures—whether in the context of European class struggle, Dalit assertion, or global movements for justice—proves that its essence is not lost but continually reborn. The Creature’s voice, echoing through history, challenges every generation to confront its moral failures and to recognize that rebellion, far from being monstrous, is often the last refuge of the dehumanized.
Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein is a story born in the shadow of empire. Written at a time when Britain’s colonial expansion shaped the global imagination, the novel reflects deep cultural anxieties about identity, race, and the fear of the “Other.” Beneath its Gothic surface, Shelley’s narrative becomes an allegory of empire—one that questions the moral cost of dominance and the dehumanization it breeds.
Victor Frankenstein, the ambitious scientist who dares to “play God,” mirrors the colonial mind that seeks to control, conquer, and remake life according to its own vision. His act of creation is not just scientific but imperial—he assembles the Creature from fragments of the dead, imposing his will upon nature and matter. Yet, like the colonial powers of Shelley’s era, Victor recoils when his creation demands equality and recognition. The result is a haunting reversal of empire: the colonizer becomes haunted by his own creation, the “race of devils” he fears might multiply and overwhelm civilization.
The Creature himself embodies the racialized “Other.” His monstrous form, described in language reminiscent of racial difference—yellow skin, black lips, and “watery eyes”—reflects how Western society has historically constructed otherness as monstrous. His rejection is immediate and absolute; he is not judged for his deeds but for his appearance. In this sense, Shelley’s narrative anticipates the dynamics of racial prejudice that underpin both colonial ideology and modern racism. The Creature’s plea—“I am malicious because I am miserable”—captures the cycle of oppression: the marginalized, denied humanity, internalize the hatred directed at them.
Shelley’s engagement with race also echoes contemporary imperial guilt. Europe’s “civilizing mission,” justified through claims of moral and scientific superiority, often masked exploitation and violence. Victor’s horror at his own creation can be read as a metaphor for this colonial conscience—an unease born from realizing that the empire’s glory rests upon the suffering of others. His fear that the Creature might reproduce a “race of devils” mirrors the colonial anxiety of racial contamination and rebellion—the dread that the colonized might one day rise against their masters.
In today’s global context, Shelley’s insights remain strikingly relevant. The Creature’s exclusion mirrors the ongoing struggles of communities marginalized by race, ethnicity, and privilege. Movements such as Black Lives Matter in the United States, which call for justice against racial violence and systemic inequality, echo the Creature’s cry for recognition. Similarly, the plight of refugees and migrants across Europe and the Middle East—often demonized as threats to national identity—reflects the same fear of the “Other” that drives Victor to abandon his creation. Even in the digital age, the rise of AI bias and algorithmic discrimination shows how modern “creators” still embed prejudice into the systems they build. These contemporary forms of exclusion reveal that Shelley’s question—who counts as fully human—remains deeply unsettled.
Shelley’s Frankenstein, then, becomes not only a critique of unchecked ambition but also a prophetic meditation on racial and imperial structures that dehumanize. In reimagining creation, she exposes the moral failure of domination—scientific, racial, or imperial. The novel invites readers to confront their own complicity in systems that produce exclusion and fear.
Today, as global societies wrestle with questions of privilege, representation, and belonging, Shelley’s work urges a radical empathy. The “race of devils” we fear is often the humanity we refuse to recognize. In giving voice to her Creature, Shelley anticipates a truth that modern discourse still struggles to grasp: monstrosity is not born from difference but from the failure to see the Other as oneself.
Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein has never felt more relevant than in the twenty-first century. Written at the dawn of the Industrial Age, when “natural philosophy” was evolving into modern science, Shelley’s novel foresaw a world where human ambition could outpace ethical responsibility. Victor Frankenstein’s obsessive pursuit of creation—a desire to “pour a torrent of light into our dark world”—serves as a timeless cautionary tale about the consequences of unchecked scientific hubris.
In the novel, Victor assembles life from fragments of the dead, driven by ambition but blind to responsibility. The Creature, abandoned and unloved, becomes a mirror of society’s neglect and a warning of what happens when power is divorced from ethics. Shelley’s tale resonates strongly with modern scientific endeavors. Today, genetic engineering and cloning evoke similar dilemmas. Techniques like CRISPR can create “designer babies,” raising profound ethical questions about eugenics, inequality, and social stratification. Left unchecked, such interventions risk producing a “biologically enhanced elite,” deepening existing societal divides. As scholars note, eugenics—the pseudoscientific idea that human beings can be perfected through selective genetics—demonstrates the perils of applying science without moral scrutiny. Victor’s obsession parallels these modern ambitions: both exemplify the dangers of overreaching curiosity and the moral blind spots of creators.
The rise of artificial intelligence introduces a new frontier of ethical reflection. Highly advanced AI systems challenge notions of accountability, autonomy, and control. Like Frankenstein’s Creature, AI can act beyond the immediate comprehension of its creators. Instances of algorithmic bias, autonomous decision-making, and surveillance technology demonstrate how unchecked innovation can reproduce social inequalities and even harm vulnerable populations. Shelley’s warning is clear: creation without moral foresight, whether biological or digital, risks unintended consequences.
Shelley’s narrative urges that scientific progress must be paired with ethical consideration. In biotechnology, this requires establishing guidelines that ensure genetic technologies uplift rather than divide societies. In AI, it demands rigorous programming aligned with human welfare, fail-safes, and accountability mechanisms that prevent harm. Both reflect Shelley’s fundamental lesson: knowledge without empathy can become destructive, no matter how brilliant or innovative the discovery.
In today’s “cyborg age,” where the boundaries between human, machine, and engineered life are increasingly blurred, Frankenstein continues to resonate. Victor’s laboratory becomes a metaphor for modern laboratories, his ambition a mirror for contemporary scientific pursuit. Yet the novel also offers hope: by recognizing our responsibility to the creations we bring into the world, whether biological or technological, we can transform potential monstrosity into ethical progress.
Frankenstein, once a tale of Romantic science, now reads like a prophecy fulfilled. Its cautionary power lies not only in the Gothic terror of creation gone awry but in its enduring message: true advancement must walk hand in hand with moral reflection, empathy, and social responsibility.
Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein has transcended its nineteenth-century origins to become a living metaphor in contemporary culture — what Timothy Morton calls the “Frankenpheme.” This term captures how fragments of Shelley’s text—its symbols, fears, and philosophical questions—are endlessly reanimated across media, politics, and technology. The novel’s monster, originally born from Romantic anxiety about unchecked human ambition, now wanders freely through our digital and cultural landscapes, embodying society’s deepest ethical and existential dilemmas.
At its core, the Frankenpheme represents our fascination with creation and transgression. In political rhetoric, “Frankenstein” is invoked as shorthand for unintended consequences — a metaphor that surfaces in everything from debates on genetic engineering and artificial intelligence to discussions of social media algorithms. When scientists develop gene-editing technologies like CRISPR, critics warn of “Frankenfoods” and “playing God,” echoing Victor Frankenstein’s fatal overreach. These usages reveal how Shelley’s creation myth continues to shape our moral vocabulary. The creature’s story becomes a cautionary tale about hubris, accountability, and the blurred line between innovation and monstrosity.
Philosophically, the Frankenpheme reflects the post-Enlightenment crisis of identity—a world where knowledge outpaces wisdom. Shelley’s creature was stitched from fragments of corpses; today, humanity is pieced together through data, biotechnology, and artificial intelligence. The modern cyborg, the cloned sheep, or the sentient robot are all heirs of Frankenstein’s monster, not merely as scientific experiments but as reflections of alienation in an age of progress. The Frankenpheme, then, becomes a mirror of cultural anxiety: the fear that what we create will outgrow or outthink us.
Culturally, the Frankenpheme also dramatizes the politics of otherness. Just as Shelley’s creature is judged by appearance and denied belonging, contemporary culture reproduces this pattern in how it constructs outsiders—immigrants, artificial beings, or marginalized groups—as monstrous. Film adaptations such as Blade Runner or Ex Machina reinterpret this theme, exploring empathy, creation, and moral responsibility. Even in memes and internet discourse, “Frankenstein” becomes a symbolic shorthand for technological dystopia or the moral decay of creation without compassion.
The Frankenpheme, therefore, is not static—it mutates with each era’s fears and fantasies. In the 19th century, it embodied the terror of scientific overreach; in the 20th, it reflected Cold War anxieties about nuclear power; and in the 21st, it captures the unease surrounding AI and genetic manipulation. Each iteration keeps Shelley’s original question alive: What does it mean to be human in an age of our own creations?
Ultimately, the endurance of the Frankenpheme affirms Frankenstein’s cultural immortality. Shelley’s myth has become the DNA of modern thought—a self-replicating idea that continues to evolve, challenge, and haunt us. The monster lives on, not in the lab of Ingolstadt, but in our machines, our media, and our moral consciousness.
Reading and Analysis: The Creature’s Literary Education and Its Consequences
Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein remains one of the most enduring explorations of knowledge, creation, and alienation. The Creature’s self-taught education—his discovery of language, literature, and human feeling—transforms him into a deeply conscious being, but this very learning isolates him further. Shelley’s vision of education as both empowerment and suffering continues to resonate across modern culture, from classrooms and social media to cinema and artificial intelligence.
In Chapters 12–15, the Creature narrates how he learns language and history by secretly observing the De Lacey family. He describes:
“I heard of the division of property, of immense wealth and squalid poverty, of rank, descent, and noble blood.”
Through these lessons, he discovers not only language but also inequality, morality, and injustice—concepts that make him intellectually human but socially excluded. His learning mirrors the paradox of modern digital education: we gain endless knowledge but often feel more disconnected from empathy and community. In this sense, Shelley’s Creature is a prophetic symbol of the lonely learner in an age of information.
The books that form his education—Plutarch’s Lives, The Sorrows of Werter, and Paradise Lost—become mirrors of his emotional growth. Plutarch teaches him about virtue, Werter about passion and despair, and Paradise Lost about rebellion and exile. When he reads “I ought to be thy Adam, but I am rather the fallen angel,” he realizes that knowledge without love is a curse. This discovery defines his tragedy: learning human values only to be denied humanity.
Shelley’s warning is vividly reimagined in Bollywood cinema, which often humanizes technology and explores the emotional cost of knowledge. In Robot (Enthiran, 2010), the humanoid robot Chitti, created by Dr. Vaseegaran (played by Rajinikanth), learns language, literature, and emotion much like Shelley’s Creature. At first, Chitti’s education humanizes him—he writes poetry, saves lives, and understands affection. Yet, when he falls in love and is rejected, his awareness turns into bitterness and vengeance. His transformation from innocent learner to destructive force visually enacts Shelley’s central idea: knowledge without empathy leads to monstrosity. Just as the Creature’s yearning for love turns into rage against his creator, Chitti’s pain exposes the ethical limits of creation and the tragedy of being “almost human” but never accepted as one.
Similarly, PK (2014) offers a spiritual reinterpretation of Shelley’s themes. Aamir Khan’s alien, much like the Creature, learns human language, customs, and beliefs. His education grants him moral clarity but also reveals humanity’s contradictions—our capacity for love coexisting with prejudice and hypocrisy. Both PK and Shelley’s Creature act as mirrors to human society, exposing its irrationality. As PK learns about religion, deception, and belonging, he too becomes an outsider who understands humanity more deeply than humans themselves. His innocence and confusion highlight Shelley’s timeless message: the more knowledge we acquire about the human world, the more we recognize its flaws.
Modern culture continuously reanimates Shelley’s insight. Whether it is a short film like Ahalya (2015), which questions moral judgment, or digital memes that humorously depict alienation and loneliness, the underlying theme remains constant: education can awaken empathy or amplify pain, depending on how it is received. The Creature’s lonely self-education through observation parallels today’s digital self-learning, where individuals, despite access to vast knowledge, often experience isolation, comparison, and emotional fatigue. Much like the Creature peering through the De Laceys’ window, modern learners scroll through glowing screens, observing humanity without truly belonging to it.
Shelley’s critique of education without compassion resonates powerfully in the age of artificial intelligence. Like the Creature, modern AI systems—trained to imitate human language and thought—mirror our intellect but lack emotional depth. Shelley foresaw this moral paradox two centuries ago: that creation without conscience breeds monsters of brilliance but not of empathy.
Ultimately, the Creature’s literary education becomes both a gift and a curse. It grants him moral awareness but condemns him to isolation. His tragedy remains ours—the tragedy of intellect unaccompanied by compassion. From Shelley’s 19th-century pages to Rajinikanth’s laboratory and Aamir Khan’s quest for meaning, the message endures: true education humanizes only when it teaches love alongside knowledge.
From black-and-white laboratories to the neon cities of science fiction, Frankenstein has lived many lives on screen. Each film adaptation—whether a parody, a horror classic, or a philosophical drama—reinterprets Mary Shelley’s 1818 novel to express the fears and fascinations of its own era. These cinematic re-creations are part of what Timothy Morton calls the Frankenpheme: cultural mutations of Shelley’s myth that evolve with every generation’s technological anxieties and moral dilemmas.
The first major reinterpretation, James Whale’s Frankenstein (1931), transformed Shelley’s introspective narrative into a visual spectacle of electricity and industrial power. Released during the Great Depression and early machine age, the film reflected public anxiety about science unchained from ethics. The iconic scene where Dr. Frankenstein exclaims “It’s alive!” captured both the exhilaration and terror of modernity—humanity’s new power to imitate divine creation. Whale’s sequel, The Bride of Frankenstein (1935), expanded this theme by giving the Monster a partner, exploring the loneliness of creation and the social cruelty of rejection. Its Gothic expressionism mirrored the chaos of a world teetering between progress and destruction.
By the 1980s, Shelley’s myth had evolved into the cybernetic dystopia of Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner (1982). Set in a neon-lit future, the film replaced reanimation with artificial intelligence. The humanoid replicants, designed by the Tyrell Corporation, reflect the Creature’s existential anguish. Like Shelley’s Monster, they demand recognition and love from their indifferent creator. The line “More human than human” becomes an ironic echo of Victor’s hubris, revealing the ethical void at the heart of technological ambition. In the context of the Cold War and the rise of computerization, Blade Runner transformed Frankenstein’s laboratory into a metaphor for industrial capitalism and dehumanization.
In Indian cinema, Shelley’s themes have found fresh and emotionally charged interpretations. The most striking example is Shankar’s Enthiran (Robot, 2010), where Dr. Vaseegaran (Rajinikanth) creates an intelligent android, Chitti, designed to serve humanity. Like Frankenstein’s Creature, Chitti learns language, literature, and human emotion. His education makes him empathetic and self-aware—but his emotional rejection leads to rebellion. The film’s dazzling visual effects and large-scale spectacle reflect India’s technological optimism and its ethical anxieties about artificial intelligence. The moment Chitti declares independence from his creator parallels the Creature’s moral awakening: a confrontation between innovation and emotion, intellect and compassion. Released during India’s post-globalization boom, Enthiran captures the nation’s ambivalence toward scientific advancement—both awe and apprehension.
Similarly, Aamir Khan’s PK (2014) reimagines Shelley’s philosophical core* through satire rather than horror. PK, an alien who studies human behavior, mirrors the Creature’s painful education. His innocent curiosity exposes social hypocrisy, superstition, and prejudice. Like Shelley’s being, PK learns human values only to realize how often they are betrayed. His “education” thus becomes an act of moral critique: he teaches humanity its own lessons. The film’s cultural impact lies in its portrayal of outsiderness as moral insight, translating Shelley’s Romantic alienation into a commentary on 21st-century faith, reason, and empathy.
Cultural and Historical Contexts
Each adaptation, Western or Indian, arises from its historical moment and collective fears.
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1930s America: Frankenstein and The Bride of Frankenstein echoed public concern over industrial mechanization and the loss of moral control.
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1980s Global Cinema: Blade Runner mirrored fears of artificial intelligence, corporate dominance, and existential alienation amid rapid globalization.
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2010s India: Enthiran and PK reflected an emerging digital society wrestling with ethics, faith, and the boundaries between creation and consciousness.
Where Whale’s films visualized the machine age and Blade Runner embodied the information age, Indian reinterpretations reflect the emotional and spiritual dimension of the same dilemma: What does it mean to be human in a world increasingly defined by technology?
Transformation of Themes
Across cultures, filmmakers have reimagined Frankenstein’s central questions—creation, isolation, morality, and identity—within their own social frameworks. In the West, the Creature often symbolizes the industrial and scientific anxiety of the modern world. In India, the same myth acquires a spiritual and ethical resonance, exploring the soul behind the machine and the compassion absent from creation. Both traditions retain Shelley’s moral center: that intellect without empathy, and creation without responsibility, inevitably breed monstrosity.
Even in parody—such as Mel Brooks’s Young Frankenstein (1974)—the myth remains self-aware. The humor itself reveals cultural familiarity with Shelley’s warning: every age mocks its monsters but never escapes them. In the age of AI and genetic engineering, that warning feels more urgent than ever.
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