My First Impression of Frankenstein

When I was reading Frankenstein, my first impression was that it wasn't a classic for nothing.
I loved it as soon as I started it. Robert Walton - who seemed to me to be the main character - was likable. He's the kind of character that you can't help but feel sympathy for; what with the way he describes his desperate need for a friend.

My second impression - and here I was only roughly through the first few chapters - was that all the cartoons had it wrong. Frankenstein wasn't a monster; he was a man.
Right at the beginning, I knew Victor Frankenstein was a man to pitied. The way he told his story to Robert Walton left no room for speculation - he kept hinting at his imminent doom so much that there wasn't a doubt that he'd suffered something major and disastrous. What it was, however, was the big mystery, and I think that's what kept me reading.
As the novel progresses, I see immediately that I was right in the fact that Victor Frankenstein was a man to be pitied. The way he removes himself from the people that care about him (Elizabeth for instance) and drowns in his frantic pursuit of knowledge is heartbreaking. He even proclaims that he "The agony of my feelings allowed me no respite; no incident occurred from which my rage and misery could not extract its food..."And when he creates the monster...I don't think I can describe this as catharsis as it only is applicable to plays, but the core definition of catharsis - a mixture of pity and fear generated by an occurrence - was exactly what I was feeling up until this point - for both Victor and the monster whose hunger for love and friendship stirs up sympathy.

Some of the themes I've spotted as I went along my reading were love, the yearning for friendship, horror (in relation to the monster), and acceptance. For now, I have no trouble understanding the book, and have encountered no roadblocks. I think it is mostly due to the way the author wrote the book - she explains so well, but leaves just enough suspense to make her reading agreeable.

Really, it isn't a book that disappoints.

Citation: Shelley, Mary Wollstonecraft, Walter James Miller, and Harold Bloom. Frankenstein, Or, The Modern Prometheus. New York: New American Library, 2000. Print.