Frankenstein (Enriched Classics) by Mary Shelley Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of Frankenstein (Enriched Classics)
Book Review: frankenstein
Summary: 5 Stars
came next day in perfect condition my sister needed it for school and she was very pleased thank youBook Review: Prometheus
Summary: 4 Stars
On my recent travels, I finished reading Mary Shelley's Frankenstein.
Written in the Gothic style, it's also written as one would tell a ghost story: minimalist in its descriptions of setting, focusing on character and action more than anything else. It's written in the first person, with varying narrators allowing for varied points of view. Despite the threadbare descriptions of setting, Shelley does a good job of conveying with those few words key aspects of the setting, giving her story great atmosphere.
Gothic stories always are high on emotion, and not high on reasoning thought, and this is no exception. I am still left wondering how folks can consider this a work of science fiction. It is more fantasy than science fiction: man takes on the role of God, man's creation, like God's, goes awry, and the pair are locked in a monumental struggle. Fantasy's themes often go to the nature of characters trying to choose between right and wrong, while science fiction's themes go towards the consequences of technology and science, without the necessity of morality, and Frankenstein tends towards fantasy under that line of thinking...hence, the alternate title, "The Modern Prometheus".
All in all, an entertaining, and quick read.
Book Review: One of the greatest stories told
Summary: 5 Stars
In Mary Shelley's novel, there are various statements about the use of science. The field of eugenics is brought into question. The issue of cloning is brought into perspective way before its time. Shelley's novel is prophetic in so many ways for revealing the debates and scientific issues of contemporary times. From the recent FDA consideration of livestock cloning to genetically engineered crops, these controversial issues have been compared to Frankenstein science. Other past scientific innovations such as the use of pesticides like DDT have led to failure and proved dangerous for human civilization. These too were once compared to Frankenstein science, yet humankind persisted on using these chemicals, all for reasons of convenience and capital ambition on the part of corporations involved. We may see Shelley's Frankenstein as the first great scientific warning to humans in an industrial world. It may also be seen as the beginning of environmental awareness. This awareness concerns humans within their own environments such as parent/child relationships and childhood influences, as well as human impact on nature. Book Review: DO NOT BUY THIS EDITION!!!!!!
Summary: 1 Stars
This "enriched classics" is a bowdlerized version of Mary Shelley's original text. It eliminates passages, changes the diction, abridges the chapters, and changes the entire structure of the novel. Our school bought this edition thinking that the additional notes would be helpful to students studying the text, but there was no indication at all on Amazon's website that this version had been substantially altered by the editors. The book is so bowdlerized that our school bought an entire new set of texts for the students at a considerable finanacial loss for the school. WHATEVER YOU DO, BUY SOME OTHER VERSION OF FRANKENSTEIN. THIS ONE IS A MONSTER CREATED BY SOMEONE WHO HAS NO RESPECT FOR THE AUTHOR. BANTAM, PUFFIN, OXFORD -- THEY ARE ALL FINE. Irene Nicastro, English teacher, The American School of The Hague.Book Review: Shelley's Magnum Opus
Summary: 5 Stars
When people think of horror, the image of Boris Karloff's Frankenstein can generally be expected to pop into their heads, usually within the first minute of the word "horror"s utterance.
Yet Mary Shelley's Frankenstein is not horror. It is science-fiction - and, for that matter, one of the first works of science-fiction ever written, as well as one of the most brilliant. While many of the nineteenth-century authors who boldly dove into the realm of the unknown came back with fascinating baubels that are now horribly dated, "Frankenstein" maintains its power and prescience in three ways:
1) Its foremost theme is that of life itself - what is it that separates inanimate tissue from its living counterpart, and what in turn can give sentience to what might otherwise be a mindless organism. The answers to these questions have not yet been discovered, and are indeed probably in greater controversy today than they were in Shelley's own time.
2) Another aspect timeless aspect of this book is its exploration into the responsibilities of creation - not merely scientific creation, but of any sort of creation, of any situation in which a human being with an idea sees it through to the finish, only to find that unexpected consequences await him/her.
3) The drama itself - of a man fleeing from a monster, and of a monster trying desperately to assert his manhood - is as poignant as it is profound, and the reader who isn't moved by the plights of both these characters lacks either the heart to care or the brain to understand.
It is a shame that people today associate the word Frankenstein with cheap and formulaic horror films. Indeed, there is a fair amount of irony that Frankenstein is often thought of as a run-of-the-mill hideous monster, when indeed it was precisely that sort of knee-jerk superficiality and intolerance that Shelley herself was trying to combat. Either way, Frankenstein is one of those rare books that managed to create its own genre without later being dated by countless similar efforts. No matter how great future science fictions writers may become, they will always walk in the shadow of Frankenstein.