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Monster by Dean Myers Summary

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Walter Dean Myers

Everything you need for every book you read..

Welcome to the LitCharts study guide on Walter Dean Myers's Monster . Created by the original team behind SparkNotes, LitCharts are the world's best literature guides.

Monster: Introduction

Monster: plot summary, monster: detailed summary & analysis, monster: themes, monster: quotes, monster: characters, monster: symbols, monster: theme wheel, brief biography of walter dean myers.

Historical Context of Monster

Other books related to monster.

• Full Title: Monster
• When Written: 1998
• Where Written: Jersey City, New Jersey
• When Published: April 21, 1999
• Literary Period: Contemporary
• Genre: Young Adult Fiction
• Setting: Harlem, New York City
• Climax: Steve Harmon is declared not guilty of felony murder
• Antagonist: Sandra Petrocelli
• Point of View: Split between first-person narration (by Steve Harmon) and dramatic point of view (through the screenplay he writes)

Extra Credit for Monster

Composite Character. Although Steve Harmon is not a real person, Myers stated that he knew many young men just like him and in his same predicament; Steve is thus a “composite character” built from all of them.

Catharsis. Myers has admitted in interviews that when he writes characters like Steve Harmon, he is writing to calm the memory of the troubled young man he once was as a teenager, and feels as if he is writing to reach out and comfort his younger self.

Monster Book Review

A Multiple Award-Winning Book by Walter Dean Myers

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• B.A., English Education and Reading, University of Utah

In 1999, in his young adult book Monster , Walter Dean Myers introduced readers to a young man named Steve Harmon. Steve, sixteen and in prison awaiting a murder trial, is an African American teen and a product of inner city poverty and circumstance. In this story, Steve retells the events leading up to the crime and narrates the prison and courtroom drama while trying to determine if what the prosecutor said about him is true. Is he really a monster? Learn more about this award-winning book that gives a disturbing inside account about a teen struggling to prove to himself that he’s not what everyone thinks him to be.

Summary of Monster

Steve Harmon, a 16-year-old African-American teen from Harlem, is awaiting trial for his role as an accomplice in a drugstore robbery that ended in murder. Before being imprisoned, Steve enjoyed amateur filmmaking and while in confinement decides to write his experience in prison as a movie script. In a movie script format, Steve gives readers an account of the events leading up to the crime. As narrator, director and star of his story, Steve navigates readers through the events of the courtroom and discussions with his attorney. He directs camera angles at various characters in the story from the judge, to witnesses, and to the other teens involved in the crime. Readers are given a front seat to the personal dialogue Steve has with himself through diary entries he tucks in among the script. Steve writes this note to himself, “I want to know who I am. I want to know the road to panic that I took. I want to look at myself a thousand times to look for one true image.” Is Steve innocent of his part in the crime? Readers must wait until the end of the story to find out Steve’s courtroom and personal verdict.

About the Author, Walter Dean Myers

Walter Dean Myers writes gritty urban fiction that depicts life for African American teens growing up in inner city neighborhoods. His characters know poverty, war, neglect, and the street life. Using his writing talents, Myers has become the voice for many African American teens and he creates characters to whom they can connect or relate. Myers, also raised in Harlem, recalls his own teen years and the difficulty of rising above the pull of the streets. As a young boy, Myers struggled in school, got into several fights, and found himself in trouble on many occasions. He credits reading and writing as his lifelines. 

For more recommended fiction by Myers, read reviews of Shooter and Fallen Angels .

Awards and Book Challenges

Monster has won several notable awards including the 2000 Michael L. Printz Award, the 2000 Coretta Scott King Honor Book Award and was a 1999 National Book Award Finalist. Monster is also listed on several book lists as a best book for young adults and a best book for reluctant readers .

Along with the prestigious awards, Monster has also been the target of several book challenges in school districts across the country. While not listed on the American Library Association's frequently challenged book list,   the American Booksellers For Freedom of Expression (ABFFE) has followed Monster 's book challenges. One book challenge came from parents in the Blue Valley School District in Kansas who want to challenge the book for the following reasons: "vulgar language, sexual explicitness, and violent imagery that is gratuitously employed."

Despite the various book challenges to Monster , Myers continues to write stories that depict the realities of growing up impoverished and in dangerous neighborhoods. He continues to write the stories that many teens want to read.

Recommendation and Review

Written in a unique format with a compelling storyline, Monster is guaranteed to engage teen readers. Whether or not Steve is innocent is the big hook in this story. Readers are invested in learning about the crime, the evidence, the testimony, and the other teens involved in order to find out if Steve is innocent or guilty.

Because the story is written as a movie script, readers will find the actual reading of the story fast and easy to follow. The story gains momentum as little details are revealed about the nature of the crime and Steve’s connection to the other characters involved. Readers will grapple with determining whether Steve is a sympathetic or trustworthy character. The reality that this story could be ripped from the headlines makes it a book that most teens, including struggling readers, will enjoy reading.

Walter Dean Myers is a renowned author and all his teen books should be recommended reading. He understands the urban life that some African American teens experience and through his writing he gives them a voice as well as an audience who can better understand their world. Myers's books take on serious issues facing teens such as poverty, drugs, depression, and war and make these topics accessible. His candid approach hasn’t gone unchallenged, but his forty years of longstanding work has not gone unnoticed by his teen readers nor by award committees.  Monster is recommended by publishers for ages 14 and up. (Thorndike Press, 2005. ISBN: 9780786273638).

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Themes and Analysis

By walter dean myers.

Walter Dean's ‘Monster’ is loaded. Justice, hope and family as themes explored, are just a tip of the iceberg.

About the Book

Article written by Chioma Julie

Degree in M.C.M. Awarded Best Graduating Student in Literature-in-English at UNISEC.

‘ Monster ’ by Walter Dean Myers has many lessons to teach. The reader has no option but to think critically. Some themes are subtle and might even attach themselves to bigger themes as subthemes. But most of them are clear and stand-alone themes. Now, let us pan our imaginary camera towards this thought-provoking masterpiece to explore for ourselves these themes, some of which will be handled side by side opposites or otherwise.

Monster Themes

Let’s dive into the captivating themes of ‘ Monster ‘ by Walter Dean Myers together. We’ll explore each focal point to unravel the essence of this compelling novel.

Crime and Consequence

Guilt or innocence, hope or hopelessness, humanity/empathy, connections/relationships, disappointment, dissatisfaction, and regret.

This is arguably the major theme in ‘ Monster .’ Most parts of this crime drama take place in the courtroom and the prison yard. We are all here, following Steve Harmon’s camera because a crime was committed. Mr. Nesbitt, a fifty-five-year-old black man, was murdered in his drugstore in Harlem City, with his own for which he had a license.

Anyone who commits a crime should very well be ready to do the time, for actions have consequences. People, including gangsters with criminal records, testify. The gangsters testify, hoping to get breaks from the times they are doing for the crimes they have committed. As long as it wasn’t any of them that murdered Mr. Nesbitt, any other crime must be excusable, they think. Bobo casually describes himself as cold-hearted to get a break. Osvaldo indicts himself. Cruz exposes himself to get a break. Actions have consequences, and James King was going to pay for his eventually.

Everyone is innocent until proven guilty. That is not even my line. It is a popular phrase. Are things that way, though? Are things not always that way, even though they should be that way? I would say ‘yes’ to the second question. Sometimes, prejudice contributes, and it shows. There was something O’Brien said, and it stuck. Rephrasing what she said, the pressure rests on the defendant. The prosecutor goes about walking like the ‘good one’.

One time, Steve says he’s not guilty, and she tells him to say instead that he is innocent. The defendant’s job is to prove, not that the prosecutor is lying, but that he or she is mistaken. James King and Steve Harmon were each to be pronounced guilty or Innocent. The verdict is read, and the latter is to be freed, while the former is to be locked up. Perhaps he would go on to appeal, perhaps he would not.

What is life without hope? Steve lost hope in himself, his mother, the judge, the system in general, and even O’Brien at some point. It was then he began to realize why shoelaces and belts are taken away from people before they are locked up. Someone who has lost all hope would likely be depressed, and someone who is depressed would likely not be far from considering committing suicide. They don’t want that in there. Steve also gets to realize why people go on to appeal after they have been found guilty. All hope is not lost after all, for what is life without hope?

This is highly demonstrated in Steve’s life, earning this theme a place reserved for the major themes. Mrs. Harmon loves Steve so much. His situation makes her cry. One time, she brings Steve a Bible while visiting and tells him to read a passage out loud. Steve sees his father sob. It is his first time witnessing that. Jerry misses his big brother. Steve’s situation breaks Mrs. Harmon’s heart and makes her cry many times, and this in turn breaks Steve’s heart. At some point, Steve wishes Jerry was with him. No, not in prison but just with him, somehow. Jerry’s visit gladdened his heart so much. Steve Harmon’s family made life worth living for him even while in jail, especially while in jail.

We see the guards cruelly teasing the prisoners, even when some of them were yet to be found innocent or guilty. This depicts a complete lack of empathy and humanity, something O’Brien had in abundance. Yes, O’Brien was Steve’s lawyer. But nothing prevented her from keeping things strictly official. Bobo, James King, Osvaldo, and Cruz were all wanting in this area. Empathy cannot be faked, at least, not for long.

When O’Brien sees Steve writing ‘Monster’ (something he was already getting used to being called) repeatedly in the courtroom, she collects the pencil from him and cancels them out. When she sees Steve visibly shaking after taking the stand, his head bowed after one of the students on an excursion smiled at him, he smiled back, but she turned away quickly, she tells him that if he doesn’t believe in himself, no one else would.

Before Steve takes the stand (her idea by the way) she plays a ‘cup’ game with him to ensure that he answers exactly what would help his case. She was to ask questions and any time Steve gives an inappropriate answer, she was to turn the cup upside down. Steve learned from this game that it would be better to present himself as differently as possible from the others: James King, Bobo, and the rest. We also see her asking to know how Steve was feeling at some point. O’Brien had a lot of empathy to give, and she didn’t hold back even one bit.

If Steve had not associated with the likes of James King, he would not have found himself in the middle of a felony murder case as one of the accused. The saying ‘Birds of a feather flock together’ will always remain true. Clearly, he had a whiff of the robbery. He knew a robbery was being planned. He may not have participated actively in the whole thing, but he was aware that these folks planned to rob someone.

The type of people one chooses to associate with affects one in one way or another, whether one likes it or not. This is why the distance between him and his father continues to grow wider, even after he was pronounced not guilty. He just couldn’t come to terms with the fact that his son, his well-behaved son (or so he thought) could associate with gangsters even enough to get roped in a felony murder case. Some of what his father sees now, O’Brien must have seen. That explains why she moved away when Steve made to hug her after they won the case.

The story of ‘ Monster ’ is about justice. It is about seeking justice. Everyone has that right, or at least, everyone should have that right. Everyone has the right to live and pursue happiness if he or she so wishes. It is only just. Mr. Nesbitt’s murder, a crime against humanity, has the state seeking justice. Justice for the dead, yes? And, a loud and clear warning to anyone who might want to go the route that is criminality. Nesbitt would never come back to life, but justice can be served. The saying, ‘What is good for the goose is good for the gander’ holds sway here. Everyone is equal before the law (or should be, at least). Every life is precious.

These emotions were conveyed by O’Brien’s face when the verdict was given. She demonstrates these then, disappointed that she probably has helped the wrong person, someone that wasn’t particularly guilty or Innocent. Dissatisfaction, because she should have probed more, to know who exactly she was sticking herself out her neck for. Regret, that it is now too late to do all that. Mr. Harmon also displays disappointment in his son because of the type of people he chose to associate with, something that landed him in jail.

What important thing does one get to realize reading ‘ Monster?’

One important thing one gets to realize reading ‘ Monster ’ is that even though it is known that life in prison would not be easy, more of the unpleasantness of what is supposed to be a correctional facility was exposed.

What is the major lesson from ‘ Monster?’

The major lesson from ‘ Monster ’ is that life is not straightforward, most times, and it takes one wrong move (intended or not) for things to start plummeting for someone. We should all be careful about the type of people we associate with. Associating with gangsters was Steve Harmon’s major mistake.

What is the significance of Steve’s imaginary camera in ‘ Monster?’

The importance of Steve’s imaginary camera in ‘ Monster ’ cannot be overemphasized. A very significant tool in the story, it is Steve’s imaginary camera we follow throughout the trial and even beyond.

What is the central theme in ‘ Monster ?’

The central theme in ‘ Monster ’ is justice, however, it would be inappropriate not to mention other themes surrounding it. Race, guilt/innocence, hope/hopelessness, and so on, are also other major themes.

About Chioma Julie

Chioma is a graduate from the University of Nigeria, Nsukka. She has a passion for music, movies, and books. Occasionally, she writes to unwind.

Cite This Page

Julie, Chioma " Monster Themes and Analysis 📖 " Book Analysis , https://bookanalysis.com/walter-dean-myers/monster/themes-analysis/ . Accessed 9 April 2024.

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54 pages • 1 hour read

A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Pages 89-200

Pages 201-281

Monster Additional Material

Character Analysis

Symbols & Motifs

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Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Pages 1-88 Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Pages 1-5 summary: journal entry.

This section is a journal entry from main character Steve Harmon: “The best time to cry is at night, when the lights are out, and someone is being beaten up and screaming for help. That way even if you sniffle a little they won’t hear you” (1). Steve describes life in the Manhattan Detention Center, where he awaits trial for murder.

Different prisoners come and go from the cells, so Steve is constantly in the presence of strangers. Each cell has a toilet with no partitions, allowing no privacy of any kind. Even after the months he has been incarcerated, he is not used to being in jail. A student of film , Steve has decided to write a screenplay of his life to help cope.

Pages 6-43 Summary: Screenplay Scenes

In Steve’s screenplay, the narrative switches to the third person.

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Truth & Lies

by Walter Dean Myers

Monster summary and analysis of the verdict.

The section begins with a series of voice-overs discussing the implications of telling the truth during a court case. The people speaking in the voiceovers are actually prisoners in Steve’s proximity. The two prisoners then debate about the nature of truth and question its validity. Steve, the supposed moral compass, chimes in and proclaims that “truth is truth. It is what you know to be right.” One of the fellow inmates responds, “the prosecutor talks about looking for truth when they really mean they’re looking for a way to stick you under the jail.”

In the next scene, O’Brien and Steve practice for when he will testify. O’Brien creates a game when drilling Steve on how to best convey his story. She asks him a series of questions, and when she disapproves of his answer, she flips a cup. Steve replies shortly and concisely, denying his involvement in the murder of Mr. Nesbitt. He is to use this method of consistent denial during the court session the following day.

Sandra Petrocelli begins cross-examining Steve. She asks him if he knows James King or Bobo Evans. Steve replies that he knows them very casually, but he hasn’t shared many conversations with either. During his sporadic conversation with James, Bobo, or Osvaldo, Steve claims that they only really talked about basketball. Steve denies that he was ever in the drugstore on the day of the crime.

Steve tells the court that during the day of the robbery, he was walking around his neighborhood filming clips for one of his movies. After Steve provides neutral and inconclusive answers to Petrocelli’s grilling questions, Mr. Sawicki is called to the stand. Mr. Sawicki is the advisor for Steve’s high school film club. Mr. Sawicki is called to the stand as yet another character witness. Mr. Sawicki argues that Steve’s film footage speaks very deeply and positively of his character. In the words of Mr. Sawicki, “it is my belief that in order to make an honest film, one has to be an honest person.”

Asa Briggs makes his closing statements. He contends that there is no concrete evidence that directly ties his defendant, James King, to the murder of Mr. Nesbitt. Following Briggs’s closing statements, O’Brien offers hers. She explains that there is no evidence that places Steve at the scene of the crime. In addition, she explains that directly following the murder, Steve Harmon was nowhere to be found.

O’Brien brings up the point that immediately following the crime, Steve was not enjoying the fried chicken meal with Bobo and King. O’Brien pointedly instructs the jury to evaluate Steve’s own testimony. She explains that Steve answered questions openly and honestly, which attests to his upstanding moral character. O’Brien places Steve in stark contrast to the other seasoned criminals on trial. She urges the jury to keep all of these facts in mind when coming to a conclusion.

The scene flashes forward to the sentencing hearing. Steve is incredibly nervous, and has experienced anxious episodes in his cell during the previous night. The jury reads the verdict, and Steve is acquitted. Meanwhile, James King is convicted of the murder and escorted out of the prison in handcuffs. In the novel’s closing pages, Steve writes in his diary. It has been six months since his acquittal. Although he attempts to find a sense of normalcy in life after prison, he realizes that many things have changed. For example, his father has moved away from home. Steve begins taking the steps to turn his screenplay into a film. In the novel’s closing sentence, he still wonders if O’Brien ever thought he was innocent, or if she thought he was a monster the whole time.

The last part of the book primarily focuses on Steve’s morality and character. Although there is no concrete evidence as to whether or not Steve was involved in the murder, O’Brien has created a clear defense case. O’Brien’s main tactic focuses on depicting Steve as a relatable young “boy next door.” Thus, the opening of this scene is worthy of analysis. While many of the other prisoners have selfish and jaded opinions concerning the topics of truth and morality, Steve is firm in conveying and upholding his moral opinion.

As a response to Steve’s beliefs, the prisoners in the voice-over express the reasons for their jaded views. Having been in prison for an extended period of time, these individuals realize that truth is often only courtroom jargon and does not translate into legal action. This sentiment is further justified by the training game that O’Brien plays with her client. If all that mattered was the truth, all that strategy and rhetoric would not be necessary.

The manner in which Steve answers questions is highly curated and optimized for approachability. When asked where he was on the day of the crime, Steve explains that he is unable to remember. This response is meant to prompt the jurors to question their own recollection of the events of their daily lives. Further, Steve explains that he only used to talk to Cruz or King about basketball. This heightens Steve’s portrayal as an average teenager with typical interests. Steve is not seen as a criminal through his responses.

When Steve learns of his acquittal, he reaches out to O’Brien and attempts to embrace her. However, his lawyer coldly turns away. This reaction deeply disturbs Steve and causes him to spiral into anxious thinking. Did O’Brien ever see Steve as a person, or just as a file number? Did she ever actually believe in Steve’s innocence, or did she see him as the monster he fears to be?

The novel’s conclusion reveals the residual effects of the prison experience. Although Steve was incredibly depressed and anxious in jail, he is unable to find normalcy following his acquittal. Steve worries about adjusting back into civic society due to the negative reputation of convicted criminals. In addition, he must now cope with the absence of his father from his home and the assumption of the patriarchal role. Still, Steve is riddled with guilt that he has torn his family apart and betrayed those closest to him. He still worries that he is not a human, but rather a monster.

Monster Questions and Answers

The Question and Answer section for Monster is a great resource to ask questions, find answers, and discuss the novel.

Wednesday, July 8th

The script allows Steve to speak and express himself when in court... it symbolizes his reality.

Please post your questions separately.

Edgar Allan Poe

This depends on what you want to comment on. Can you be more specific? Is it a specific work that he has done?

what page number is "You do the crime, you do the time. You act like garbage, they treat you like garbage" on

Page numbers differ depending on your book copy but you can find this quote in chapter 6.

Study Guide for Monster

Monster study guide contains a biography of Walter Dean Myers, literature essays, quiz questions, major themes, characters, and a full summary and analysis.

• About Monster
• Monster Summary
• Character List

Essays for Monster

Monster essays are academic essays for citation. These papers were written primarily by students and provide critical analysis of Monster by Walter Dean Myers.

• Race and Identity: 'The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian' and 'Monster'
• A Modernist Monster: Techniques and Social Messaging in Myers' Novel

Wikipedia Entries for Monster

• Introduction
• Themes and format
• Autobiographical elements

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Research essay: a ‘monster’ and its humanity.

Professor of English Susan J. Wolfson is the editor of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein: A Longman Cultural Edition and co-editor, with Ronald Levao, of The Annotated Frankenstein.  

Published in January 1818, Frankenstein: or, The Modern Prometheus has never been out of print or out of cultural reference. “Facebook’s Frankenstein Moment: A Creature That Defies Technology’s Safeguards” was the headline on a New York Times business story Sept. 22 — 200 years on. The trope needed no footnote, although Kevin Roose’s gloss — “the scientist Victor Frankenstein realizes that his cobbled-together creature has gone rogue” — could use some adjustment: The Creature “goes rogue” only after having been abandoned and then abused by almost everyone, first and foremost that undergraduate scientist. Facebook creator Mark Zuckerberg and CEO Sheryl Sandberg, attending to profits, did not anticipate the rogue consequences: a Frankenberg making. 

The original Frankenstein told a terrific tale, tapping the idealism in the new sciences of its own age, while registering the throb of misgivings and terrors. The 1818 novel appeared anonymously by a down-market press (Princeton owns one of only 500 copies). It was a 19-year-old’s debut in print. The novelist proudly signed herself “Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley” when it was reissued in 1823, in sync with a stage concoction at London’s Royal Opera House in August. That debut ran for nearly 40 nights; it was staged by the Princeton University Players in May 2017. 

In a seminar that I taught on Frankenstein in various contexts at Princeton in the fall of 2016 — just weeks after the 200th anniversary of its conception in a nightmare visited on (then) Mary Godwin in June 1816 — we had much to consider. One subject was the rogue uses and consequences of genomic science of the 21st century. Another was the election season — in which “Frankenstein” was a touchstone in the media opinions and parodies. Students from sciences, computer technology, literature, arts, and humanities made our seminar seem like a mini-university. Learning from each other, we pondered complexities and perplexities: literary, social, scientific, aesthetic, and ethical. If you haven’t read Frankenstein (many, myself included, found the tale first on film), it’s worth your time. 

READ MORE  PAW Goes to the Movies: ‘Victor Frankenstein,’ with Professor Susan Wolfson

Scarcely a month goes by without some development earning the prefix Franken-, a near default for anxieties about or satires of new events. The dark brilliance of Frankenstein is both to expose “monstrosity” in the normal and, conversely, to humanize what might seem monstrously “other.” When Shelley conceived Frankenstein, Europe was scarred by a long war, concluding on Waterloo fields in May 1815. “Monster” was a ready label for any enemy. Young Frankenstein begins his university studies in 1789, the year of the French Revolution. In 1790, Edmund Burke’s international best-selling Reflections on the French Revolution recoiled at the new government as a “monster of a state,” with a “monster of a constitution” and “monstrous democratic assemblies.” Within a few months, another international best-seller, Tom Paine’s The Rights of Man, excoriated “the monster Aristocracy” and cheered the American Revolution for overthrowing a “monster” of tyranny.

Following suit, Mary Shelley’s father, William Godwin, called the ancien régime a “ferocious monster”; her mother, Mary Wollstonecraft, was on the same page: Any aristocracy was an “artificial monster,” the monarchy a “luxurious monster,” and Europe’s despots a “race of monsters in human shape.” Frankenstein makes no direct reference to the Revolution, but its first readers would have felt the force of its setting in the 1790s, a decade that also saw polemics for (and against) the rights of men, women, and slaves. 

England would abolish its slave trade in 1807, but Colonial slavery was legal until 1833. Abolitionists saw the capitalists, investors, and masters as the moral monsters of the global economy. Apologists regarded the Africans as subhuman, improvable perhaps by Christianity and a work ethic, but alarming if released, especially the men. “In dealing with the Negro,” ultra-conservative Foreign Secretary George Canning lectured Parliament in 1824, “we are dealing with a being possessing the form and strength of a man, but the intellect only of a child. To turn him loose in the manhood of his physical strength ... would be to raise up a creature resembling the splendid fiction of a recent romance.” He meant Frankenstein. 

Mary Shelley heard about this reference, and knew, moreover, that women (though with gilding) were a slave class, too, insofar as they were valued for bodies rather than minds, were denied participatory citizenship and most legal rights, and were systemically subjugated as “other” by the masculine world. This was the argument of her mother’s Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792), which she was rereading when she was writing Frankenstein. Unorthodox Wollstonecraft — an advocate of female intellectual education, a critic of the institution of marriage, and the mother of two daughters conceived outside of wedlock — was herself branded an “unnatural” woman, a monstrosity. 

Shelley had her own personal ordeal, which surely imprints her novel. Her parents were so ready for a son in 1797 that they had already chosen the name “William.” Even worse: When her mother died from childbirth, an awful effect was to make little Mary seem a catastrophe to her grieving father. No wonder she would write a novel about a “being” rejected from its first breath. The iconic “other” in Frankenstein is of course this horrifying Creature (he’s never a “human being”). But the deepest force of the novel is not this unique situation but its reverberation of routine judgments of beings that seem “other” to any possibility of social sympathy. In the 1823 play, the “others” (though played for comedy) are the tinker-gypsies, clad in goatskins and body paint (one is even named “Tanskin” — a racialized differential).

Victor Frankenstein greets his awakening creature as a “catastrophe,” a “wretch,” and soon a “monster.” The Creature has no name, just these epithets of contempt. The only person to address him with sympathy is blind, spared the shock of the “countenance.” Readers are blind this way, too, finding the Creature only on the page and speaking a common language. This continuity, rather than antithesis, to the human is reflected in the first illustrations: 

In the cover for the 1823 play, above, the Creature looks quite human, dishy even — alarming only in size and that gaze of expectation. The 1831 Creature, shown on page 29, is not a patent “monster”: It’s full-grown, remarkably ripped, human-looking, understandably dazed. The real “monster,” we could think, is the reckless student fleeing the results of an unsupervised undergraduate experiment gone rogue. 

In Shelley’s novel, Frankenstein pleads sympathy for the “human nature” in his revulsion. “I had worked hard for nearly two years, for the sole purpose of infusing life into an inanimate body. For this I had deprived myself of rest and health ... but now that I had finished, the beauty of the dream vanished, and breathless horror and disgust filled my heart. Unable to endure the aspect of the being I had created, I rushed out of the room.” Repelled by this betrayal of “beauty,” Frankenstein never feels responsible, let alone parental. Shelley’s genius is to understand this ethical monstrosity as a nightmare extreme of common anxiety for expectant parents: What if I can’t love a child whose physical formation is appalling (deformed, deficient, or even, as at her own birth, just female)? 

The Creature’s advent in the novel is not in this famous scene of awakening, however. It comes in the narrative that frames Frankenstein’s story: a polar expedition that has become icebound. Far on the ice plain, the ship’s crew beholds “the shape of a man, but apparently of gigantic stature,” driving a dogsled. Three paragraphs on, another man-shape arrives off the side of the ship on a fragment of ice, alone but for one sled dog. “His limbs were nearly frozen, and his body dreadfully emaciated by fatigue and suffering,” the captain records; “I never saw a man in so wretched a condition.” This dreadful man focuses the first scene of “animation” in Frankenstein: “We restored him to animation by rubbing him with brandy, and forcing him to swallow a small quantity. As soon as he shewed signs of life, we wrapped him up in blankets, and placed him near the chimney of the kitchen-stove. By slow degrees he recovered ... .” 

The re-animation (well before his name is given in the novel) turns out to be Victor Frankenstein. A crazed wretch of a “creature” (so he’s described) could have seemed a fearful “other,” but is cared for as a fellow human being. His subsequent tale of his despicably “monstrous” Creature is scored with this tremendous irony. The most disturbing aspect of this Creature is his “humanity”: this pathos of his hope for family and social acceptance, his intuitive benevolence, bitterness about abuse, and skill with language (which a Princeton valedictorian might envy) that solicits fellow-human attention — all denied by misfortune of physical formation. The deepest power of Frankenstein, still in force 200 years on, is not its so-called monster, but its exposure of “monster” as a contingency of human sympathy.