The name “Frankenstein,” commonly known as the name of the monster, is actually the name of the doctor who created it. The nameless monster, created using the brain of a criminal, is a tragic result of a lack of research and a lack of meaning, illustrating the dangers of rushing into scientific endeavors.
Do you know who ‘Frankenstein’ is? If you think of a green monster with a screw in his neck, you’re wrong. Contrary to popular belief, Frankenstein is not the name of the monster, but the name of the doctor who created it. Dr. Frankenstein, who experiments with creating new life from the dead, creates the monster from a freshly buried corpse and the brain of a criminal. In other words, Dr. Frankenstein is the creator of the monster. So, what is the name of the monster that we mistakenly think of as “Frankenstein”? There is no name. It’s just a “monster” without a name. The “monster” becomes a menace to the town, contrary to Dr. Frankenstein’s expectations, and eventually dies in flames.
Based on Mary Shelley’s novel of the same name, director James Whale’s Frankenstein (1931) consistently portrays Dr. Frankenstein in a negative light. Everyone except his assistant is skeptical of the madman’s experiments. Even the assistant is portrayed as merely carrying out his duties and is not shown to have consented to the experiment. The movie opens with the narrator saying “Hear the story of the man who, without God’s permission, tried to create a human being in his own image.” When Dr. Frankenstein’s experiment succeeds and he experiences his greatest triumph, the disapproval of his opponents must have reached a fever pitch.
“(The corpse) is alive, it’s alive! Now I know what it’s like to be God…”
The movie implies that the doctor’s attitude of invoking the name of God is what led to the catastrophe of the killer monster. There’s only one scene in which he states his beliefs, but it’s a powerful one.
“Have you ever wanted to do something, even if it was risky? If no one ever challenged you to take a risk, where would we be? Haven’t you ever wanted to see what’s beyond those clouds and stars? Have you ever wondered how trees sprout? Have you ever wondered how a dark night dawns? People would call me crazy if I said these things, but I wouldn’t care if they called me crazy if I figured out the secret of eternity, for example.”
Indeed. The history of humanity is a history of challenges. There was Magellan, who risked his life to prove the world was round, and Galilei, who supported Copernicus’ theory of geocentrism at the risk of being labeled a heretic. Risky endeavors continued, and things once scoffed at as impossible became possible, such as landing on the moon or cloning animals. The challenges sometimes invaded the realm of the divine. Humans built the Tower of Babel to reach the heavens like the gods, and Phaethon sought to fly like the sun gods. Given that it was heresy to hold to the theory of geocentrism, perhaps Galilei was also crossing the divine line. In any case, there were harsh consequences for those who crossed the divine line, but today we can build dizzyingly tall buildings and fly in the sky. These are things that would have been unthinkable if we hadn’t crossed the divine realm. The number of divine realms that humans encroach on has increased, and will continue to increase, and there is no stopping human nature. Just as Adam and Eve dared not listen to God and ate the apple, mankind has rebelled against God since the beginning of time and will continue to do so. The birth of the monster was not a “curse for challenging God”.
So what went wrong that led to the tragedy? With a little thought, we can realize that the direct cause of the monster’s creation was the use of a criminal’s brain. If the assistant hadn’t accidentally brought in a criminal’s brain, or if the doctor had used a normal brain, the monster might not have been born. But that doesn’t absolve the doctor. Using a normal brain does not guarantee that a monster will not be created. There was only one way to prove that using a normal brain would result in a normal human being. More research and experimentation. For a doctor who already has the technology to create life, the advice to do more research may seem pointless. However, the tragedy that can occur when a new technology is rushed into human use can be seen in the case of lobotomies, which were first performed in the United States in 1935. Lobotomies, which remove the nerves in the frontal lobe, were actually used to treat abnormal brains, like the criminal brain used by Dr. Frankenstein. When it was discovered that chimpanzees with unruly behavior and mood swings were able to control their behavior after a lobotomy, it was applied to humans just three months after the chimp experiments. Recognized as a breakthrough treatment, the procedure quickly spread around the world, but it has serious side effects, including death and impaired frontal lobe function. After realizing the seriousness of frontal lobotomies, newer surgical approaches have led to a decrease in their use, and they are now performed in only a small percentage of patients. The line “First on animals, then on human hearts, and then for three weeks they kept them beating” is reminiscent of the three-month chimpanzee lobotomy experiment. If Dr. Frankenstein’s experiments were carried out in the same way as early lobotomies, many monsters would be created. Just as frontal lobotomy has since been extensively studied and is now performed on a very limited basis, Dr. Frankenstein’s experiment needs more research on how it should be performed and on which cadavers.
Lack of research wasn’t the only thing he overlooked: as mentioned earlier, the monster has no name. This fact is very important because the conventional wisdom that monsters have names doesn’t apply to them. When a new life is born, one of the first things we do is give it a name. The first human being was named Adam, and some people even give unborn babies names. The same is true when we get a pet. Names, or language, are the medium through which we give meaning. If a monster doesn’t have a name, it means we haven’t given it meaning. The monster was created without knowing the meaning of its existence, and without meaning, it becomes nothing more than a killer. Despite having created the life he so desperately wanted, at the slightest disturbance, Dr. Baker chains the monster and sends him to the basement. This is because he hasn’t thought through what meaning he wants to give his creation, or more importantly, what he is creating to give it. To a creator who is unprepared for his creation, and therefore unprepared to be a creator, the creation is merely frightening. If Dr. Frankenstein wants to become a god, I would be happy to applaud him. He just doesn’t know what it’s like to be a god yet.
There’s no disputing that Dr. Frankenstein’s efforts to recreate life and his recklessness is what drives humanity forward. As Dr. Frankenstein said, it takes courage to take risks and challenge others, even if they think you’re crazy. But apart from that, it takes many iterations of experimentation before a new technology can be applied to humans, and we need to be ready to give the monster a name. If Dr. Zhang had recognized the monster before it was born, he might have created a blessed life instead of a monster.
