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Introduction: Frankenstein is a Gothic novel written by Mary Shelley in 1818. It revolves around Victor Frankenstein, who brings a creature to life by stitching together body parts. This book explores themes of social rejection, obsession, prejudice, and revenge. This book is now considered a classic and a must-read for literature. Plot: The book is a combination of letters from Robert Walton to his sister. Walton explored the Arctic, so out on an expedition, he finds Victor being towed in by dogs, sledding on the ice, and nearly dead. After nursing Victor back to health, Victor tells Walton his story. He recounts that he spent his childhood in Geneva with his friend Henry Clerval and his cousin, Elizabeth Lavenza. Victor himself had always been fascinated by life and wanted to learn more about it. So, Victor studies natural philosophy and chemistry at the University of Ingolstadt. After years of hard work and research, Victor is finally able to create a living being from several body parts, but as soon as his creature comes to life, Victor is horrified and runs away, abandoning his creature. The creature is lonely and sensitive and rightfully hurt by Victor’s rejection. When Victor returns after telling a friend about his creature, he finds that the creature is no longer there. Victor is terrified to even leave his house, afraid of his own creature. Victor returns to Geneva to meet his friends and family once again and be free from the burden weighing him down. However, just before he departs, he finds out that his younger brother William had been killed, and Justine Moritz, who was a beloved family friend, had been accused of the crime and executed. Victor fears that his creature was the one who killed William and is devastated and guilty. Victor takes a break from all this and goes on a trip to the mountains, where he meets the monster, and the monster tries to justify its crime, saying how lonely and rejected it felt. The monster begs Victor to create a mate for him so he wouldn’t be alone and could have a partner. Eventually, Victor agrees, and just like how he created his first creature, he gets to work to create his second. While working on the second creature, Victor looks out his window to see the terrifying grin of the creature standing outside the window, and is once again horrified. He dumps the remnants of his second creature into the river. The monster vows revenge on him, and while trying to leave the lake, Victor can’t and is carried away to a new town by the current and arrested for a murder discovered the previous night. Victor is framed and sent to prison. After leaving, he marries Elizabeth. Victor is tense throughout the wedding, remembering the creature’s words, and sends Elizabeth away because he is certain that the creature was after him. But upon hearing Elizabeth scream, Victor realizes that the creature had been after his wife all this time. Victor swears revenge on the creature, whom he tracks to the northward ice. He almost catches up to it until the ice between them breaks, and he is thrown off track. That was when Walton encountered Victor, who died shortly after telling his story. The creature appears, grieving after its creator, and vows to leave for the northernmost ice to die alone. Critical analysis: The primary factor while analyzing Frankenstein is Victor’s own ego and god complex. First, in the search for finding the meaning of life and its creation, he completely abandons his family and fiancée to work on his project to create a living being. However, once he does, he is absolutely horrified and runs away, abandoning his own creature. When he tries to leave it forever and return to Geneva to spend time with his family, he finds out that his friend has been killed, and the accusation was put on Justine. But rather than saving her from her gruesome fate, he chooses not to talk about what he did and does not disclose any information about the monster, which leads to Justine getting executed for a crime she did not commit. Guilt-stricken, he accompanies the monster to create a mate for it, but upon seeing its own grotesque face (which he had made), he is disgusted and throws away the female mate. After that, the creature vows revenge on him and says that it will kill everyone, so Victor feels just as isolated as the creature. This results in his wife being killed. Then, Victor moves on to kill his own creature. He was the one who made the creature, first obsessed, then disgusted as he abandoned it, and now he still sees no fault in himself, only in the creature for not understanding its loneliness, even when it begged him. Victor is found by Walton on the verge of death, as he recounts his story and dies. However, when Walton returns, he finds the creature sobbing over Victor, and unlike Victor, the creature actually has remorse and self-loathing. Despite what Victor did to it, it was still devastated by the fact that he died. And so, it chose to end its own life, which is very tragic in my opinion.