Frankenstein's evolution...

I'll be the first to defend Mary Shelley's Frankenstein as the definitive telling of the tale. This might seem like a major "duh!" statement, as she was the original creator of the story and the monster, but Frankenstein has taken on such a life of its own over the last two hundred years that the vision most of us identify with today is hardly Shelley's at all.

However, I will also not discount the evolution that the character, Frankenstein's monster, has undergone over the years.

As students of literature, we'll often advocate the original texts over any form of media created for mass consumption, but the dumbing down of a highly complex idea or story is inevitable eventually. Frankenstein caters to this more than anything. It's about a monster cobbled together from a human scrap heap. That right there is enough to entice the imagination. We should congratulate Shelley for her highly psychological work with this subject, because it takes a great mind to take something so straightforward and take it to a different place. But the evolution of the story and the character are obvious and should be expected.