Summer Reading Essay- Frankenstein Revised
Possibly most alarming for the Lesbian-Gay-Bisexual-Transgendered (LGBT) community of Russia is that by a single act of the Duma they have found themselves isolated and persecuted in a country that many of them have always called home. Like the Jews in Nazi Germany and the Christians of Ancient Greece and Rome, they are a minority faction of native people being attacked by their countrymen (Fry). Shelly places her creature in much the same situation; he is “born” into a world that shows him nothing but the basest loathing for no other reason than his form being so “hideous” that even his creator “turns from [him] in disgust”(Shelly, 117). What Frankenstein’s monster experienced, first in a small town, where he was greeted by cries of terror and pitch forks, and then with his cottagers when his honesty was met with fire and condemnation, is the human capacity to hate where hate is undeserved (Shelly). In both instances, people shun the demon and act with malice towards him for the sole reason that he is grotesque in appearance, not because of any act of violence or evil on the part of the monster. The nature of the anti-gay revolution in Russia is born of much the same irrational fear and hate. In both circumstances the victims of violent attacks are guilty of nothing more than being in existence, as they were created, unable to control or change what makes them so vulnerable (“Human Rights in Russia”). It is this connection between Shelly’s monster and the LGBT community which most strongly suggests that, just as he did in Frankenstein, the creature would be called to the side of the ostracized people of Russia with unyielding ferocity, for “life … is dear to [him]” and he shall “defend it” from the injustice of the isolation produced by unreasonable hate of the inherent traits of man (Shelly, 90).