My Own Private Frankenstein

"Although many people focus on the idea of the "mad scientist" Frankenstein losing control of his monster, the real emotional and enduring truths of Shelly's story lie deeper in the book, where grief uncomfortably resides. Victor Frankenstein grows obsessed with the idea of animating lifeless matter and assembles cadaverous body parts to form a humanlike creature that he electrifies into life."

"In 1979, five months after my seventh birthday, my father crashed his plane into an orange grove and died. Dad, a pilot, had gone up in one of his twin-props with a friend and lost control after some sort of mechanical failure occurred in the skies above Central Florida. The funeral was closed casket-an uncommon thing for Catholics back then-because my mother did not want people to see the work the undertakers had to do to stitch my father back together."

At age seven the narrator's father died in a plane crash and a closed-casket funeral prevented a final visual farewell. The narrator became fascinated by stories about raising the dead, including ghosts, vampires, and gothic Victoriana, and discovered Frankenstein. The novel examines grief through Victor Frankenstein's obsessive attempt to animate lifeless matter and the assembly of cadaverous body parts into a humanlike creature. Victor's immediate disgust and flight from his creation produce profound rejection. The creation's resulting isolation and misery drive it into violence, becoming an instrument of death against those close to its creator. The work frames an obsessive desire to conquer death and the corrosive effects of loss.

Read at The Atlantic