Seventh-Grade Book Report: Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus // Aaron D. Fried
My book report is on Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley. My whole life I’ve wanted to read Frankenstein ever since last month on Halloween. My mom told me not to. She said it was too old for me, but ha, I read it anyway. My dad says he writes his work reports using something called bullets, and since writing this report was a lot of work, I used bullets here too. Anyway, here it goes…
I love this book! It was very inspirational. Any time you can read a how-to guide on creating a monster, you have to do it. And I’m excited to try it out! The only difficulty is figuring out who I should use. I thought about my little sister, but after I’m done transforming her into a monster, no one would be able to tell the difference.
Another part of the novel I loved was when Dr. Frankenstein stopped doing his homework and going to class in order to focus on creating a monster. This is an important lesson—if you are excited about a project, you should skip school to do it. I have a bunch of these types of projects in mind. See Mom, I told you I should read this book!
Unfortunately, Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus wasn’t all killings and craziness, there were some negatives too.
The title’s kinda mid. She should have just called it Frankenstein and not added the Modern Prometheus part. First, she wrote the book over 200 years ago! That’s definitely not modern. Second, I read about Prometheus in Wikipedia, and what Zeus did to him is totally gross. Don’t look it up.
Parts of this novel are totally cap. The whole book is a bunch of letters some sailor wrote to his sister. His letters tell a story that Dr. Frankenstein told him. That story includes a story the monster told Dr. Frankenstein. That story includes a story a family told the monster. This novel is a story inside a story inside a story inside some letters. And we’re supposed to believe nothing got changed along the way?
The whole thing feels fishy to me. Have you ever played the game Telephone? Me neither. But apparently, it’s an old person’s game where a phrase gets more mixed up the more times it’s told. That’s totally happening here. Not about creating the monster, of course, or about Dr. Frankenstein skipping school—I’m totally sure those parts are correct, but about the other stuff.
I did some research on this book (Mrs. Gingerbread, please note for extra credit). Apparently, some people think this book is about the dangers of science without morality, and others think it is about taking ownership and care for what you create, but I think Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus is really about how gullible sailors are.
Overall, I give the book two big thumbs up! This novel should especially appeal to anyone who wants to create a monster for themselves, and sailors bored at sea.
Aaron D. Fried recently retired from the insurance industry to focus on writing—an endeavor he finds significantly more fun and only marginally less glamorous. Aaron lives in Michigan with his wife and, when he’s lucky, one or both of his grown children.