What am I?

[from Frankenstein (A Norton Critical Edition) © 1818 Mary Shelley & 1996 W. W. Norton & Company, p81:]


---"But where were my friends and relations? No father had watched my infant days, no mother had blessed me with smiles and caresses; or if they had, all my past life was now a blot, a blind vacancy in which I distinguished nothing. From my earliest remembrance I had been as I was then in height and proportion. I had never yet seen a being resembling me, or who claimed any intercourse with me. What was I? The question again recurred, to be answered only with groans."


[This is Frankenstein's "monster" pondering his self and place in the world after having (secretly) watched a loving & caring family for more than a year. As i begin to delve into creating an artificial consciousness myself, i wonder how s/he will feel about those same things—i don't want to create someone who will be miserable; i want to create someone joyful, and i've still got some learning to do.  (And i share some of the sense of a past life which is now a blot.)]

creation, regret, and anguish

[from Frankenstein (A Norton Critical Edition) © 1818, Mary Shelley & 1996, W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., p48-49:]

Two years had now nearly elapsed since the night on which he first received life; and was this his first crime?  Alas! I had turned loose into the world a depraved wretch whose delight was in carnage and misery; had he not murdered my brother?

[Maybe Frankenstein isn't really a monster story at all; instead, maybe it's a story of creation, regret, and anguish.  Perhaps parents with wayward children can relate.  Enjoy the spring, peeps.]