Frankenstein Day: Interesting Facts And Quotes From The Classic Science Fiction Novel

Frankenstein Day is celebrated on Aug. 30 to honor the world’s first science fiction novel.

Frankenstein, a combination of Gothic horror and science fiction, is a novel written by Mary Shelley in 1818. It tells the story of a “mad scientist” who creates a monster from pieces of corpses and gets eventually killed by his creation.

Frankenstein Day can be celebrated by reading the classic and sharing your thoughts about the novel among your friends.

Here are some interesting facts about Frankenstein:

1. Mary wrote Frankenstein when she was 18.
2. The novel came out of a ghost story competition while Mary was on holiday with her husband, Percy Shelley, and friends, Lord Byron and John Polidori, who were all established writers.
3. Mary got the idea for a ghost story from a dream. She believed that what terrified her will terrify others.
4. Frankenstein was initially published anonymously as many people believed at the time that female authors would not be accepted by the public. Since the novel was dedicated to Mary’s dad, many people assumed it was written by Mary’s husband.
5. Although the novel has specified the name of the scientist who creates the monster as Frankenstein, the monster itself has no name and is often addressed as “creature”, “demon” and “it.”

Here are some fascinating quotes from the novel:

Courtesy: Goodreads

1. “Nothing is so painful to the human mind as a great and sudden change.”
2. “There is love in me the likes of which you’ve never seen. There is rage in me the likes of which should never escape. If I am not satisfied in the one, I will indulge the other.”
3. “I cannot describe to you the agony that these reflections inflicted upon me; I tried to dispel them, but sorrow only increased with knowledge.”
4. “The whole series of my life appeared to me as a dream; I sometimes doubted if indeed it were all true, for it never presented itself to my mind with the force of reality.”
5. “I have love in me the likes of which you can scarcely imagine and rage the likes of which you would not believe. If I cannot satisfy the one, I will indulge the other.”
6. “The world was to me a secret which I desired to divine.”
7. “Learn from me, if not by my precepts, at least by my example, how dangerous is the acquirement of knowledge, and how much happier that man is who believes his native town to be his world, than he who aspires to become greater than his nature will allow.”
8. “I could not understand why men who knew all about good and evil could hate and kill each other.”
9. “Life, although it may only be an accumulation of anguish, is dear to me, and I will defend it.”
10. “When falsehood can look so like the truth, who can assure themselves of certain happiness?”