Frankenstein - According to

and soul in pursuit of some discoveries through
which I hoped to make a monster. None but those who have experienced them can
conceive of the enticements of science — one is money. In other studies you go
as far as others have gone before you. Some got as far as Bexhill-on-Sea, which
is not a seat of learning. In scientific pursuit there is continual food for
discovery; I had discovered sausage and mash with mushy peas. I, who
continually sought the attainment of one object: sausage and chips and mushy
peas.
    One
of the phenomena which had peculiarly attracted my attention was the structure
of the human frame. I discovered it was made up mostly of bones, skin and
veins, all of which could be made into a nourishing soup! Then I asked myself,
how did the principle of life proceed? The answer was mostly on foot. Next, how
would life proceed to be a mystery? To find out, I shot somebody and waited by
the corpse. Finally, I took it to the morgue. In life he had been a butcher. I
sat by the body all night with some cheese sandwiches and a thermos of
Horlicks. In the morning the sandwiches and Horlicks were gone but he was still
there and still as stiff. The moral of this story was, if you shoot a butcher,
he stops working. Suddenly in the midst of this darkness a light broke in upon
me, a light so brilliant it must have been 200 watts, while I became dizzy with
the immensity of the prospect which it illustrated. I was surprised that among
so many men of genius, like George Formby, I alone should be reserved to
discover so astounding a secret.
    Remember,
I am not recording the vision of a madman. I have succeeded in
discovering the cause of generation of life. I became capable of bestowing
animation upon lifeless matter, like I could make a doormat shake itself and I
could make a couch animate and run around the room. I could boil an egg just by
looking at it. What had been the study and desire of the wisest men since the
creation of the world was now within my grasp, i.e., life. I was like the Arabian
who had been buried with the dead and who found a passage to life, aided only
by one glimmering and seemingly ineffectual light that led me to the Stock
Exchange where I met Jeffrey Archer who immediately absconded with my life
savings.
    When
I found so astonishing a power placed within my hands, I put it in my pocket.
It was with these feelings I began the creation of a human being, but the size
of his parts formed a great hindrance. I decided to make the being of a
gigantic stature, about eight feet in height. I plundered the mortuary for
parts and what I couldn’t find I would take from the butcher’s shop.
    Life
and death appeared to me to be ideal bounds, and most people are either one or
the other. I could dig up the dead departed and put them on the lawn of the
grieving and say to them, ‘Give me four hundred guineas and I can bring that
stiff back to life.’ No man could refuse such an offer. This I did successfully
for a few weeks.
    My
cheek had grown pale with study, and my person had become emaciated with
confinement. Who could conceive the horrors of my dabbling among the unhallowed
damps of the grave? But then a resistless and almost frantic impulse urged me
forward — so I collided with a tree. I seemed to have lost all soul or
sensation but for this one pursuit. It was indeed but a passing trance; it
passed me at thirty miles per hour and disappeared. I returned to my old
habits. I collected bones from charnel houses. They disturbed the tremendous
secrets of the human frame. In a solitary chamber, or rather a cell, at the top
of the house separated from all other apartments I kept my workshop of filthy
creation; my eyeballs were starting from their sockets in attending to the
details of my employment. The dissecting room and the slaughterhouse furnished
a pair of balls and a willy the right size for my monster. I stuck them on with
glue, they looked marvellous. I knew my silence disquieted some of my friends.
One of them said, ‘Your silence disquiets me.’ !
    I
knew well how my father felt — it was usually my mother. My father made no
reproach in his letters and only took notice of my silence by enquiring, ‘What
the fuck are you doing? Love, Dad.’ Winter, spring and summer passed away. So
did Queen Victoria. I did not watch the blossom or the expanding leaves; no, I
was looking for bones and spare kidneys to fit an eight feet giant. I appeared
to people like one doomed by slavery to toil in the