Writes Noriyoshi Needle:
For my final project for Professor Norrie Epstein’s Literary Traditions, I chose to make a marionette puppet based on my interpretation of the monster in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. I made the skeleton and joints of the puppet out of scrap wood and then covered it with Styrofoam which I shaped using hand tools. Finally, I painted it, using epoxy putty to make its fingers, toes, nipples, and naval. I chose a dark shade of teal to suggest that his body is a conglomeration of body parts taken from corpses. I painted his eyes bright orange to create a menacing sense of unnatural life sparked from within.
My version of the monster drastically contrasts with original. I wanted him to look more monster than human. He’s not simply ugly. He is a combination of scariness, awkwardness, mythic strangeness, and amiability. Like Frankenstein, I found many different materials and limb by limb constructed my very own monster. Instead of using complicated science to resurrect the dead, I manipulated strings to bring my creation to life.
I did not want to present only the puppet as my final, so I created a video of it performing an excerpt from the Monster’s speech to Frankenstein as they sit by the fire in an ice cave. In this excerpt, the monster asks the doctor to make him a mate so he will finally have someone who would understand him. I enjoyed this section because it illustrates the great struggle of pain, loneliness, violence, sensitivity, and eloquence that the monster possesses within him.
What the Monster Says to Frankenstein:
“I expected this reception…All men hate the wretched; how, then, must I be hated, who am miserable beyond all living things! Yet you, my creator, detest and spurn me, thy creature, to whom thou art bound by ties only dissoluble by the annihilation of one of us. You purpose to kill me. How dare you sport thus with life? Do your duty towards me, and I will do mine towards you and the rest of mankind. If you will comply with my conditions, I will leave them and you at peace; but if you refuse, I will glut the maw of death, until it be satiated with the blood of your remaining friends…Have I not suffered enough, that you seek to increase my misery? Life, although it may only be an accumulation of anguish, is dear to me, and I will defend it. Remember, thou hast made me more powerful than thyself; my height is superior to thine, my joints more supple. But I will not be tempted to set myself in opposition to thee. I am thy creature, and I will be even mild and docile to my natural lord and king if thou wilt also perform thy part, the which thou owest me. Oh, Frankenstein, be not equitable to every other and trample upon me alone, to whom thy justice, and even thy clemency and affection, is most due. Remember that I am thy creature; I ought to be thy Adam, but I am rather the fallen angel, whom thou drivest from joy for no misdeed. Everywhere I see bliss, from which I alone am irrevocably excluded…The desert mountains and dreary glaciers are my refuge. I have wandered here many days; the caves of ice, which I only do not fear, are a dwelling to me, and the only one which man does not grudge. These bleak skies I hail, for they are kinder to me than your fellow beings.”
