Forsaken.
A retelling of Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein through the lens of empathy and childhood abandonment trauma
A Rebellious Task
For this assignment I was tasked with presenting a banned book in a way that modernizes it, or emphasizes its value, redesigning and printing it, and then hand binding it. For my project I chose Frankenstein, and I chose to retell it through the lens of empathy and psychology.
Shifting perspective
Mary Shelley presents Frankenstein’s creature in a way that prompts the reader to receive him as a developed adult who should know better than to act as he does. When I read the book, I found that there wasn’t enough of a call for empathy for the creature. This upset me because I believe the creature should be observed as a being with the mental maturity of a child subjected to trauma and developing without guidance. I believe that every being deserves empathy and understanding, so i took this opportunity to try and teach that.
Gaining Understanding
In order to better understand the creature myself, I did some research on childhood abandonment and the mental health consequences that come with it. As anticipated, all of his negative behavior aligns with the way that children tend to act out as a reaction to being abandoned early in life and having to deal with the emotions that come with that without any sort of support or healthy coping mechanisms.
Facilitating Empathy
My strategy was to present the creature as the child he was. I rewrote all of the creature’s dialogue in a way that gave him the voice and vocabulary of a child. I also printed his dialogue in a font that resembled a child’s handwriting. Throughout the book I placed the statistics about childhood abandonment in proximity to the creature acting out in different ways in order to provide psychological context for his actions.
This, combined with a collection of symbols that are representative of childhood and youth are meant to facilitate empathy for the creature. For the cover of the book, I purchased a teddy bear from Good Will, destroyed it, rolled it in dirt, and photographed it in natural places in order to make it look like it had been abandoned by a child.
Challenges
Binding a book by hand presents a set of challenges that relate directly to dexterity and precision during all of the construction stages. In addition to the challenges with physically making the book (Producing a book that was clean, straight, and symmetrical), finding ways to facilitate empathy rather than make the reader feel obligated to force empathy was difficult, because I feel so strongly about the creature deserving it. Challenges aside, this is one of the most fulfilling projects I’ve ever done. My biggest life goal is teaching and showing empathy to humans that don’t get enough.