1. “It took a lot of money to start my heart
Just to peg my leg and to buy my eye, yeah
The newspapers call me the state of the art
And the children, when they see me, they cry…
I know what it means to freeze to death
To lose a little life with every breath
To say goodbye to life on earth
To come around again
Lord have mercy, I’m the frozen man
God have mercy on the frozen man”
The Creature may be an entirely unique lifeform, but if any human were to be able to empathize with him, William James McPhee would undoubtedly come the closest. William’s resurrection is a medical miracle, but despite the achievement he embodies, his physical appearance drives even the most open-minded people away. Everyone he used to know has long since died, stranding him in time as Victor strands his creation in space. One aspect of the Creature’s existence that Frankenstein refrains from exploring in-depth is that each part of him ostensibly once came from a living being, that in truth, part of him has died again and again before he has so much as opened his eyes for the first time. [I went back to check that this was, in fact, true and not a detail added to the character in later retellings. From what I can see, it’s more implied than stated—pages 42-3 provide the best evidence both for and against this—but I think the conclusion is sufficiently backed by the text.] “The Frozen Man” might let the Creature consider the pain that has been inflicted upon him by Victor other than his abandonment.
“I am malicious because I am miserable; am I not shunned and hated by all mankind? You, my creator, would tear me to pieces, and triumph; remember that, and tell me why I should pity man more than he pities me? You would not call it murder, if you could precipitate me into one of those ice-rifts, and destroy my frame, the work of your own hands.”
2. “Oh
Forgiving who you are for what you stand to gain
Just know that if you hide, it doesn’t go away…
Oh
I grieve in stereo, the stereo sounds strange
I know that if you hide, it doesn’t go away
If you get out of bed and find me standing all alone
Open-eyed, burn the page
My little dark age”
The Creature spends his entire life in the shadows, yearning for any connection with another human being but knowing he will never have what he wants. After years of torment, he finally decides to demand happiness from his creator in the form of a companion, but to do so, he has to show himself as he is, not just in appearance but also in self-expression. In this confrontation, the Creature has accepted the disgust of human society and has still deemed himself worthy of happiness, worthy of being stood up for, even if the only one who will do it is himself. The Creature could also easily use these lyrics to directly address Victor, particularly towards the end of the excerpt, as Victor really does awaken to find the Creature waiting for him, and no matter how he runs, he will inevitably reckon with his fate. Though only the chorus is quoted here, the verses are also pertinent, though in delivery rather than content. They are monotone, indicative of emotional fatigue or even a blank canvas on which to overlay one’s own emotions. The Creature, in learning how to speak entirely on his own, would have had to teach himself intonation and social cues, and I imagine he’d relate more closely to this kind of delivery early on than the livelier entries on this list.
“Shall I respect man, when he contemns me? Let him live with me in the interchange of kindness, and, instead of injury, I would bestow every benefit upon him with tears of gratitude at his acceptance. But that cannot be; the human senses are insurmountable barriers to our union.”
3. “*audience clapping in time*
I want to hear every single person
See every single pair of hands
Three, four
Find me somebody to love (x8)
Somebody, somebody
Somebody find me, somebody find me somebody to love
Can anybody find me
Somebody to
*pause*
Come on!
*audience responds* Love
*pause*
(Two, three)
Yeah!
*George Michael spins, song resumes*”
Listening to this song evokes a vivid childhood memory: curled up in a black mesh nest of a chair in my father’s 4th grade classroom, playing Flash games on a school laptop, and waiting for the day to begin. Every time this song came on, Dad would light up and say, “Isn’t that amazing? To have thousands of people clapping along, singing your words?” In creating this playlist, I sorted the candidates into themes of reality, relatability, and angst vs escapism, aspiration, and love. I think this specific iteration of George Michael singing this song is about as far from the Creature’s lived experience as a person could get, but that distance heightens the allure. Just as ordinary people watch superhero movies and see the selves they fantasize of being in the paragons on-screen, so too would the Creature listen to this performance and see himself on that stage, soaking in the bright warmth of mass adoration, allowed to be seen and heard and loved for who he is.
“Yet mine shall not be the submission of abject slavery. I will revenge my injuries: if I cannot inspire love, I will cause fear; and chiefly towards you my arch-enemy, because my creator, do I swear inextinguishable hatred. Have a care: I will work at your destruction, nor finish until I desolate your heart, so that you curse the hour of your birth.”
4. “Doctor, my eyes have seen the years
And the slow parade of fears without crying
Now I want to understand…
‘Cause I have wandered through this world
And as each moment has unfurled
I’ve been waiting to awaken from these dreams…
Doctor, my eyes
Tell me what you see
I hear their cries
Just say if it’s too late for me”
This song hits on the audio equivalent of an “aesthetic” that I think dips into both the “people being like me” and the “me understanding what people are like” categories: the content is heavy, but the musical style is light. I’m not well-versed in music theory, so you’ll have to forgive me, but in general, songs in major keys have warm colors and more upbeat tones for me, while songs in minor keys have cooler colors and more serious or negative tones. “Doctor My Eyes” is in the key of F, and the combination of a major key, the older style, and the unfaltering bounce of the percussion could lead someone not paying attention to the lyrics (say, a child in the car at 6 AM on the way to school) to believe “Doctor My Eyes” is quite a happy song indeed. Once the lyrics are laid bare on a page, however, the illusion is easily dismissed. One song that didn’t make it to the final list, Billy Joel’s “Great Wall of China”, cultivates a similar aesthetic (which I just now learned is etymologically linked to any kind of sensory perception, not just visual, neat) of anger through a smile. The colors are like fire: warm and engaging, but with an underlying intensity that would prove painful under closer inspection. “Doctor My Eyes” accomplishes a similar effect, but the colors are earthier, the emotions more melancholic than choleric.
“I intended to reason. This passion is detrimental to me; for you do not reflect that you are the cause of its excess. If any being felt emotions of benevolence towards me, I should return them an hundred and an hundred fold; for that one creature’s sake, I would make peace with the whole kind! But I now indulge in dreams of bliss that cannot be realized.”
6. “Gasping at glimpses of gentle true spirit he runs
Wishing he could fly
Only to trip at the sound of goodbye
Wordlessly watching he waits by the window and wonders
At the empty place inside
Heartlessly helping himself to her bad dreams he worries
Did he hear a good-bye?
Or even hello?”
There’s a similar bittersweetness in this entry to the last, but I think “Helplessly Hoping” weighs more heavily into the themes of isolation, yearning, and insecurity. The Creature would definitely have played this on a self-pity day while huddled behind the De Lacy house. Peeking through the cracks, he invades this family’s privacy, studies their speech and behavior and dreams, all for his greatest desire to be crushed under the blows of a frightened but united front against him. The practically parasocial intimacy he constructs over months of patience and devotion falls apart the instant he attempts to realize it. While the Creature comes away from this experience with a working knowledge of language and a better understanding of the world, the fragile heart that he has worked to protect has also broken, and he knows that unless he can enlist Victor’s aid and/or enact revenge, his life will forever be empty.
“What I ask of you is reasonable and moderate; I demand a creature of another sex, but as hideous as myself: the gratification is small, but it is all that I can receive, and it shall content me. It is true, we shall be monsters, cut off from all the world; but on that account we shall be more attached to each other. Our lives will not be happy, but they will be harmless, and free from the misery I now feel.”
7. “I walk into this room
Oh, all eyes on me now
But I do not know the people inside
You look straight through me, these eyes
Seeking more wisdom than I have to give away
Realize, realize what you are
What you’ve become,
Just as I have
Oh, well are you and I so unalike?
I don’t hear you
Just as I am
We’re all afraid if we move we might die
So we mock the world
From our sacred, oh
Lives, our lives
Don’t you know only when you give life
Oh, then you become what you are”
Many of these selections are debatable fits for the Creature’s music taste, but if I am to die on a hill, my grave will read: “The Creature digs Dave Matthews.” As a note, I am definitely biased, as this song features one of my favorite intros of all time. I know he gets a certain reputation, particularly for his raunchier subjects, but many of his songs grapple with God as a creator who ultimately will not save the singer in the way he wants. (It’s very Jewish of him.) He also performs his pieces as though they’re part of a musical, and through that lens, he’s an excellent actor. He infuses every song with raw, sincere emotionality, and while his voice is consequently not quite as polished, it is individual and human. No matter what you think about his work, it is undoubtedly art. The Creature would so dig him, his themes and his passion and the orchestration of his music. I chose this song specifically because it’s one of the angrier pieces and, alongside religious undertones, it also deals with identity, fear, and sacrifice—the struggles of which the Creature would know all too well.
“Oh! my creator, make me happy; let me feel gratitude towards you for one benefit! Let me see that I excite the sympathy of some existing thing; do not deny me my request!”
8. “This is our moment
Here at the crossroads of time
We hope our children carry our dreams down the line
They are the vintage
What kind of life will they live?
Is this a curse or a blessing that we give?
Sometimes I wonder
Why are we so blind to fate?
Without compassion, there can be no end to hate
No end to sorrow
Caused by the same endless fears
Why can’t we learn from all we’ve been through
After two thousand years?”
After all these songs about individuals and interpersonal relationships, we needed at least one that zooms out and considers humanity as a whole because that’s what the Creature is missing out on in totality. As much as he claims he’d be satisfied with a single companion, the reality is that no matter where the pair would go, it would quite literally be them against the world until they die. When I undergo periods of loneliness, I can sit in the quad or visit the cemetery and feel like one in eight billion. The Creature doesn’t have that luxury. “2000 Years” narrates (with exception) from the perspective of every person, living and dead, looking back at their lives together and hoping for the future. This live performance, perfectly positioned in time, becomes all the more potent as countless voices count down to the new millennium. By contrast, the Creature will spend his life in misery, pining for the collective voice that will never accept him.