EN6471 Section 2: Your paragraphs on "How does Montag use Marxism to read Frankenstein?" by Prof. WINCKLER Reto Thomas Edgar

2025-10-24 12:34:31 UTC

The author argues that the story of Frankenstein is a metaphor for the Industrial Revolution. Dr. Frankenstein is like the industrialist and capitalist. The “monster” he creates is like the new industrial working class—the factory workers. This “monster” is powerful but is seen as ugly and unnatural, and is cast out by society. The story shows the fear and pity the upper class felt towards the workers they created but did not want to face.

1322926709 — 2025-10-24 12:35:46 UTC

In the text “The Workshop of Filthy Creation,” Warren Montag is arguing that Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein reflects the emergence of the modern working class through the figure of the Creature. Montag portrays the monster as a symbol of the proletariat produced by early industrial capitalism. The Creature is assembled from many different body parts mirrors the fragmentation and dehumanization of labor under capitalism. Victor’s horror at his creation represents the bourgeois fear of the very forces it has brought into existence, just as the ruling class fears revolution. In this way, Montag uses Marxism to reveal how Frankenstein encodes class struggle.

2025-10-24 12:37:33 UTC

In the text, the author is arguing the relationship between characters and social classes at that time and also the relationship between differnt classes.

The author explicitly defines the creature as the industrial working class itself, pointing out that it is the instrument of capitalism’s self-destruction and also it is regarded as monstrous by Frankenstein, who is his creators and also the symbol of the bourgeoisie due to the conflict between interests. Because the proletariat is a product of the capitalist background, the creature is also a product of Frankenstein. The creature is labeled as dangerous due to conflicting interests with his creators, reflecting the bourgeoisie’s perception of the proletariat.

In conclusion, the work has corresponding analysis of the class symbols of Frankenstein and the creature and also class conflicts at that time.

shannbplus666 — 2025-10-24 12:37:43 UTC

In the text, Montag is arguing that history is a struggle between antagonistic social forces. Montag argues that the relationship between Victor and the monster, which indicates the main conflict between the creator/capitalist and the creation/working class. Victor owns the means of production, including knowledge, tools and so on, and the monster is the product of this labor, away from the society and creator. These indicates the history of class struggle. This struggle is the driving force of social change

2025-10-24 12:38:09 UTC

in the text, the author is arguing that the giant monster created by Frankenstein is the embodiment of the brutal and hideous capitalist society during the Industrial Era by adopting the Marxist viewpoint. As indicated in the text, the author proactively alluded to the historical event French Revolution to place emphasis on the time period when Frankenstein was published, which marked his attempts to create connections between the story and the specific historical period. Then, at the end of the text, the author purposefully pointed out the unique feature of that historical period where oppressive and ruthless effects of capitalism was way too conspicuous, and then, if not too intentionally, cautioned us against being destroyed by the sadistic monster created by ourselves through urging us to address the evident inequality and injustice in the society, instead of merely throwing those alarming phenomena into darkness and distance, and thus waiting for their return. Then, to sum up, the author in the text is in an attempt to make associations between the monster in the classic and the time period where it was created by pointing the cruel societal features at that time.

jzhang3858c — 2025-10-24 12:39:00 UTC

In the text, Warren Montag argues that Frankenstein reflects the anxieties of early industrial capitalism by portraying the monster as a symbol of the industrial working class. He notes that the creature is artificial, assembled from parts, and isolated—much like the proletariat, which was viewed as a nameless mass. For him, the novel's omission of the creation process supports this reading, as it mirrors a refusal to confront the harsh realities of industrial production. Thus, he interprets the story as a warning about class and the monstrous consequences of progress.

In the text The Workshop of Filthy Creation: A Marxist Reading of Frankenstein, the author is arguing that history does not lie in the background of the text, but as a divisive force. The text considers the image of monster as a symbolic system and regards conflicts between rural background and industrial products as inner conflicts between classes. Therefore, the author shows readers the history as a splitting force.

2025-10-24 12:39:14 UTC

2025-10-24 12:39:15 UTC

In the text, the monster in Frankenstein is completely interpreted as a literary symbol of the industrial proletariat, with its creation and subsequent ostracism mirroring the alienation and exploitation of the working class under capitalism. Montag first establishes this connection by highlighting the monster's artificial nature as a fabricated being, assembled from disparate parts. This reflects that the industrial working class has no specific identity. They are just a mechanical crowd. Furthermore, in monster’s poignant self-analysis, it declares it possesses "no money, no friends, no kind of property," identifying itself as a "vagabond and a slave" doomed to labor for the profit of others. This monologue directly echoes the fundamental Marxist conception of the proletariat, which is defined by its dispossession and its forced servitude to the capitalist class. Thus, by framing the monster as a figure that is both fearsome and pitiable, the novel dramatizes the profound ambivalence and anxiety the bourgeoisie held toward the industrial working class.

2025-10-24 12:39:21 UTC

In the text, the author argued that Frankenstein is unpresentable and the monster is powerful.

Firstly, the Frankenstein represented the working class in an enterprise. Its existence is controlled by the capitalist system under Marxism. However, the mentioned unawareness in the form of works creates doubts in its existence.

Secondly, the scientific approach brings about industrialism of Frankenstein. The author controls the outcomes under Marxism.

2025-10-24 12:39:26 UTC

In the text “The Workshop of Filthy Creation”: A Marxist Reading for Frankenstein, the author is arguing that Mary Shelley’s work is not simply the horror story but also the class conflict in the early stage of early industrial revolution. Montag identifies the giant monster as the representation of proletariat. The monster is created by the parts of human beings. He is treated badly and cruelly, and finally tries to revolt. Just like the proletariat at that time. And Victor is the representation of the bourgeoisie who holds the product materials and is not responsible for what he has done. Montag uses these representations to argue that the Capitalism will create something to destroy themselves.

🧟‍♂️

LonZ — 2025-10-24 12:40:15 UTC

In the text, the author argues that Frankenstein’s creature represents the new industrial working class that emerged in the wake of the Industrial Revolution. Just like the proletariat, the creature is made up of the body parts of the poor, marginalized and dead. The scientist Victor brought it into existence but then abandoned it, referring to capitalism producing laborers without responsibility for their conditions. The most important point of Montag’s argument is that Frankenstein stands for a class which is at once everywhere but invisible in bourgeois literature and the novel is one of the rare examples that this class appears in literature world though only in the form of a monster.

2025-10-24 12:40:21 UTC

In the text, Warren Montag is portraying a political allegory for the class conflicts in the dual currents of the Industrial Revolution and the influence of the French Revolution, arguing that the relationship between Victor Frankenstein and his creation is a symbol of bourgeois capital and alienated proletarian labor. Victor's process of “manufacturing” life like assembling machines in his “workshop”, but finally he feels horrible and ultimately destroyed by the monstrous product of his own exploitative system without humanity and basic rights. Thus, a violent rebellion inevitably happens, which mirrors the revolutionary potential of the oppressed working class whose collective power the bourgeoisie rightly fears.

dellastarrr67 — 2025-10-24 12:40:57 UTC

In the text, the author is arguing that Mary Shelley’s work precisely reflects how the process of capitalism undergoes, by portraying the creature as the creation of the capitalism, as a product, and Frankenstein as the industrial power who created a product which only ended up to be destructive.

By applying Marxism into analyzing the novel Frankenstein, the author said that ‘it bears witness to the birth of that monster, simultaneously the object of pity and fear, the industrial working class(Montag 303)’ , that he thought that the monster represents particularly the poor, while Frankenstein, the creator, serves as ‘the practitioner of science and servant of technological process only to prove no more than an unwitting instrument of this process(304). By applying Marxism into analyzing this text, he actually argues that the monster and the creator reflects the working class and the capital class, that such process had in fact produced a monster, a destructive force, rather than something they thought would be helpful.

In conclusion, by applying Marxism into analyzing this text, the author argued that Mary Shelley’s work became the witness of the Industrial Revolution, and the characters in this text are represented as two different classes existed in that period, which reflects the process of capitalism and how it finally destroyed itself.

2025-10-24 12:43:17 UTC

In the text, the author is depicting that there is symbolic connection between Frankenstein and the proletariat in reality. The author demonstrates their similarities from two dimensions.

First, their existence in nature are similar: they are both artificial products. The monster is a being created by Victor through scientific means, while the proletariat is a collective group produced by capital expansion and technological innovation.

Second, they have similar social situation -- marginalized and excluded status. Frankenstein is a monster hated and expelled by human society. The proletariat is also oppressed by the bourgeoisie and can only depend on their labor to make a living.

From above, Frankenstein can be a symbolic representative of the proletariat, which reveals the similar social phenomenon caused by the historical process.

2025-10-24 12:43:27 UTC

In the text, Montag is arguing that the monster, not only a novel creature but also a symbol of the industrial proletariat, embodies capitalist contradictions and the ideological dilemmas of the Enlightenment. The text, created during the birth of the industrial working class, reflects the social crisis in England after the Napoleonic Wars. The monster shares similarities with the industrial proletariat of the early 19th century, for example: both are made by modernization, both are marginalized, oppressed by the dominant class, and both lack social status, property, and voice. Montag also emphasized on the similarity between Victor Frankenstein's creation and capitalist production Monster's class identity and resistance, industry and cities.These examples support Montag's argument that the monstrosity of the proletariat is a label by the bourgeoisie while the real monster is the capitalism that creates inequality and oppression.

2025-10-24 12:48:10 UTC

In the text, Warren Montag is arguing that historical background of industrial capitalism in the early 19th century, reflecting the class struggle and economic transformation of that era, especially the industrial working class as capital.The rise of the great power created by the progress of ideology. Montag supported this by linking monsters with the proletariat, which he described as an artificial, gathered existence that was both sympathetic and frightening, just like the bourgeoisie's view of the emerging working class during the Industrial Revolution. Therefore, Montag's Marxist interpretation reveals that Frankenstein is a critical exploration of the social and economic confrontation at that time, not just a supernatural story.

Montag's Marxist reading frames Frankenstein as an allegory for industrial capitalism. The Creature symbolizes the proletariat.Key narrative omissions, like the vague creation process, reveal repressed class anxieties. The phrase "workshop of filthy creation" merges industrial and theological discourse, exposing capitalism's inherent alienation. The novel's form thus internalizes its era's social contradictions, embodying the unresolved conflict between capital and labor.

1739147824 — 2025-10-24 12:51:11 UTC

2025-10-24 12:56:57 UTC

In the text, the author Montag argues that Frankenstein is a fable about class conflict and relation of production. He compares some basic characters and plots to Marxism concepts. From Montag's view, Frankenstein is a capitalist and his lab is a factory in which the whole production can be finished. The monster stands for labor force and the education of it showcases the awareness of inequality among the class. At last, Frankenstein wants to kill the monster because the capitalist is afraid of proletariat. Montag uses these correspondence to portray that Frankenstein itself displays conflict and darkness in that society.

2025-10-24 13:08:26 UTC

In the context, the author mainly argued that people from the working class were regularly ignored, kept silent and feared by the capitalist society. By interpreting the wellknown story Frankenstine from a Marxism perspective. In the story, Frankenstine, as a thing that never exsisted, represented a figure out of people's conservative and traditional mindset under the capitalism circumstances. He challenged people concept of what is a man or "working class" is like. As a manmade, abonormal "creature", he was discreminated, excluded and feared by the society due to his apperance and difference from other people. By showing the conflict between Frankenstine and people, Montag indicated the struggle of working people fighting for their rights and resistence of those from the upper class.