> “Sometimes, watching him, I thought of Dr. Frankenstein’s monster, a simulacrum of the human that entirely failed to express any true humanity.” But that of course is a remark inspired by film images rather than the novel. For the debatable nature of “true humanity”—and whether Victor Frankenstein (never Doctor in the novel) or his Creature can best express it—is precisely the dilemma of Mary’s original fiction.
Being alive but somehow, stomach-churningly inhuman in appearance and expression is precisely what's so awful about the monster in the novel. Inhumanity (again, of appearance and affect). The difficulty of expressing this visually is probably part of why the Monster in film is simply cadaverish and covered in scars and bolts and such.
Its exact appearance—dimensions and general Lovecraftianly-left-to-your-imagination inhumanity aside—and the details of the process of its creation, get little page space in the book. There are (framing) story reasons for the latter to be lightly treated, in fact.
Whether one can pin the Rushdie quote's inspiration to the film depiction depends on how one takes "express". It could, and was perhaps intended to, cover film and book alike.
Being alive but somehow, stomach-churningly inhuman in appearance and expression is precisely what's so awful about the monster in the novel. Inhumanity (again, of appearance and affect). The difficulty of expressing this visually is probably part of why the Monster in film is simply cadaverish and covered in scars and bolts and such.
Its exact appearance—dimensions and general Lovecraftianly-left-to-your-imagination inhumanity aside—and the details of the process of its creation, get little page space in the book. There are (framing) story reasons for the latter to be lightly treated, in fact.
Whether one can pin the Rushdie quote's inspiration to the film depiction depends on how one takes "express". It could, and was perhaps intended to, cover film and book alike.