Thoughts of A Student

Thoughts of a Student: An Adaptation of “Frankenstein” by Mary Shelley

“I am not of nature–I mold it!” The grandeur of this thought excited Victor even in his tired state. The time had just reached three in the morning, and Victor could not remember if he had slept the day before. It had just begun to rain when Victor rushed to the window, shut it, and closed the drapes. He did not want anything to get in. As he turned he glared at the lifeless form, lying on the table in the center of the room, covered in his white bedsheet. Victor then walked back to the table and looked over the rolling hills of white. “What can now be said of limits? Limits, unmet, I have already broken! They cannot even foresee what I now take for granted!” A frightened voice then appeared. “But who is to control it? What if it disobeys me?” The original voice returned. “Disobey–Ha! Ha! Disobedience could only come from misinterpretation or some other folly. Such a grand creation, of such noble construction, only makes its creator all the more surpassing. Well done!” His paced thoughts made him breathe heavily. “None of them understand. The whole lot of them would never even conceive that I–a student–could ever do anything; they never thought for a single second that I had genius! That I was worthy of my own opinion, of their own attention! They never thought I could do anything!”

Victor’s thoughts paused for a moment as he caught his breath. “They never thought I could do anything. All they ever did was talk down to me.” Victor’s thoughts then paused for a long while when suddenly, “What is that? A voice? The creature speaks. What is that it said? No, no, nonsense. No foul breath could have been exhumed from this limp flesh. Oh, but this flesh that is so fine is the future–my future! What shall it be but servile for I can already see it now. I foresee the greatest of humility and nobility all contained within one body. The body that I form and that is loyal only to me! The wind shall be nothing more than the swiftness of my moving hand.” Victor then shook and was thrown back by his own imaginings, clattering against the plates and stands of his room, falling atop a naked

mattress. “You can’t do this, it’s not right! What if–how could–we shouldn’t be doing this.” His head then turned. “How can you presume to know what is right and what is wrong, blasphemer? I can create anything that I want. I will be able to give life to the dirt–to black flesh! And with this you will save me–you will live for me! Oh, I wouldn’t doubt me, or what I am doing, for those are the ones who will be made fools.” Victor paused again. “You are beginning to sound like Professor Marcus. I hate that man; the way he approached me only yesterday. What is it that he said to me?

“You seem tired, Victor.” “Well, professor, nothing of consequence was ever accomplished between bed sheets. I believe Dante said something like that.” “Did he really say that?” “Something like that, yes, sir.” “Well, I think the parents of all the great people of history might disagree with you.” And then he laughed vulgarly, like an old man. “Remember you are just a student here, Victor, you are here to learn the rules. Then you will leave and go out there, and that’s when you will apply the rules, and you will be thankful that you did. Because to fail to learn those–.” “Oh, just a student,” he says. Victor then leaped off of his mattress, moving towards the center of the room, and looked back onto the veiled, lifeless flesh on the table. The room seemed to be made cold by the body in its center. The fireplace did nothing but cast orange, flickering light onto and away from the unanimated form. “How could you help me anyway?” The rain outside grew heavier as the campus remained completely silent. Standing over it, Victor then took the edge of the bedsheet and pulled it towards himself to reveal the hewn face of his creation. “Just a creature,” he thought. But as his glare carried down onto its face he noticed that it had begun to change. The nose and the eyes were shifting, seemingly endlessly, into an endless array of faces. It was mutating and changing into faces–faces of strangers who he had passed on the street the day before, and those of his classmates and family; until it finally became the face of Victor’s friend, Henry. “My Henry!” Victor thought.

Immediately Victor then threw the sheet over the creature’s face and pulled the power switch.

MEET THE AUTHOR

Thomas Senesac is a junior at Fairfield University. He is currently studying English while specializing in Creative Writing, and has a minor in Mathematics. Thomas has written for his university’s newspaper, The Fairfield Mirror, and plays tennis for Fairfield’s club team.

Thomas wrote the following short story Thoughts of a Student based off of Frankenstein by Mary Shelley. In writing this, he wanted to represent the struggle to succeed while in a harsh academia setting like college.