Read an excerpt from Susan Tyler Hitchcock’s new book, “Frankenstein: A Cultural History”

Reprinted by permission of W.W. Norton

As darkness falls on Halloween night, a child stands at a full-length mirror, admiring his appearance, practicing the look, becoming the character one more time before he goes out into the world. His face is greased green, his eyes circled with black. A jagged red scar intersected with black stitches has been painted across his cheek. A fake black crop of hair bulks up his skull. Vague stubs of aluminum foil attach in a homemade way to his neck. He steps back, then walks into the frame of the mirror, his arms out, stock-straight; his hands blindly groping; his legs clumping with a jerky, heavy, stiff-legged gait. He lets out a deep-throated groan. Perfect.

This is our monster. This is the monster we know so well, the monster we have taken into our hearts and lives, the monster we love to tremble and to cheer for, the monster we fear, the monster we seek, and the monster we have become. This is the monster made by man. This is the monster called by his creator’s name, if named at all. This is the monster known as Frankenstein.

In the world of gods and monsters, he is not so very old. His origins trace back to a single source. His story has been called the first myth of modern times. It emerged at a turning point in Western history, when the moral universe was shifting and when some dared to believe that advances in scientific knowledge promised humans dominion over that which for centuries had been God’s alone. The story of Frankenstein’s monster is a myth of claiming long-forbidden knowledge and facing the consequences.

Many belief systems include stories of a hero who dares to stand face to face with the powers of the universe on behalf of the human race. In his classic study of mythology, The Hero with a Thousand Faces, Joseph Campbell called this the quintessential myth of the search for meaning in human life. The hero is rewarded for his extraordinary courage and sent back to earth with gifts that will enhance human life forever after. The central figure of such a myth shimmers forth in human consciousness and cultural history — Odysseus, Jonah, Beowulf in Western culture; Ramayana in the Hindu tradition; Scarface in the Blackfeet Indian tradition; and many others from around the world. Their stories convey to all that transcendent wisdom and rewards come to those who find the courage to push beyond normal limits and perform the impossible.

Other myths warn against such rash acts. Prometheus, Adam and Eve, and Faust crossed the boundary line that divides the human from the divine, and for that rash act they were punished. In these myths, the moral order — the set of rules for playing this game of life — is dictated by the deities, whether Zeus or Yahweh. Even if it is part of human nature to want to, even to be able to, transgress the boundaries set by God, humans must agree to live within limits and follow the divine command. In this moral universe, life presents a perpetual temptation. There is always farther to go, but the reward of a long and serene life comes to those who hang back and toe the line.

These two archetypal myths are essentially human — and essentially contradictory. One inspires a human being to cross over into unknown realms, and congratulates any who does so. The other limits human pursuit and experimentation, threatening punishment to anyone who dares. These two ancient myths represent two very different world views with different assumptions about right and wrong, good and evil, the nature and purpose of human existence, and the future of humankind. On the axis formed by these two contradictory myths hang the culture wars of history and of the present day. They reverberate through every debate over life-and-death matters such as cloning, genetic engineering, euthanasia, and abortion. Progressives applaud the human drive to extend knowledge. They can be represented in Prometheus, who risked his own safety to give fire to humankind. Conservatives respect boundaries beyond which human understanding cannot or should not go. They more closely resemble Adam, tempted and fallen but seeking reentry into grace through obedience.

Both mythic views can be teased out of Frankenstein, an observation that goes far to explain the novel’s everlasting appeal. Frankenstein the man is both hero and villain, applauded for his courage and genius at the same time that he is punished for his pride and transgression. His monster is to be both feared and pitied; for the humans he encounters, he is the ultimate other and at the same time a mirror of the deepest self.

All great myths balance irreconcilable opposites, and this very characteristic has kept Shelley’s novel alive, retold and reinterpreted over and over, through almost two centuries. It is on the one hand so true as to be universal and, on the other, malleable enough to conform to different times, places, peoples, and moments in history. In this story reverberate the monumental paradoxes of life and death, right and wrong, human and divine. They may not register as a trick-or-treater admires his green makeup on Halloween night, yet the monster that the child is portraying remains a player on the great stage of human history because his story continues to raise, not answer, questions.

To the centrally human quandary between risk and obedience, Frankenstein adds one more crucial, haunting, modern twist. What if there is no divine source for the rules, no final moral answer, no divine authority to judge, punish, or reward, to create, destroy, or control? In short, what if there is no God? Then what is the story that we can tell ourselves, the myth within which we glimpse our human condition? If there is no God, then what is life? And what is death? The dark possibility of a godless world permeates the novel and carries through every retelling. As if to embody the answer, a monster looms into view. Despite his promise of self-immolation at the end of Mary Shelley’s novel — and despite the gruesome deaths he has suffered, over and over, in interpretations, adaptations, spin-offs, and sequels of the novel ever since — this monster lives on, perpetually spawning meaning, an obscene caricature and a god for modern times.