Two British newspapers are baffled – baffled – that today’s students see Frankenstein’s monster as a victim. So how should we interpret other classic works?
In a fit of thin-skinned, liberal foot-stomping, millennials are, say two UK newspapers, empathising with the monster in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. “The sympathies of today’s millennial students often lie with a mistreated creature whose ambiguous near-human status prefigures today’s interest in animal rights,” says the Times. The Sun, nuanced as ever, says: “Snowflake students claim Frankenstein’s monster was ‘misunderstood’ — and is in fact a VICTIM.” While the Sun is realising, in its own roundabout way, the point of Frankenstein, here’s a guide to the other books it must imagine that young, idealistic students have been getting wrong.
