Title: I Am a Frankenstein!
Author: Wayne Rogers
Date of First Publication: September 1940
Place of Publication: Terror Tales
Type: Short story
Characters: No Character
Themes: MAD SCIENTISTS/MONSTERS; ANDROID; BYRONIC HERO
Critical Summary: I Am Frankenstein! is about a man named Dr. Cooper who is excited to intern for Dr. Godfrey Kittredge at his house in the country. Once Kittredge meets with Cooper, he begins telling the intern how excited he is to have him by his side during his experiments and how they are going to be great working together. Later in the story, a repairman dies of electric shock when trying to fix Kittredge’s high-power line that leads to his laboratory. Kittredge takes the corpse of the repairman and decides he wants to fix it up and experiment with the body. Cooper becomes repulsed at the idea of Kittredge messing around with a man’s corpse—but stays because of his curiosity regarding the doctor’s intentions and ideas. After the lineman’s death, there is a new corpse brought to Kittredge’s home. It is the body of a murderer named Joe Gannon. Kitteridge has an idea of bringing a dead man back to life by creating him to be stronger and better than he was before. Cooper is disgusted at this idea, but picks up the scalpel to continue with the procedures. It turns out that the reason why Cooper is always cooperating with Kittredge’s experiments is because he is being secretly drugged by Kittredge to help perform these surgeries. Eventually Kittredge wants to create a mate for their live experiment in order to breed them to start his own race. They have a woman named Alice Adair locked up in the house already to be a part of the surgery and Cooper’s lover Ruth as well.. He tries to avoid it by killing their creation so there would be no point in it having a mate. He ends up killing the first experiment, but gets knocked out by Kitteridge. Cooper wakes up and realizes that his brain is in the first creation’s body and that he too is now an experiment. While in this “new” body, Cooper tries to set up Kitteridge by leading a bunch of townspeople and authorities to his home. Everyone blames Cooper for the murders since Kittredge is nowhere to be found. The house eventually is set on fire, and Cooper dies and writes the rest of his story in his journal and throws it outside the house. We find out that everything was a setup in order to keep Cooper away from Ruth. Ruth was willing to throw away her fortune so she can be with Cooper, but her guardian Lyman Ritchie wants her to marry his son Arnold Ritchie. So Lyman has everything set up to blame Cooper for the murders. Lyman ends up committing suicide after the incident. Cooper rests in the hospital to recover, showing no more signs of insanity. Ruth and Cooper end up marrying each other. Wayne Roger’s story is highly influenced and comparable to Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. Even though we find out in the end that everything is a setup, the initial idea of the whole story resembles Frankenstein. Kitteridge plays the role of “God” and wants to bring dead things back to life to make them stronger than they were before, just like Victor Frankenstein. The whole idea of Godfrey Kitteridge experimenting with dead bodies, and combining different body parts together to create something is what Victor did to create the Creature.
Administrative Notes: Natallia Mak , CSUF; Annette Morrison, Editor, CSUF