Man Made Boy

Title: Man Made Boy

Author: Jon Skovron

Date of First Publication: 2013

Place of Publication: Viking Books for Young Readers

Type: Novel

Themes: ANDROID; BYRONIC HERO; MAD SCIENTIST/MONSTER; SYMPATHETIC MONSTER

Critical Summary: Jon Skovron’s Man Made Boy is a novel that tells the modern story of a Frankenstein monster named Boy, the son of the original monster from Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. This novel follows Boy’s attempts to fit in to a modern society as a monster, and his relationship with being both a creature and creator.

This novel is told in first person by Boy, a 17-year old monster, and the son of Victor Frankenstein’s original monster. Boy was created by the Monster and his bride, and now lives in an underground show-business which features other monsters like Boy and his parents. Boy struggles with feeling accepted in this community, and has a hard time living amongst other monsters in his commune. Boy’s struggles arise from being different than other monsters in this commune: they exist naturally; whereas Boy and his parents were man-made by Frankenstein. Boy’s parents refuse to speak about their origin, and Boy has therefore developed a hate for Frankenstein because of the mad scientist stories he has heard. Since Boy cannot connect with anyone in society, he has developed an interest in computers and technology, this skill leads to his own creation of a virus that he releases on the internet. Boy eventually accepts that he cannot live in this community, and his parents agree. However, they decide he should be sent to Switzerland to attend college, attempt to have a normal lifestyle –and most importantly to live with the Frankenstein family. Boy is opposed to this because he hates the way the family treated their creations, he runs away from home and ends up living in New York City, attempting to disguise himself as a human. His attempts are no good, as he soon realized that the computer virus he created, VI, has created a mind of her own and wants to become a physical creation – much like Boy. He is forced to flee from the city and meets different monsters along the way, one of which he falls in love with, and is also the granddaughter of another familiar monster, Jekyll and Hyde. He eventually learns that in order to defeat VI, the evil virus who has started to host herself in physical form, he must be a good creator and talk to her, and try to change her from being evil and hurting everyone around Boy.

Skovron’s novel Man Made Boy is told from Boy’s perspective and is one of the biggest connections to Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, because he is a sympathetic monster in the book. Boy resembles the same characteristics as the original Frankenstein, therefore he has self-confidence issues and we are told the story from his perspective. The reader sympathizes with Boy, and the other monsters throughout the story who struggle with their own identity. Skovron’s novel also mirrors the Byronic hero because Boy is an outcast in both the real world and his own commune of monsters, he is the only “Man made” monster – besides his parents – so he therefore struggles with connecting with anyone. He also feels an immense amount of guilt once he realizes he has created a monster, the computer virus known as VI, who is not a physical creature when he creates her but she eventually begins to host bodies in order to talk to and provoke her creator. He realizes he has many parallels with his original creator Victor Frankenstein, but that he must correct errors in the past and unlike Victor, reach out to his own creation and sympathize with it. He unfortunately fails and must destroy VI in the end of the novel, but within the last pages we learn he recreates her because he does not want to be a mad scientist but a loyal creator, unlike Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein.

Administrative Notes: Danielle Hamlett, CSUF; Matthew Vu (editing)