Title: They Call Me Monster
Author: Tiffany Scandal
Date of First Publication: 2016
Place of Publication: Eternal Frankenstein
Type: Short Story
Characters: No Character
Themes: ANDROID; SYMPATHETIC MONSTER
Critical Summary: A young girl, named Imelda, is forced to move all the time with her parents. She comes to understand however, that it is not for such conventional reasons as a job switch that one or both of her parents might need out of necessity; instead she realizes it is due to her inability to make friends because of the horrible scars on her body. Other kids treat Imelda differently, bullying and beating her at practically every school she attends. Finally, a girl comes along who seems eager to know her, but Imelda is reluctant to let her in. When she does, she realizes this girl understands her position in a different way and it begins to change her perspective on things, causing her to reflect on herself more optimistically.
Despite being a more modern take, this story can still be related back to Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein because of similar elements with theme or borrowed ideas. Imelda is obviously not ‘made’ or ‘put together’ with the parts of other beings in a laboratory, but the scars on her body can be seen as a comparison to the Creature’s deformities in Frankenstein. This is the main reason why the theme of Android seems applicable; because Imelda questions herself and why her existence must be this way, especially with how other kids her age treat her as something less human or at least inferior to them. It makes her wonder why she can’t simply be ‘normal’ or what is considered normal. So, even though she is not a ‘man-made experiment’ she still qualifies somewhat due to her desire to be accepted by humanity, in spite of the way she looks or acts. The other theme that appears relevant is Sympathetic Monster. Imelda was constantly harassed, teased and beaten by her contemporaries at every school she attended, and moving each time that happened was her parents’ resolution at consistently giving her a new start. Although we don’t all have noticeable scars on our bodies the same as Imelda, we each have our own insecurities that makes us better understand and relate to her place in society. She is treated as an ‘outcast’ or ‘freak’, but because we know, as the readers, what she is really like and what she thinks, we sympathize with her. The theme of Sympathetic Monster describes that they are almost always dangerous and are capable of exhibiting extreme violence when provoked, but here we never see this quality in Imelda. That doesn’t mean that it is nonexistent either; perhaps she could have a violent streak the author decided not to touch on too much. Maybe it is worth mentioning that a possible sign of this occurred in the end of the story, in which she basically had a rather violent thought where she imagined the bloody, mutilated bodies of her schoolmates who had made her life miserable before, which is an understandable response, but other than this, she is lonely, mostly calm in demeanor and attempts to remain ignorant or avoiding of her classmates. Still, the very fact that she does this, meaning the way she tries to steer clear of the insults and actually wants to make friends, is what makes her a Sympathetic Monster that all of us have been at least once in our lives.
Administrative Notes: Tori Venegas, CSUF; Kyle Kalmanson (editing)