Christian Imagery
Christian imagery is "hidden in plain sight" throughout the film. In addition to the scenes of the Monster trussed in a cruciform pose and the crucified figure of Jesus in the graveyard, the hermit has a crucifix on the wall of his hut (which, to Whale's consternation, editor Ted Kent made glow during a fade-out) and the Monster consumes the Christian sacraments of bread and wine at his "last supper" with the hermit. Horror scholar David J. Skal suggests that Whale's intention was to make a "direct comparison of Frankenstein's monster to Christ". Film scholar Scott MacQueen, noting Whale's lack of any religious convictions, disputes the notion that the Monster is a Christ-figure. Rather, the Monster is a "mockery of the divine" since, having been created by Man rather than God, it "lacks the divine spark". In crucifying the Monster, he says, Whale "pushes the audience's buttons" by inverting the central Christian belief of the death of Christ followed by the resurrection. The Monster is raised from the dead first, then crucified.
Read more about this topic: Bride Of Frankenstein
Famous quotes containing the words christian and/or imagery:
“The North is full of tangled things and texts and aching eyes
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And Christian killeth Christian in a narrow dusty room,
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And Christian hateth Mary that God kissed in Galilee,”
—Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874–1936)
“Poetry presents indivisible wholes of human consciousness, modified and ordered by the stringent requirements of form. Prose, aiming at a definite and concrete goal, generally suppresses everything inessential to its purpose; poetry, existing only to exhibit itself as an aesthetic object, aims only at completeness and perfection of form.”
—Richard Harter Fogle, U.S. critic, educator. The Imagery of Keats and Shelley, ch. 1, University of North Carolina Press (1949)