Nevertheless, much of the ﬁlm has its roots in the novel. At one point in the monster’s wanderings in the book, he sees a young girl fall from the side of a cliff, into a rapid stream. The monster jumps in and rescues her, dragging her to the shore. The creature’s reward is a riﬂe bullet in the shoulder from a friend of the girl’s. There is a similar scene in Bride of Frankenstein when a pretty young shepherdess, on seeing the creature, falls off a cliff into a pool of water, to be rescued by the monster.


Despite the creature’s heroics, the girl’s screams draw two hunters, who shoot at the creature. One of the most memorable scenes in the ﬁlm is the monster arriving at the blind hermit’s hut and being welcomed as a friend. The creature is so over-come by the kindness of the stranger that a tear comes from his eye and drips down his cheek. With this one small moment, the creature is no longer a monster but has become a man. (This also ties into the tear in the monster’s eyes at the end of the ﬁlm as he takes one last look at his intended before blowing up the Frankenstein laboratory.)


The creature’s growth as a person then continues at the hermit’s hut, as he learns to speak a few words and even put some ideas together, such as “Alone bad, friend good.” Although hardly as erudite as Mary Shelley’s creature, the movie monster is stating one of the prime ideas from the novel, which leads into the idea of creating a mate for the monster in both the novel and the movie.