Frankenstein

While Mary Shelley's often overwrought prose doesn't stand the test of time so well, the issues she raises are at least as timely today as they were when she wrote the book. From its impassioned odes to Europe's beauty spots to its hymns to masters of study and scholarship, it offers a fair introduction to Western civilization as it existed at the beginning of the 19th century, and an opening for further study. Perhaps more important, it raises many questions about human nature, what causes people to behave as they do and leads to inexorably terrible consequences.

Victor is surrounded by the most virtuous and noble of role models, including his parents and beloved "cousin" Elizabeth and good friend Henry, who are not only paragons themselves but never fail to come to his aid. Since he has been brought up surrounded by such values, he is all the more tortured by the horror he has unleashed upon them, and his inability to reveal it, and displays a degree of hand-wringing helplessness and spectacular denial that may seem strange to 21st century sensibilities. While we see many examples of people behaving nobly with regard to each other, including particularly touching examples seen through the monster's eyes, we also see the limits of that nobility -- no human is able to see past the monster's physical ugliness to the inner beauty he has managed to cultivate, even when he performs noble deeds, and all who see him flee or treat him violently.