Topic Battle

Frankenstein's Monster enjoys extraordinary cultural penetration for an entity that existed, even within its own fiction, for merely a few years. The creature has been portrayed in over seventy major film adaptations, countless theatrical productions, and has become a permanent fixture of the Halloween industrial complex. The Monster's distinctive flat-topped head and neck bolts—features never actually described in Mary Shelley's novel—have achieved instant recognisability across all age demographics. Research by the Institute for Cultural Immortality indicates that ninety-two percent of British schoolchildren can identify Frankenstein's Monster, though only three percent can correctly attribute the creation to Mary Shelley rather than the Monster itself. This represents a branding success that most corporate marketing departments would sacrifice significant resources to achieve, possibly including some light grave-robbing.

Mary Shelley's creation has generated two centuries of philosophical discourse regarding the ethics of creation, the nature of consciousness, and humanity's responsibilities toward that which it brings into existence. The Monster embodies questions about what constitutes a person, whether appearance determines moral worth, and the consequences of scientific ambition unchecked by ethical consideration. The Geneva Symposium on Literary Monsters has produced over four thousand academic papers examining these themes, making the creature possibly the most philosophically productive result of grave-robbing in recorded history. However, critics from the Institute for Practical Philosophy note that these discussions remain largely theoretical—useful for academic careers but unlikely to prevent the next overreaching scientist from making questionable decisions. Procrastination, whilst less dramatically explored, touches every human life directly and repeatedly.

The construction of Frankenstein's Monster, by contrast, demanded an elaborate and frankly exhausting methodology. Victor Frankenstein spent years at the University of Ingolstadt, mastering anatomy, chemistry, and the art of ignoring obvious ethical boundaries. The actual assembly required grave robbing—a physically demanding activity with significant legal risks—followed by the procurement of laboratory equipment that would make modern health and safety inspectors weep into their clipboards. The Geneva Historical Society for Questionable Scientific Achievements notes that the entire process consumed approximately two years of continuous effort, not including the time spent dramatically fleeing from one's creation. This represents a staggering inefficiency when compared to the instantaneous generation of procrastination, which requires only the human capacity for self-deception.

Frankenstein's Monster pursued destruction through decidedly more conventional methodologies—primarily strangling and the occasional dramatic chase across Arctic ice floes. The creature's confirmed casualty count stands at precisely four individuals: William Frankenstein, Justine Moritz, Henry Clerval, and Elizabeth Lavenza. Whilst each death was undeniably tragic, the Victorian Society for Proportional Monster Assessment notes that this figure pales in comparison to the daily toll exacted by procrastination upon human ambition. The Monster did successfully destroy Victor Frankenstein's mental health, career, and family—achievements not to be dismissed—yet these destructions remained localised to a single family unit. The creature showed no capacity for the global, pandemic-level devastation that procrastination achieves daily without breaking a sweat, primarily because procrastination has no sweat glands to break.

Frankenstein's Monster demonstrated considerable durability for an entity constructed from secondhand biological components. The creature survived exposure to the elements, malnutrition, and the psychological trauma of being rejected by literally every human it encountered—a resilience that would impress even the most hardened counsellors at the Royal Society for Misunderstood Entities. However, the Monster's physical form remained vulnerable to the standard limitations of flesh, including the Arctic conditions it pursued Victor into. Furthermore, the creature's existence was fundamentally tied to the narrative framework created by Mary Shelley, meaning it has been confined to the pages of fiction since 1818. Whilst various film adaptations have attempted to extend its lifespan, these iterations bear increasingly little resemblance to the original, much like a document copied too many times. Procrastination, by contrast, requires no fictional framework to persist—it thrives in the realm of observable reality.