While Monstrilio is deeply embedded within Latin American literary trends and traditions, it is also in dialogue with one of the most famous Gothic novels about grief and a “monstrous” creation, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1818). Monstrilio contains several notable parallels to Shelley’s text while also diverging from its treatment of the same subject matter in significant ways.  

In Frankenstein, a gifted young scholar, Victor Frankenstein, becomes consumed with the idea of conquering death and creating life at will after his mother’s death. In secret, he collects the body parts of various corpses and seeks to reassemble and reanimate them in his laboratory, hoping to create a viable human being. Once Frankenstein succeeds in bringing his creation to life, however, he is horrified by what he has done. The Creature—as Frankenstein often calls his creation—appears monstrous and frightening to him. Frankenstein immediately abandons the Creature and does not dare mention what he has done to others.

Time passes, and the Creature eventually reappears, having murdered one of Frankenstein’s relatives and framed another for the crime. The Creature tells Frankenstein of his grief over Frankenstein’s abandonment, and his unsuccessful attempts to forge meaningful connections with other human beings. He demands that Frankenstein create a companion for him, promising to retreat with his female “mate” into the wilderness once Frankenstein reanimates her. Frankenstein initially agrees, but then decides against reanimating the female creature at the last minute, enraging the Creature. Frankenstein and the Creature become locked in a game of cat-and-mouse, with Frankenstein determined to kill the Creature, who continuously eludes him. At the novel’s end, Frankenstein dies aboard a ship in the arctic, having told his tale to the explorer Walton. The Creature appears on the boat, grieved at Frankenstein’s death. He tells Walton he wishes to die by suicide and disappears into the arctic landscape.

In Monstrilio, Magos’s desire to recreate life is also triggered by a bereavement, as she is mourning the loss of her son Santiago just as Frankenstein is mourning his mother. M’s creation from a dead body part—Santiago’s lung—echoes Frankenstein’s technique of creating new life from the parts of corpses. Like Frankenstein’s Creature, M both appears and sometimes behaves “monstrously,” causing distress to the parental figure who created him. Unlike Frankenstein, however, Magos does not abandon M, but instead tries to nurture and raise him as his mother. The nurturing M receives from Magos, Lena, and Joseph provides him with support and love, which in turn helps him to gain a stronger sense of himself than Frankenstein’s abandoned Creature ever develops.

The novel’s ending also contains an important adaptation of a Frankenstein plot point: While the Creature escapes into the arctic determined to die, M goes into the woods determined to live life on his own terms. In these ways, Monstrilio both pays homage to Frankenstein while offering a new twist on the themes of grief, parental responsibility, and what it truly means to be human or monstrous.