The works of Karl Marx and Mary Shelley are both in conversation with the rise of the Industrial Revolution. Marx describes the alienation of the worker from his work in Estranged Labor. At first glance this may not seem directly related to Frankenstein, but when Victor Frankenstein is read as if he were the theoretical worker Marx describes in his essay, the two become similar while sometimes remaining in tension with each other. the other. Marx's theoretical worker is alienated from his product as well as his production, just as Victor's creature becomes his product, which causes his alienation and later, he too becomes alienated from his production. When Victor works on his creature, he is completely absorbed in his production. During my first experience, a sort of enthusiastic frenzy blinded me to the horror of my job; my mind was intensely focused on the rest of my work and my eyes were closed to the horror of my steps. (118) Victor's work on the monster was something he was so fully invested in that he isolated himself in his home in Ingolstadt. Victor's work is not separate from himself because he is so immersed in it that he and his act of production are deeply intertwined, such that he distances himself from others rather than himself. This alienation is opposed to Marx's idea of ​​the worker's alienation from his production. He takes so much pleasure in it that he does not realize “the horror of his approach”. Victor only truly understood what he was doing once it was done and he saw his product come to life. When confronted with his finished, living product, he becomes alienated from the product and disgusted by what he has done. This is the first type of estrangement that Frankenstein encounters, where he...... middle of paper... my slavery forever” (109). He loses his sense of self when the creature forces him to create another creature. His original creation, his “object”, enslaved him. This is more literal than Marx means: an automobile cannot enslave a worker on the assembly line, but the monster is like a living manifestation of a commodity. He pushed Frankenstein to the point of wishing for his own death to “end his slavery,” his loss of autonomy from the creature’s machinations. While Frankenstein and Estranged Labor may not appear to be related works, they are actually a fairly similar depiction of a worker's alienation from his job. They are sometimes in conflict with each other and yet become very close in meaning. Perhaps Shelley's work may be a testament to the extreme misery experienced by wage workers and tangential to Marxist ideology..