I might as well lower everyone’s hopes right now. No one is actually fighting in this essay. If you want to see Frankenstein’s monster duke it out with the Count, I recommend tracking down this film instead. No, today I’m more concerned with the theme than the monster used to showcase it. In particular, I’m going to be discussing how two of the western world’s most famous monster stories have polar opposite themes, and how they have informed (American) society in the past century.