About the seeds of creativity that produced her Frankenstein, Mary Shelley paraphrases Sancho Panza, explaining that "everything must have a beginning." She and Percy Shelley had read Don Quixote, as well as German horror novels, during the "wet and ungenial summer" and "incessant rain" of their stay with Lord Byron at the Villa Diodati in Geneva in 1816. In his introduction, Maurice Hindle notes the connection between the two fictional madmen: Don Quixote and Frankenstein both begin with the noble intention of helping their fellow men, but their aspirations are doomed by their pursuit of a "single vision." a situation that takes them further and further away from meeting the moderate needs of the community and brings them closer and closer to a personally tragic outcome. (Frankenstein xxxviii) Society too must have had its beginnings, but theorists from Hume to Marx to Darwin and writers such as Shelley and Dostoyevsky may never resolve the question of who or what came first: the individual or the community? One thing seems clear: whether through sensational impressions, inductive reasoning, or common sense, the individual cannot survive for long without meaningful integration within the larger group of humanity. From childhood we recognize the deep wound that results from the exclusion of the majority, and this alienation, in Marxist language, can lead to an antagonistic position towards society, as shown by both the "monster" of Dostoevsky's Frankenstein and the Underground Man. The monster proclaims in his agony that he is “wicked because I am unhappy,” and he is unhappy, no doubt, because he is not only alone but rejected by society (147). The creation of Shelly.s is partly derived......middle of paper......arles. “The Origin of Species.” From modernism to postmodernism: an anthology. 2nd expanded edition. Ed. Laurent Cahoone. Blackwell Publishing.2003.Dostoyevsky, Fyodor. “Metro Notes.” The Norton Anthology of World Masterpieces: The Western Tradition 7th Edition Vol. 2. Ed. Sarah Lawall. New York, New York. 1999. Hume, David. “A Treatise on Human Nature.” From modernism to postmodernism: an anthology. 2nd expanded edition. Ed. Laurent Cahoone. Blackwell Publishing.2003.Marx, Karl. Manifesto of the Communist Party: “Bourgeois and proletarians”. From modernism to postmodernism: an anthology. 2nd expanded edition. Ed. Lawrence Cahoone. Blackwell Editions. 2003. Shelley, Mary. Frankenstein. Edited with an introduction and notes by Maurice Hindle.Penguin Books. United Kingdom, 2003. http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Groucho_Marx