Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein is about a doctor who becomes obsessed with creating a being. He wants to be the first scientist to find the secret to life.
Dr. Victor Frankenstein goes on to find the partial remains of a dead man. He combines the parts of other dead people, patching them together to form a complete human. Then, he goes on to animate the creature using an unspoken science he had discovered (that the author doesn’t fully elaborate on).
The only thing we know is that electricity is the final piece to his medical breakthrough, and is what ultimately animates this being.
After it comes to life, things go off the rails, Dr. Frankenstein is terrified of his creation, shouting at it, before he flees his apartment. He returns, only to find it had run away, scared and angry, to be scorned by society, and eventually go on a rampage.
There’s a great anonymous quote, I recall from a few years back,
“Knowledge is knowing that Frankenstein is not the monster.
Wisdom is knowing that Frankenstein is the monster.”
This addresses one of the most common literature misconceptions in the world, that Frankenstein is Dr. Frankenstein’s actual creation.
Dr. Frankenstein never actually names his creature. It is just called Frankenstein’s Monster.
Knowledge means you get this basic fact.
Wisdom means you understand that Dr. Frankenstein is the monster because he had no business creating life in the way that he did, impulsively pillaging the remains of bodies, sewing them together, and with little consideration, forcing a tortured being into life simply to satisfy his own ego.
And not only that, he rejects the creature, who understands him and is hurt by his creator's disgust with him.
Victor Frankenstein, by playing god and feeding his ego, became the very monstrosity he was disgusted by.
Knowledge means you know the information.
Wisdom means you understand it in a way that most don’t.