Science in Shelleys Frankenstein :: Frankenstein Essays

Science in Shelleys Frankenstein In Shelleys Frankenstein, its interesting to use the text to ask the question, whose interests lie at the heart of science? Why is sea captain Frankenstein incite to plunge the questions that bringing life to inanimate matter can bring? Victor Frankensteins life was destroyed because of an obsession with the power to create life where no(prenominal) had been before. The monster he created could be seen as a representation of all those who are wronged in the selfish name of science. We can use Shelleys book to seize on parallels in our modern society, and show that there is a danger in the impersonal relationship that science creates between the scientist and his work. It seems to me that Shelley was saying that when science is done scarcely on the basis of discovery without horizon to the affect that the experimentation can have, we risk endangering everything we hold dear. When describing the monster he had created, Frankenstei n says No mortal could support the plague of that countenance. A mummy again endued with animation could not be so hideous as that wretch. I had gazed on him while unfinished he was scrofulous then but when those muscles and joints were rendered capable of motion, it became a thing such as even Dante could not have conceived. (Shelley, 235) This was Victors response to the reaching out of the monster towards Victor on the night of his creation. Victor, who for months had worked on this creation, was suddenly confronted with the results of his scientific pursuit. He had labored night and day in an effort to do something that had never been done by man before. He had figured out the scientific way to bring life to that which was dead, so he blindly went forth and did it. He never truly stopped to think what the consequences of his action might be. He knows that the creature he is making is ugly, but he never wonders what will happen to the creature after(prenominal) h e is brought to life as a result of that ugliness. The monster is made oversized so its easier for Victor to work on him, yet no thought is taken about how the creature might feel about such a form.