Frankenstein and humanness: Mary Shelley’s debate on science and nature

Abstract

Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus, demonstrates how knowledge and awareness of a craftsman profoundly affect his artifact. The creature—the created man by Dr. Frankenstein—has taken different paths during its short presence in the novel and ultimately kills its creator. When the creature struggles to know itself, it has a strong wish to get approval from its creator. Here, after being rejected by civilization, the creature becomes grumpy, just as a person who is expelled from the Garden of Eden in Milton’s Paradise Lost. We can realize this novel as an utterly secular book about the dangerous nature of cognition. The creature turns violent and decides to take revenge on his imposed diverge after being repeatedly rejected by human beings. The creature/monster realizes its resemblance to other creatures more precisely than its creator/scientist. Although the scientist has become a grotesque parody of his creature to escape his paternal responsibility, the challenge between a man who is using technology and his illegitimate creation is narrated through a technological apocalypse by Mary Shelley. Science, in this novel, effaces the creator and by assuming the position from its creator, technology causes a sense of emptiness and alienation. While science looks like a powerful artificial intelligence, sometimes it acts as an uncontrollable and destroying weapon.