In Mary Shelley’s novel Frankenstein a young man’s interest in the sciences leads him to an experiment which threatens his own life and the life of those around him. At the age of seventeen, Victor, is sent away from his home in Geneva to study in Ingolstadt. Before leaving, a close family friend, Elizabeth, becomes ill in turn causing his mother who was nursing her to also get sick. His mother, unlike Elizabeth is not able to recover from the fever and she dies. After experiencing the death of such a close family member, Victor departs for school. While there his love for the sciences grows and he becomes fascinated with life and death. It is this fascination which causes him to attempt to create a superhuman creature to defy such natural processes. He thinks of the recognition he would receive if he was able to create a new species of human being. He also realizes how the boundaries of life and death would drastically change if he was able to create ad new species. He explains,
“Life and death appeared to me ideal bounds, which I should first break through, and pour a torrent of light into our dark world. A new species would bless me as its creator and source; many happy and excellent natures would owe their being to me.”
With this attitude he creates this new species. After the experiment, the appearance of his creation is a monstrosity, frightening him out of his own apartment. Upon returning, the monster is gone. With the creation of the monster weighing on his conscience, the encounter with the monster in his apartment is far from his last. Realizing that he will never be accepted by humans the monster vows revenge against all humans. It is this way which Victor has endangered the lives of those around him.
It is undeniable that the combination of the death of his mother and his interest in the sciences caused Victor to create this monster-like being. In doing so, however, he attempted to defy nature by finding a way to beat death and create life. It becomes clear as the story progresses that the creation of this creature, which clearly, was unnatural, was a terrible idea. By attempting to almost reverse all natural processes, he becomes cursed with the burden of the monster as it wreaks havoc in its revenge against humans. I believe that this burden is something that Victor deserves for the creation of such a being. Nature and the natural world and its processes are not something that should be tampered with. The circle of life and death is something that just simply happens, it is perpetual and unchanging. Therefore, his attempt to alter mortality and fate is something should not be done. It is clear that trying to cheat death is something that cannot be done without severe consequences.
After reading through the novel, I wonder what would have occurred if his experiment was successful. If he could have created a human who looked normal and was not monster-like in appearance, would the same problems occur? It seems that the creation’s appearance caused most of the problems in the novel. However, it can not be said that the new species would totally fit in and thrive if they looked like normal human beings.
