Frankenstein: Creator of Evil or Evil Creator? - a Response to Mary Shelley's view of science.

Essay by darkrajCollege, UndergraduateB, September 2007

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On July 5, 1996, the first successfully cloned mammal was born. Soon after the cloning of this ewe named Dolly, many other large mammals were cloned, including horses and bulls. Humankind is in the age of cloning, and it is only a matter of time before the technology to clone humans is available. This brings to light many questions of morality that must be answered. If a clone kills another human, then who would be responsible? Is the killing of a clone deemed murder? Is circumventing God and creating life evil? Two hundred years ago, a writer named Mary Shelley wrote about what she thought would unfold if humans were to create life. This book, Frankenstein, is about a scientist who found himself in the same predicament as the scientists of tomorrow. In this book, Frankenstein studied life and the human body until he was able to see the secret to life.

However, being an immoral and obsessive man, he went too far and used his secret to usurp God's power to create life. Although he intended for his creation to be beautiful, it was an ugly, revolting monster. Clearly, Shelley's view of science was not that science itself is evil, but that science in the hands of a monster can produce some very evil things.

Frankenstein was a man both infatuated with science and with questionable morals. In one passage, Shelley explains that Frankenstein, through his education from his father, did not believe in the supernatural. He was never fearful of anything dead or dark. Frankenstein said, "A churchyard was to me merely the receptacle of bodies deprived of life" (161). The passage goes on to describes how Frankenstein became obsessed with death and that he spent days and nights in these vaults filled with bones. In...