Frankenstein Thinking Activity

                     Science v/s Nature In Frankenstein 




 

Leaving in rapidly changing world, people have reached to the depth of ocean. To quest and enlighten ourselves are the 12th century's people. Discovered and invented gadgets have not been remained utilized and they are running behind new. It can be called curiosity and eagerness and unsteadiness of human beings. The civilized people do not stop learning. Whereas the point at which someone stands up and says, “okay, that enough enlightening for now, we are good for another few centuries”. For better or worse, human quest is still going today. Science is becoming now a basic essential not only that but an intoxication. It propels people to search something new for science's sake not for our happiness. Behind the rat-race, human beings keep exploring their ideas, keep experimenting, and finding not assumed result, still working. Sometime, why don’t people find good result in the arena of science and technology and turn into menace? This is what Frankenstein deals with.

Why is Victor Frankenstein motivated to plunge in bringing new life from inanimate body parts? Frankenstein's life was destroyed because of an obsession with the power that he possessed by education of science to create new life where none had been before. Sometime his evolving mind in the field of science and eagerness reminds us Charles Darwin’s famous lines for Theory of Spices,

Man is not the first and final creation of God,

It is just an accident from an ameba to an ape

and ape to man and their might be super man

to come.

But becoming supermen, human being do not find result-oriented save repercussions that they face throughout the life and it is because nature does not remain in people’s side to support but vice versa. It is against the law of Nature that Victor had created a huge, grotesque and man like a monster. The basic reason behind Victor’s creation was his desire to keep science in his hand, to triumph over nature. He says, “My eyes were insensible to charm of nature” that shows that how Victor’s conflicting thoughts against nature are! And one of the important things is his thirst for knowledge what exactly Dr. Faustus had in Marlowe’s play Dr. Faustus.   

 

 

 

Nature can be rendered as both human nature as well as an omnipotent or natural cycle of every leaving being. In these two phenomena, science does not prepare its place because it contains artificiality that a monster, a nameless creature on the earth, does not have. He behaves as naturally as other normal being. He helps people, because a victim of great hatred, disgusting, insulted, kicked, humiliated, got nothing in return to rescuing a girl when she was drowning and ultimately all circumstances turn him a real monster from real human being. This humiliation is not really a humiliation of monster but of nature itself. Addition to that he reads, studies and learns Goethe’s Sorrow Of Werter, a volume of Plutarch’s ‘Lives’ and John Milton’s Paradise Lost.  This reading makes him realized what is human nature, what is his real identity. So whole process of learning stands for nature's education of human being what they are. He comes to know where he is standing for what.

 

 

Keeping Charles Darwin's idea of evolution, one may lead to believe that throughout the novel, the monster remains a monster whereas Frankenstein travels from man to monster. Monster evolves by observing people and reading books of literature. Somewhere the idea of appearance v/s reality pertains directly to science v/s nature. Because reality is totally opposite to appearance. Science can be rendered as an appearance. For a while it seems a white angel but when it turns into devil, it shows the real nature of human being. What seems appearance is not exactly reality. Victor could not understand his creation (Reality, Nature) and when the reality turns into devil. He had to drink a bitter draughts of the outcome of reality. So Victor (Appearance) and the monster never remain in good terms till their end. Tragic full point of Victor leads him to say,

“But before I continue my narrative,

I must record an incident.”

This ‘must’ is a culmination of his scientific life. This “must’ indicates the conflict between him and monster because whatever happened in past between Victor and monster, cannot be forgotten easily, It becomes a memory of the past. Generally speaking, the scientist invents something special but not something odd and strange. So it becomes common need. But Victor’s was a reverse case. Not need, but the desire that ignited by his Chemistry professor Mr. Waldman of an irrepressible gain of ruthless pursuit of knowledge that results only end with his creation. He does not possess only knowledge of science but transcends its territory and even he goes beyond the nature also, that shows his arrogance, nothing else. He becomes conscious and cautious of his gradual loss of touch with humanity. He views science as an base of getting new knowledge. His pursuit of scientific knowledge reveals a great deal about his perceptions of science in general. He just leaves his family to become a king of science like Dr. Faustus leaves his soul to become a king of magic and black craft in science’s name.

 

The monster does not have any relative. Neither he nor other is there to cry after his death. So he always gets benefit of Victor’s incalculable fatigue. This is how they act and react to each other. These action and reaction are inexorably the crux among science and nature. They act and react with an arrowy swiftness. The very crucial and valuable point of the essay lies in below stated line that is more symbolic and relevant to nature’s rage upon mankind.

“The rain was pouring in torrent.”

This line has a deep innuendo that human beings have to pass from reality that is ultimate death. The monster also goes away after atoning on his creator’s body. No one can escape from nature’s clutches. Even the Master of Science has to put his ornaments on the land and to die. The nature requires just a bit of moment to vex human being and this happens in the novel Frankenstein. To sum up the discussion, one reaches to a place where Nature always conquers everyone who goes beyond it. In the novel nature is macrocosm of the monster and the monster is a microcosm of nature in real sense of the term. By conflict between science and nature, Marrey Shelley wants to say that science is not still everything. It is limited and should be limited otherwise people have to face its repercussions.