Resumo de Frankenstein - Mary Shelley

FRANKENSTEIN ? MARY SHELLEY
The gothic literature medium was becoming tired and clichéd when Jane Austen satirized the whole genre in Northanger Abbey, published in 1818, the very same year true science fiction began. It began with a novel that breathed vibrant new life into the Gothic? medium, Mary Shelley?s Frankenstein. Shelley, influenced by readings of Darwinian evolution theory, and the atheist ideals of her husband, Percy Blyshe Shelley, was unaware that she was creating a whole new genre in literature. The story began as a nightmare, when she, Percy, and Lord Byron were competing (possibly with the aid of Laudanum) in creating the scariest story conceivable. Mary Shelley knew what was important in such a story; Lots of blood, death, and violence. A shrewd judge of her readership, Mary Shelley knew what ingredients would sell her story. Frankenstein, subtitled, The Modern Prometheus, after the hero who made men independent of the Gods by giving us fire and survival skills, also offered something new. Her story was very forward looking, and scientific in its moral and social look at the causes and effects of Frankenstein?s terrifying experiment gone wrong. Doctor Frankenstein is a science student obsessed with neglected alchemical theories. He merges old science with new and generally accepted theories on galvanic-electricity and evolutionary ideas; to raise a composite body made from dead men into a new living entity. Frankenstein is the first God Player in SF and like the gods disapproved of by Prometheus, he abandons his work. He creates life for the sheer sake of the achievement but then he discovers that he cannot control life, nor- does he have any plans for how to care for his creation. Wanting a thing of beauty, Frankenstein is appalled by its ugliness; and dumps it without a word. Against the odds the creature survives; alone, hated and despised by all who see only its ugliness. It learns by trial and error as we did ourselves. It lives in cold glaciers and later on the Arctic Ice flows; a Neanderthal throwback to our ice age. With acquired knowledge, comes anger, passion, and desire for revenge. He finds his creator, and kills members of his family. Frankenstein, unable to accept the full responsibility for the actions resulting from his God-playing, is reduced to misery and suffering. His lot becomes as wretched as that of his creation. There's an extremely powerful Christ allegory in this. The God who doesn't help his creation has to suffer with it for his inactivity. The creature makes its God into a image of its own suffering; Both God and new man are terrible in nature, both do awful things, but we're forced to feel respect and sympathy for them; while being appalled by then too, Frankenstein's not a nice man, though often admirable. The creature begs fur a wife, which Frankenstein starts to produce, and then destroys. He is unable to father a race of creatures. His destruction of a mate evokes terrible retribution from the God-Slayer; who has already said ?remember, thy creature and I. I ought to be thy Adam; but rather I am thy fallen Angel, whom though drivest from Joy for no misdeed. Everywhere, I see bliss from which I am irrevocably excluded. I was benevolent and good, misery made me a fiend. Make me happy and I shall again be virtuous.? The answer is no. The Creature loses faith in Frankenstein; faith being Conditional dependency; we make our Gods into the source of what we want. Frankenstein, the novel, plays on our relationship with God; and yet this creation wants to kill its creator. I myself used to imagine finding God and attacking him, killing him, somehow punishing him for my anxieties and pain. Only through love of each other as human beings do we avoid selfishness and nihilism. The creature avenges itself on Frankenstein for failing to give it any means of achieving this. The creature is blinded by love and passion, which it can never satisfy. The morrale - Hell hath no fury like a moer scorned. In the scientific age, a novel had come along showing the dangers of scientific malpractice. Frankenstein is literature?s first mad scientist. Many others would follow. The SF age had truly begun. Many writers started speculating what the next scientific innovation might be, and what its consequences would be. Fast economic travel, and news of new species of flora and fauna being found in exotic, distant lands, sparked a whole trend in adventure-travel, with scientists, anthropologists, and explorers leading the way to all manner of danger. The SF genre was born. Shelley gave birth to a monster of her own, but one most of us learn to love.

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