Frankenstein: Technology
...century by Mary Shelley, Shelley proposes that knowledge and its
effects can be dangerous to individuals and all of humanity. Frankenstein was
one of our first and still is one of our best cautionary tales about scientific
research.. Shelley's novel is a metaphor of the problems technology is causing
today. Learn from me. . . at least by my example, how dangerous is the
acquirement of knowledge and how much happier that man is who believes his
native town to be the world, than he who aspires to become greater than his
nature will allow (Shelley 101)
The popular belief of how Frankenstein came to be written derives from
Shelley herself, who explains in an introduction to the novel that she , her
husband Percy Shelly, and Lord Byron set themselves the task of creating ghost
stories during a short vacation at a European villa. According to Shelley, the
short story she conceived was predicated of the notion as the eighteenth became
the nineteenth century that electricity could be a catalyst of life. in her
introduction she recalls the talk about Erasmus Darwin, who had preserved a
piece of vermicelli in a glass case, till by some extraordinary means it began
to move with voluntary motion," (Joseph vii). The extraordinary means forms the
basis for Frankenstein. Many people also believe that a nightmare that Mary
Shelley had could also be partly responsible for the creation of the novel.
At the time the novel was written, England was on the brink of leading
the Industrial revolution in Europe. The experiments of Huntsman (crucible
steel manufacture), Newcome (steam-powered pumps), and Cochrane (coal tar
production) throughout the eighteenth century in England were decisive in the
initial transformation of England into an industrialized country (Burke 137, 173,
195). The emerging age of technology appears to have found followers throughout
the culture and to...
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