Technology In Mary Shelley's Frankenstein

Addicted to Technology Technology has made numerous evolutions throughout history by having someone creating it to later becoming something more powerful than intended. A demonstration of this malpractice of technology is viewed in the novel Frankenstein when the author, Mary Shelley, introduces a character named Victor Frankenstein, who is so eager to create life that during his process he never analyze the consequences that it brings to him. After he creates what he calls a “monster” instead of assuming responsibility, he ends up leaving it behind where the monster has to learn to interact with people he never seen before. However, his appearance makes it difficult for people to accept him into their society since they never seen a creation

In Frankenstein, Victor experiences with this distraction when he “engaged, heart and soul, in one pursuit...caused me also to forget those friends who were so many miles absent, and whom I had not seen for so long a time”(Shelly ). Victor’s eager to produce life was so high that he forgot the people who cared about him back home and dedicated all his time to finish his masterpiece. Shelley portraits the distraction of technology by having Victor isolate himself from the rest of the world until he finishes his invention. Just like technology was a distraction in Shelley’s novel, it also distracts people very often which makes them not finish a task or cause an accident because they were so busy on their phones that they did not notice the person in front of them. Pamela Hill Nettleton, author of the article The Sound of Silence, points out a study done by Microsoft where they observed digital users and concluded that they“ crave continual new stimuli, have trouble filtering out distractions, and struggle to focus on a single task” (Nettleton 20). The reason for this is because people tend to multitask, but instead they lack to finish one task because whatever was on their technology they got so involved into it, that it was hard for them to leave the device alone. As new technology comes out, the more we get drawn into a device and the more distracted.

As Mary Shelley argues in her novel about the monstrosity of technology, she also includes health problems by having Victor becoming ultimately ill after finishing his creation. During his experiment, Victor’s ambition to accomplish his experiment was so tremendous that he would work restless day and nights. After his friend Henry encounter him one day, Henry noticed how ill Victor was, so he decided to be his nurse until he fully recovered. Once Victor recovered from his sickness, he confessed to Henry that “his disorder indeed owed its origin to some uncommon and terrible event”(Shelley 39). Shelley is demonstrating the effect of what technology can do when becoming too fascinated with it. In this case, Victor’s eager to solve the mystery of the creation of life made him become very ill to the point where if Henry never found him, his life would have been at risk. Not only does this “craving” or “addiction” to technology happen during Shelley’s period, but in modern day people are more likely to encounter health problems; one example would be obesity becoming one of the top concerns. This issue is commonly view in children because they are mostly lured into getting addicted to technology, a.k.a the television. As authors of the article, Childhood Obesity: causes and consequences points out that “each additional hour of television per day increased the