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The industrial revolution introduction for an essay
The industrial revolution introduction for an essay
The industrial revolution introduction for an essay
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Change is scary, leading many people to meet it with a slow and cautious approach. This fear for change often leads others to push against the incoming innovation and instead fight for the way things have always been. Mary Shelley, the author of Frankenstein, hated the switch of her society that she saw during the second half of 19th century when the Industrial Revolution hit the United States. The Industrial Revolution replaced the ideals Shelley believed in, and instead pushed scientific knowledge upon people. Shelley felt the strong fear of change. To express her feelings towards this horrible new scientific society, Shelley wrote her argument about the danger of scientific knowledge throughout Frankenstein. By having scientific voyages …show more content…
always end in woe while showing the joyous and carefree ways of nature, Shelley clearly shows her views towards the beauty of nature and dislike for the innovations of science and research. The main problem in Frankenstein is the monster in which Victor Frankenstein creates through his desire to learn the “secrets of heaven and earth”(Shelley 22) and reanimate a dead body. This desire to break natural law through science and take on a godly persona gets Victor in trouble as he realizes the creation he has made is truly appalling. Frankenstein's reaction towards his creature is of pure disgust and fright. He refers to his creature as “the wretch” and recalls his first thought of his creation as a “miserable monster whom I had created.” (Shelley, 100) By making the creation of Frankenstein a horribly misfigured creature Shelley is trying to prove that no matter how hard man tries, he will never be able to create a perfect creature as God is able to do. Shelley is furthering her point in the argument that man will never be able to reach the powers that God has, and any attempt to do so will just end in the creation of monsters. Frankenstein's creature even directly compared himself to the creations of God as he said “God, in pity, made man beautiful and alluring, after his own image; but my form is a filthy type of yours, more horrid even from the very resemblance.”(Shelley, 38) Proving Shelley’s point in saying god is able to make a “beautiful and alluring” man while all Frankenstein is able to create is a “filthy type” of man, the type that the creature winded up being. Shelley also shows how nature, the good way to live, can also be used to test things in the way God had intended and thus will reward you with what you want. The creature, like Frankenstein, is also a very intuitive person and does his own little “experiment” with testing what food will and will not roast well over a fire. This test however, follows all laws of nature and does not aim to change anything that nature cannot do itself. As the creature came to the simple conclusion “that the berries were spoiled by this operation, and the nuts and roots much improved.”(Shelley, 220) the reader sees that nature seems to yield much less dangerous experiments since the only negative outcome of this experiment were burnt berries, unlike Frankenstein's unnatural experiment which produced a much more negative outcome. Shelley here shows the true harmlessness of nature and provides the reader a true scale of how bad Frankenstein's unnatural experiment was when another experiment done in nature produced such little backlash. Burnt berries are a simple mistake and provide no real danger to human society since many things in nature have been around since before mankind and the only reason we, as a species, have survived is because nature is relatively harmless to us.
Shelley is able to use the harmlessness of nature as another point in her argument towards the dangers of scientific discoveries. By using nature as a type of getaway for the monster to go to when reality has gotten to hard, Shelly gives the reader the sense that when science and reality will fail you, the good ways of nature will always be there to cheer you up and make you feel better. The monster explains how his mind will often “ramble in the fields of Paradise, and dared to fancy amiable and lovely creatures sympathizing with my feelings and cheering my gloom; their angelic countenances breathed smiles of consolation.”(Shelley, 41) By having the creature find tranquility in nature Shelley is reinforcing the idea that nature is a calm and peaceful place to be with no danger. As the creature recounts his reality he speaks about how he is alone and looks towards the stories he has read while hiding in the forest to see if he can find any answers stating “I remembered Adam's supplication to his Creator. But where was mine? He had abandoned me, and in the bitterness of my heart I cursed him.”(Shelley,41) Shelley here is showing the scientific backlashes of Frankenstein's creation. In the first half of this quote where the creature was …show more content…
in his paradise, everything was natural, thus, everything was peaceful and calm. However, when the creature returns to reality he states how he is not the natural creation Adam was to God, and instead is abandoned by his creator cursed by Frankenstein's unnatural experiment. Change is intimidating.
Not everything necessarily has to change. Nature had been around for thousands of years before the Industrial Revolution without nearly any flaws, why would it needed to have been changed? Shelley clearly thought that the scientific discoveries being made to overcome nature were an unneeded and extremely dangerous change. Her opinions towards scientific discoveries and overcoming the natural will of God written throughout Frankenstein proved that she was unfond of the profound terrors that science could bring, and the dangers of what man thinking he was greater than god could lead to. With the creations of atomic bombs and new weapons of terror years after Shelley’s death, one has to think, did she have it right all
along?
The period during which Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein there were many scientific developments in the world, that contributed to the gothic genre of her novel as well as the author’s personal experiences. The main scientific development that possibly may have inspired the author to produce a gothic novel is similar to Luigi Galvani’s experiment, during which Galvani observed the relationship between electricity and life. In chapter four, Shelley has mentioned the scientific improvement that occurred during the 19th century: “when I considered the improvement which every day takes place in science and mechanics”.
To begin our analysis, I will look to how Mary Shelley positions Victor Frankenstein's motivations to create life against natural laws within the ideas of individualism, as Victor can correlate directly to the educated human at the center of Enlightenment, Industrialism, and Romanticism values. With the burgeoning interest in scientific discovery during the Industrial Revolution "transform[ing] British culture" and "changing the world"(Lipking 2065), many concepts of society were also changed, which Shelley looked to explore through Victor's actions. Rooted in the scientifically curious spirit of Industrial England, Victor's attempt to create life can show many examples of how an importance of the individual acquisition of knowledge and accomplishment can disrupt society. Victor's...
Monsters, in myths and legends, are ugly beasts with vicious tendencies and overbearing powers who bring suffering and agony to those who cross their paths, regardless of intention. However, the same cannot be said for Mary Shelley's monster, the Creation. Victor Frankenstein's lab experiment emphasizes the danger of not taking responsibility for one's own actions and knowledge, by being an instrument of Victor's suffering.
In Shelley's Frankenstein, it's interesting to use the text to ask the question, whose interest's lie at the heart of science? Why is Victor Frankenstein motivated to plunge the questions that bringing life to inanimate matter can bring? Victor Frankenstein's life was destroyed because of an obsession with the power to create life where none had been before. The monster he created could be seen as a representation of all those who are wronged in the selfish name of science. We can use Shelley's book to draw parallels in our modern society, and show that there is a danger in the impersonal relationship that science creates between the scientist and his work. It seems to me that Shelley was saying that when science is done merely on the basis of discovery without thought to the affect that the experimentation can have, we risk endangering everything we hold dear.
In Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, the concept of "discovery" is paradoxical: initial discovery is joyful and innocent, but ends in misery and corruption. The ambitions of both Walton and Frankenstein (to explore new lands and to cast scientific light on the unknown, respectively) are formed with the noblest of intentions but a fatal disregard for the sanctity of natural boundaries. Though the idea of discovery remains idealized, human fallibility utterly corrupts all pursuit of that ideal. The corruption of discovery parallels the corruption inherent in every human life, in that a child begins as a pure and faultless creature, full of wonder, but hardens into a self-absorbed, grasping, overly ambitious adult. Only by novel's end does Walton recognize that he must abandon his own ambition (the mapping of previously uncharted land), out of concern for the precious lives of his crew.
Frankenstein is a book written by Mary Shelley in 1818, that is revolved around a under privileged scientist named Victor Frankenstein who manages to create a unnatural human-like being. The story was written when Shelley was in her late teen age years, and was published when she was just twenty years old. Frankenstein is filled with several different elements of the Gothic and Romantic Movement of British literature, and is considered to be one of the earliest forms of science fiction. Frankenstein is a very complicated and complex story that challenges different ethics and morals on the apparent theme of dangerous knowledge. With the mysterious experiment that Dr. Victor Frankenstein conducted, Shelly causes her reader to ultimately ask themselves what price is too high to pay to gain knowledge. It is evident that Shelly allows the reader to sort of “wonder” about the reaction they would take when dealing with a situation such as the one implemented throughout the book.
Albert Einstein once said, “A little knowledge is a dangerous thing. So is a lot.” Einstein believes that there is a point where the acquisition of knowledge becomes dangerous for humans. Mary Shelley extensively explores the effect dangerous knowledge has on the characters in her book Frankenstein. Throughout the book, Frankenstein and the creature are corrupted by knowledge that changes their outlooks on life. In both cases, the information that corrupts the characters was not meant for them to be discovered. When Frankenstein is discovered in the Arctic by a sailor named Walton, he is taken on board of Walton’s boat. Frankenstein then tells Walton about his quest for information, and it changes Walton’s perspective on the pursuit of
With the advancement of technology and science, we are now able to genetically modify animals. Mary Shelley found a way to make science an epitome, and confirms what could happen if science is taken too far. In conclusion, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein is considered to be a historical novel, based on scientific advancements. In this novel Shelley depicts her own definition of human nature, by showing the creature and the ways that humans react to him. The novel also showed the differences between morality and science.
By definition, knowledge is the fact or condition of knowing something with familiarity gained through experience or association (Merriam-Webster.com). In the novel Frankenstein, Mary Shelley considers knowledge as a “dangerous” factor. The danger of it is proved throughout the actions of the characters Robert Walton, Victor Frankenstein, and the creature. The characters all embody the theme of knowledge in different ways. Shelley supports her opinion about knowledge by using references from the Bible and Paradise Lost. She uses these references to show the relationship between God’s Adam and Frankenstein’s creature, and how nothing turns out as great as God’s creation. Mary Shelley’s goal is to teach a lesson on how destructive the desire for knowledge really is.
By attempting to create life and messing with the natural order of the world, Victor loses his connection to the earth and eventually ends up as a shell of what he once was. No matter how hard he tried to redeem himself, he could no longer be one with nature. The creature that Victor creates by using the malicious techniques of science actually starts out to nature than Victor himself. The Creature recognizes the wonders of nature and finds temporary happiness in his closeness to the world. He turns away the peace given to him by nature just to satisfy his desire for revenge, and becomes a broken being. Mary Shelley demonstrates in Frankenstein what happens if someone strays too far from nature. Shelley purposely shows the destructive nature of science in her novel to highlight the strife that her society was going through. Her society, disillusioned by war and the devastation that new technologies caused, wanted to go back to their roots in nature, and her novel pushes at that idea. Shelley’s example of Victor’s and the Creature’s downfall warns us of the dangers and temptations of science. Even now, people are constantly enraptured by the possibilities that science and technology offer, while neglecting their duties towards nature and the
Given the deep ties to nature that Mary Shelley explores within Frankenstein, the principles and methodology of ecocriticism can be applied in many different ways. The interaction of humanity and nature is a concept explored throughout the novel, relating directly to a core tenet of ecocriticism, "directly relat[ing] who we are as human beings to the environment" (Bressler 231). Being as there is no "single, dominant methodology" (235) within ecocriticism, the extent to which we can use ecocriticism to interact with Frankenstein contains considerable depth. However, I will look to a few main methodologies of ecocriticism to look at Frankenstein in detail to uncover how the novel deals with the changing attitudes of humanity and nature in early 19th century England.
Frankenstein has been interested in natural science since childhood and has described himself to “always have been imbued with a fervent longing to penetrate the secrets of nature”(Shelley 25), which foreshadows his future aspiration to create life, and
Frankenstein in a Historical Sense Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein was published in 1818 during the Romantic era. Romanticism describes the period of time from the late 18th century to the mid 19th century. This period was seen as a response to the Enlightenment; overall there was an increase in the desire to understand the world in an objective matter (lecture). Though Romanticism is commonly viewed as a literary and artistic movement, Mary Shelley gives evidence on the development of Europe in a historical sense through her novel, Frankenstein. Through the motifs and personal experiences of her characters, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein gives insight on scientific development, emerging roles of women, and how the individual is viewed as the lower class during the early 19th century.
The novel Frankenstein, written by Mary Shelley, centers around a scientist, Victor Frankenstein, and the creation that comes from one of his experiments. In her book, Shelley addresses the concern of technology going too far and disrupting human life. She argues that the progression of technology becomes monstrous when humans can no longer control it. In many cases, the use of genetic engineering leaves scientists useless because they have no control over the consequences that come from it. Victor Frankenstein is trying to recreate life, but does not understand everything that comes with it. His attempt to copy life ended up disturbing the natural order of human life because of the unexpected actions of the creation. The use of genetic
Through his death Mary Shelley showed that she was against science. Henry Clerval was the best friend and complete opposite of Victor Frankenstein. While Frankenstein was a man devoted to science Clerval was oppositely devoted to Nature. In the book Clerval was the clearest representation of Nature. In fact Frankenstein once described him as a being "formed in the 'very poetry of nature '"(Shelley, 208). Further showing that Shelley is for nature is that Clerval is positively described as “perfectly humane” and “made the doing good the end and aim of his soaring ambition.”(Shelley, 39). Clerval being described as humane shows that nature is what Shelley considers the standard for humanity. Nature is normal and the ideal. The science portrayed in this book never reached any human positively as did nature. Clerval who represents nature is associated with humanity while science leads to the creation of monster. Also Clerval aims to do good therefore Shelley is telling us that she believes that nature is a force that can bring good. Shelley believes that in the end nature knows what was best and will make things right. In the end Frankenstein’s monster kills Henry Clerval in revenge against Frankenstein. In essence a product of science gone wrong killed nature. Once again Shelley shows us that science brings negative consequences. Clerval who did nothing