Modernity In Frankenstein

What happens when the point of no return has been passed for a fixing detrimental problem? There are two interpretations of this: through novel and lecture. Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein is a novel about an eighteenth century scientist, Victor Frankenstein, who creates life from a dead body and cannot handle the consequences of his action. Immediately after his creation comes to life, Frankenstein abandons his creation due to pure disgust of its appearance. In a time of loneliness and rejection, the creature decides to kill everyone Frankenstein loves in hopes of getting his attention. By the time Frankenstein decides it is time to take action, it is too late to fix his mistake. According to the views of French philosopher, Bruno Latour, Frankenstein’s

Frankenstein knew that he created a problem when he first saw it. His initial reaction once the creature had come to life, aside from analyzing its physical features, was that he was “unable to endure the aspect of the being [he] had created, [and he] rushed out of the room” (42). Leaving it alone alone of pure horror and disgust instead of taking action was what began the domino effect of terrible events. After leaving it alone, he later saw the consequences unfold once others came into contact with it. The initial contact with the other people is not what caused all of the damage. The damage caused by the fact that Frankenstein did not attempt to do anything about it until it was far too late. This fits Latour’s analysis of humanity’s response to our environmental issues. One of the problems Latour talks about the most is how current humans in the Anthropocene are aware of all the facts of climate change and still avoid it as if it is not their problem, even though they are the ones to blame. As a result, one of Latour’s most emphasized points is that humans often do not take responsibility where responsibility must be taken. In both cases of humans living in the Anthropocene and Frankenstein dealing with his creation, both parties did not take action to fix their own mistakes. When Latour addresses the fact that humans remain to

The reason Frankenstein created the creature was because he was in denial of his mother’s death and wanted to do something to bring her back in a way. The night he created the creature he dreamt that “[he] held the corpse of [his] dead mother in [his] arms” (Shelley 43). As he fled from the past, as the dancer did, he went full speed to the future. For Frankenstein, the future is a life of science and his one specific project to make life from the dead. By denying and rejecting his mother’s death, or the past, he accelerated in the opposite direction. Also just how the dancer was backpedaling, Frankenstein was bind to what he was running towards as he was facing away from it. Once he finally turns around and faces the second fear, which Latour would interpret as achieving modernity, he is full of regret, shame, and fear, as seen on the dancer’s face. As soon as he faces Gaia, or in this case an equivalent human made horror, Frankenstein described his experience by saying, “I had desired it with an ardour that far exceeded moderation; but now that I had finished, the beauty of the dream vanished and breathless horror and disgust filled my heart” (42). This statement describes the entire process of modernity summed up by Frankenstein realizing what he had done in the blind flee