How To Control Nature In Frankenstein

How far is too far before we loose all of our humanity in the quest for becoming godlike beings as we seek for the ever illusive control of all that is around us? In order for us not to lose our humanity we have to find a balance between allowing nature and the sublime to guide us and our desire to control it through science. When we look at Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, we can see this underlying question being scrutinized as Victor Frankenstein goes from being in a state of balance between nature and science to being enveloped in his quest of conquering nature’s laws around him. When we look at Victor as a child we see that from an early age he has this vast fascination in wanting to understand the world around him: “I delighted in investigating

They are both one half of the whole, and when they are balanced work concentrically with the other, but when science or the masculinity of man tries to control nature they become unbalanced. At first Victor is balanced between the two parts of himself thanks to his sister Elizabeth. “She was the living spirit of love to soften and attract; I might have become sullen in my study, rough through the ardor of my nature, but that she was there to subdue me to a semblance of her own gentleness” (44). Elizabeth kept Victor in check never allowing his humanity to be forfeited to the demands of science, and the desire to have control of the world around him. Whereas once he leaves his home, and the connection with the natural world he becomes unbalanced, and the clarity of the world blurs as his focus becomes that of science and conquering. “I was alone…I ardently desired the acquisition of knowledge…and had longed to enter the world and take my section among other human beings. Now my desires were complied with, and it would, indeed have been folly to repent” (53). When Victor talks about wanting the acquisition of knowledge he’s showing how his power to dominate the world around him is beginning to cloud his clarity, and wanting to take his seat among other human beings is his desire of wanting to take his place among the

And why should I describe a sorrow which all have felt, and must feel” (51). The answer is because it connects us together in our humanity through our pain and loss. Without it we become hardened, and less human which is what happens to Frankenstein, because he will not deal with the death of his mother he loses a part of his humanity. As his humanity is slowly being eaten away by his desire and the focus of what is out of his grasps there is an underlining tension that is created with the death of his mother, and his attraction of bringing life to something that is already dead:I paused, examining and analyzing all the minutiae of causation, as exemplified in the change of life to death, and death to life…I became myself capable of bestowing animation upon lifeless matter…What had been the study and desire of the wisest men since the creation of the world was now within my grasp (62-63).

As Frankenstein becomes obsessed with changing ‘life to death, and death to life’ his fascination with undoing the greater force at work is revealed, and showing his dominion to command nature to his own will corrupts his very being. He becomes no longer aware that man is the creation not the creator, and by becoming the other it will destroy any resemblance of what is left of our humanity and what