Similarities Between Frankenstein And Oppenheimer

“Both the man of science and the man of action live always at the edge of mystery, surrounded by it” (J. Robert Oppenheimer, 1904-1967). Dr. Victor Frankenstein, the creator of the monster constructed crudely out of human body parts in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, was tempted by the mystery surrounding life. Julius Robert Oppenheimer, the chief physicist of the Manhattan Project, and father of the atomic bomb, was allured to the study of destructive properties of an atom because of the mystery behind it. Frankenstein and Oppenheimer were led from ethnical science and trapped in the dazzling world of prodigious discovery. Oppenheimer’s curious childhood led into an impractical and eccentric young adulthood. His exuberance in youth transitioned

When Frankenstein give life to the creature, he suddenly is able to see the ugliness of his beautiful task. How could one possibly think to break natural law and disrupt the balance between life and death? This is akin to the creation, and resulting destruction from dropping the atomic bomb. Oppenheimer wanted to abandon the use of nuclear weaponry after seeing what the atomic bomb could, and would, do. At the point of creation, in both instances, it became too late to turn back. Frankenstein’s creature would destroy his family and Oppenheimer’s bomb would obliterate Hiroshima. Whatever compelled the scientists to build what they did would also destroy them. The peak of their success was the beginning of the scientists’ demises.
Frankenstein and Oppenheimer were alike in the tales of their youth, their formidable scientific successes and their downfalls. Their childhood curiosities led them into the work they would become consumed by. Both were naïve and turned to sciences with immoral components. Both men could be held responsible for the deaths of others. The mystery of the natural operations of life and the earth persuaded the scientists into the production of unearthly