Victor Paid for His Sins in Frankenstein The setting of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein plays a very important role in both the meaning and realism of the story. By the end of the 18th century, smallpox and cholera epidemics across Europe had claimed millions of lives and provoked a crisis of faith in both the Catholic and Protestant churches. The once profane practices of medicinal healing were just beginning to gain acceptance at major universities when hundreds of cities were quarantined due to their disease and high mortality rates. Interdisciplinary learning within the scientific community was unheard of. If Victor Frankenstein had been alive during this time, his practices would have been considered blasphemous. Much more so than Edward Jenner's smallpox research in the same period, which would ultimately save millions of lives in 1796. Frankenstein's intentions were good, but even in this modern age of genetic engineering and cloning, the story of his creation remains of all evil. In recent years, contemporary thinking has enabled enormous growth in genetic engineering; the evolution of science from the analytical engine to the modern PC occurred thousands of times faster than the evolution of our species, from ape to man. New drugs are discovered every day. However, if Mary Shelly's proposal to "play God" had been a reality in the late 18th century, and if Victor Frankenstein had been able to take this dramatic shortcut in the slow process of evolution by creating life from death, the crisis between the church and science would have been decidedly against science. These were the feelings of Victor's headmaster in Ingolstadt, as well as the rest of the European scientific community. Frankenstein's intentions were good. He wanted to rid the world of genetic defects and bacterial diseases by creating the perfect man. He would do this by applying electricity to the polar regions of a body, which he had constructed from pieces of recently executed villains, immersing them in an elemental pool of life. However, he was so driven towards his goal that he never considered the consequences of his actions. In many ways he was acting like the do-gooder in Jurassic Park, hastily creating a life form without considering the possible harm. When Frankenstein created his monster, he didn't know what to do with it and immediately wished him dead, but ironically he had made him so strong that he didn't die.