Topic > Free Essays: Frankenstein and the Enlightenment

Many people say that Mary Shelley's Frankenstein post-Enlightenment; that it is a retrospective of the cultural phenomenon after its completion and a first uncertain reaction to the movement. I don't agree. There is no "after the Enlightenment". A civilization does not simply stop learning. Where's the point where someone stands up and says, "Okay, enough of the Enlightenment for now, I think we'll be fine for another few centuries"? For better or worse, the Enlightenment still exists today. As the information age advances, we continue to invent and build. Exploration now reaches the depths of the oceans and the nearest regions of space. We look beyond the atom, beyond the subatomic particle, digging ever deeper into the secrets of science to find that ultimate point where it converges with philosophy. The question is: do we want it? The cover image of our edition of Frankenstein is An Experiment on a Bird in the Air Pump by Joseph Wright of Derby - an apt scene, not only for how it recalls Shelley's state of mind, but also for how exactly it illustrates that doubt about 'Enlightenment for which the novel was written. squeeze. Around the table, at which a scientific experiment that harms a living being is being conducted, are seated various people of different social positions and equally different reactions to the event in question. A pair of curious young men watch eagerly, a frightened woman turns her head away in absolute horror, a young girl watches apprehensively, unsure of what to think. That little girl is us. And based on what we see in the air pump, we have to decide whether we will become the scared woman or the interested man. I find little room to doubt that Shelley is trying to instill a sense of fear in his reader. For not only does Victor Frankenstein loathe his own creation – and let us not be mistaken, the doctor's work is undoubtedly a symbol of the larger body of work of all Enlightenment scientists, who seek knowledge they do not understand in order to operate. tasks previously thought impossible - but the creation also curses itself, speaking of the grotesqueness of its appearance and freely admitting that it has willfully done harm. Perhaps in Shelley's mind this is truly unspeakable. For my part, instead of viewing Frankenstein's monster as a symptom of the potential terror resulting from the advances of Enlightenment science, I view it as a symptom of one of the advances made by Enlightenment philosophy..