Making the Seam between Morality and Science:

A Review of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley’s Frankenstein

by Marc Lorlin Z. Navisa 2013-38337 Group Xixy

More often than not, the equation E=mc² keeps popping up in my head even as I take a shower here in our dormitory. Perhaps, it is undeniably symbolic of man’s ingenuity. Indeed, man has never been so close to unfolding every secret nature conceals under its skin—the laws, principles, and mysteries governing it—to use them for his advantage. But what price have we paid in attaining what we have now which science gave? In the novel “Frankenstein,” Mary Shelley, the author, shows how science compromises morality in Victor Frankenstein’s pursuit to crack the mystery behind life and death.

Notable in the novel is that the monster was made to carry out decent conversations which is evident in lines such as “I ought to be thy Adam but I am rather the fallen angel…. Satan has his companions, fellow-devils, to admire and encourage him; but I am solitary and detested.” But in the movie, the monster was made dumb.

From where I see it, James Whale did this to make the monster’s appearance really digress from the normal, aside from its gigantic stature and hideous appearance as a conglomerate of corpse parts. Indeed, if the monster was made to carry out a decent conversation in the movie, it would not appear as much a freak as it would if it were dumb.

Another notable thing is that the monster speaks like a monkey, a primate, implying that it is inferior.

The novel’s theme centers on the battle between two entities: science and morality. It warns us not of the dangers of science, but of what happens when we indulge in one of these two entities with the expense of the other. It’s still up to us humans what to make out of the power science endows us: In the end, it is our conscience that should work.

God bestowed us with a great thing—a brain—but along with it came a greater gift—a heart. We must know when to use it.

More often than not, the equation E=mc² keeps popping up in my head even as I take a shower in our dormitory. Perhaps, it is undeniably symbolic of man’s ingenuity; yet as we know, is still far limited. Having read the novel, I reflected on the present state of science in our society:

In our pursuit for knowledge, we might be forgetting the core values ascribed to our society; and in the process, I fear it is man himself who pushes his brethren to peril’s pit. In the same way that E=mc² embodies man’s curiosity, his insatiable lust for knowledge, I believe, it also conceals the formula for his annihilation: Extinction=man’s cosmic curiosity.