Science and Morality

Reaction on Frankenstein

Most of us refer to Frankenstein as “The Monster”.  In fact, I only learned about the real Frankenstein (the scientist) after watching the movie. But come to think of it, Dr. Frankenstein and “The Monster” are both monsters in their own different way. “The Monster” is regarded as a monster due to his scary features while Dr. Frankenstein could be considered a monster due to his immoral ways by meddling with life and death. As the title of Mary Shelley’s novel Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus suggests that like Prometheus, Dr. Frankenstein is a genius who wanted to expound his knowledge in science but resulted in tragedy since his methods are defying God’s teachings.

Science as a branch of knowledge and morality as a belief of what is right behaviour and wrong behaviour comes hand in hand in providing an understanding to the society regarding human existence.  Thus, however eager people are in exploring and expanding our knowledge, things must be done in a moral way. And evidently, Dr. Frankenstein’s method of making a dead body alive is immoral. Biblically, we know that Jesus brought Lazarus back to life four days after his burial. And He is the only one who could resurrect a person from the dead. And Dr. Frankenstein wanted to do the same which is morally wrong. And this results to tragedy.

One reason “The Monster” was made dumb is to show his difference from a living person. His dumbness adds to his features to make him a scary monster. This emphasizes his imperfections and Dr. Frankenstein’s failure in his immoral scientific experiment. If “The Monster” was made intelligent and able to converse, then it would show that resurrecting dead people is possible. And this contradicts reality. Thus, making “The Monster” dumb is an important tool to highlight the lesson of the novel and the movie.

Princess Rosales

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