by When mentioning Frankenstein, many people will immediately think of the idea of how dangerous “playing god” is in the case of scientific investigation. However, I want to think from another perspective and talk about something else: ISOLATION.
In its preface, Frankenstein were claimed to be a novel that is about “domestic affection”. It is somehow strange, as this novel is full of murder and death. I believe, all of these tragedies in the novel has nothing to do with “domestic affection”. Instead, it’s about the lack of connection to either family or society. In another word, the real “monster” or “evil” in Frankenstein is not Victor or the Creature, but isolation. In the following WordPress entry, I will briefly discuss the difference between Victor and the Creature’s isolation, how does isolation become an important topic of this novel, and how it brings some thoughts regarding science nowadays.
As I have mentioned, I believe both Victor and the Creature are experiencing isolation in the novel. However, they are different in forms.
For Victor, he actively chose to be isolated. When Victor realized his passion in the topic of death, he starts to investigate by himself alone, without sharing this with his friends or teachers. As his creates the Creature, which can be considered as both miracle and taboo, he becomes completely lost in his studies. Since he can’t share his fear with others, he actively removes himself from human society, and therefore loses sight of his responsibilities and the consequences of his actions. Victor’s behavior directly causes the isolation of the Creature, and it turns vengeful not because it’s evil, but because its isolation fills it with overwhelming hate and anger. And what is the monster’s vengeance? To make Victor as isolated as it. This even reinforce Victor’s isolation. Add it all up, it becomes clear that this novel sees isolation from family and society as the worst imaginable fate, and the cause of hatred, violence, and revenge.
However, for the Creature, his isolation was not a consequence of active choice. He was passively be force to become isolated. I would like to spend some time to elaborate more about how Victor leads to the isolation of the Creature, and make him turns into a hideous “monster”, explaining by the idea of “lack of naming”.
Naming is a very important, say, ceremony within a person’s life. It’s the prerequisite of the existence of human society. Names were usually given by our parents, and without a name means has no relation with the family and the society. The process of naming makes us to have a sense that we are a part of a group (maybe in family, in school, or in the society), and we have to play a certain role within this group. A famous scholar in Gender Studies named Judith Butler had proposed a theory, that we are not born to be male nor female. The reason we become male or female now is because gender is a culturally and socially constructed term. We are actually “performing” in a way that we supposed to be as having one certain gender. It’s because the others told us we are male/female, and we should act like a male/female, we gradually start to become a person that correspond to our gender. Reason I explain this is because gender, in Butler’s theory, is similar to name in this case. It’s because we got the name, we start to become and act in a way that correspond to this name. In the novel, the Creature created by Victor actually has no name. Victor was frightened by him right after he was created, so he didn’t give him a name. As mentioned, the action of “giving name” can be understood as a ceremony to acknowledge one in its society. Since the Creature has no name, it is excluded from human society.
Noticing that the change in pronoun that Victor used to call the Creature, something more can be inferred. At the beginning, Victor called it “the being”, and after it becomes alive, Victor change the pronoun into “monster”. If we say “the being” can be used to call any living things in the world, “monster” actually draws a clear line between the Creature and human being. Monster, in the history, was always used to call those which are not like human, and usually weird and hideous. By calling the Creature “monster”, Victor put the Creature and human into two totally different categories, thus, the Creature become isolated with the entire world. Though, the monster at that time is actually nice and kind, only with a weird appearance.
Here, the Creature can be seen as an analogy of baby. Just like when a baby was born, the Creature understand nothing when he was created. Usually, the first relation that baby build is with his/her parents and families. After that, he/she starts to be able to get contact with more people and form more relations. However, in the novel, Victor as the creator/parent of the Creature, abandon the Creature because of his fear. Thus, the Creature as a newborn fail to build the first relation with the world. This makes him unable to build relation with others, thus finally chose to be a “monster” and become isolated after being hurt by people for many times. In conclusion, the isolation of the Creature is actually a passive process instead of an active choice.
Why I spend so much time focusing on the concept of ISOLATION? Because as I reading this novel, I realized that this is not only a case in the story, but a problem that people may face in the real world. Nowadays, more scientists start to put efforts on the genetic engineering project. We now have genetically modified vegetables, and even genetically modified baby (referring to Jiankui He’s experiment), it’s no doubt that people will in some day start to investigate about how to “create” genetically modified human beings. If that really happens, then the “product” would be something similar to human beings, but not a human being, just like the Creature that Victor created in Frankenstein.
Human beings are exclusive, especially to those who are much stronger than them. In the novel, the Creature is isolated not only because of its appearance, but also for its weird body and strongness. In the novel, the ending seems to be acceptable: The Creature choose to die. This ending implies that human beings are still the superior existence of the world. However, if one day, human beings create something that is much stronger and smarter than us, when they scorn us just like we scorn Homo Neanderthalensis that existed thousands year ago, what should we do? At that time, what being isolated will no longer be a single creature. Instead, maybe hundred and thousands of them. Do we expect them to suicide in order to keep human beings as the primate of all living things? Are we going to change from the one who isolate the others to the one being isolated?