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Loss Of Humanity In Frankenstein Essay

Decent Essays

Mary Shelley’s Warning to Humanity

A myth can be described as a story created to explain something unknown, or to preserve a valuable lesson for society to learn from down the line. Although a myth’s details may become altered while passed down from generation to generation, the moral of the story continues to teach readers today. Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein delivers a similar theme in which the reader explores the uncharted concept and consequences of recreating life. Shelley also references many other myths in the tragedy of Victor and the monster. The inclusion of the legends Prometheus and Paradise Lost in Frankenstein helps frame the moral of the story and allows Frankenstein to be considered a myth at heart. Recreation of life is a vast, unknown belief to the human race. Only now in the modern era are we touching the surface of artificial intelligence, an idea that generations before the computer could not even contemplate. But the mythical story of Frankenstein is structured to give meaning to such …show more content…

Besides the monster quoting directly from the epic poem and then comparing the situation of Adam and his creator with that of the relationship between him and Victor, Shelley includes Paradise Lost in Frankenstein to connect the reasoning behind Satan and Victor’s punishments. Satan’s playing God while manipulating Eve to eat from the Tree of Knowledge in Paradise Lost led to further punishment from God, just as Victor’s actions of recreating life evoked the loss of his loved ones, “I escaped from them to the room where lay the body of Elizabeth, my love, my wife, so lately living, so dear, so worthy…. The murderous mark of the fiend’s grasp was on her neck, and the breath had ceased to issue from her lips.” (Shelley). Victor and Satan alike suffered severely for their actions, further supporting Shelley’s caution to what happens when meddling with the recreation of

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