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- LITERARY CONNECTIONS
Dr Frankenstein may be considered a nineteenth
version of the Medieval
German necromancer
Dr Faust whose story is
also the basis for
Christopher Marlowe's play Doctor Faustus. With his desire to control and manipulate
nature, Dr Frankenstein
recalls the magician
Dr Faustus, who sells his
soul to the Devil
to go beyond the human
knowledge but is finally
destroyed by his ambition.
The story gives
origin to the famous myth of Faust.
Dr Frankenstein is also a modern Titan Prometheus
of Greek mythology in his
desire to overcome
man's limitations and gain
God-like power.
The full title of Mary
Shelley's novel is
Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus and the influence of the myth of Prometheus as described by the Greek dramatist Aeschylus
in his tragedy Prometheus Bound may be noted.
For the Romantics Prometheus became a symbol
of man's resistance to
and rebellion against
political despotism.
Whereas in the Greek myth, Prometheus bows
before the power of the
gods, the hero of
P.B.Shelley's "Prometheus Unbound" is relentless in his resistance and
glorifies the virtues of
revolt, representing
authority (political, religious
and scientific)
as responsible for men's
sufferings.
Mary Shelley's Frankenstein combines characteristics
of the mythological hero
with those of the
Romantic one. Like Aeschylus'
Prometheus,
Frankenstein defies God
and upsets the pre-established
nature of the universe.
Like the Romantic
Prometheus, he does so
by manipulating science
and thus resisting traditional
authority,
especially that of the
church.
Mary Shelley's metaphor of Prometheus the
scientist has far-reaching
implications.
If Prometheus is a creator
then so is the
scientist. Not only art
is creative, science
may be too. If the revolting
monster is the
short-term result of speculative
scientific
Prometheanism, what effects
may it have in
the long-term?
Mary Shelley's use of the Promethean myth
opens up the way for future
imaginative-horror
writer, who will be inspired
by the scientific
possibilities of genetic
manipulation.
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- SCIENCE FICTION
The science theme which lies at the heart
of the novel makes Mary
Shelley a precursor
of the modern science fiction
genre.
This genre deals with the
impact scientific
discoveries and technological
progress may
have on mankind. On the
one hand science
is revered for the new
possibilities it offers
to the world, but on the
other such discoveries
can also have negative
effects on man and
lead to destruction and
death.
The technique of suspense
is used to increase
a feeling of anxiety and
expectation in the
reader .
Writers of the science
fiction genre encourage
the reader to look at science
from a critical
perspective which scientific
discoveries
present to mankind, considering
their advantages
and disadvantages for human
life and society.
The tone of such narrative
is very often
gloomy and alarmist.
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- BRAVE NEW WORLD by ALDOUS HUXLEY
Written in 1932 this anti-utopian novel is
set in an imaginary future
dominated by science
and technology. In the
novel  the stability of society is assured by genetic
manipulation of foetuses
in the incubation
stage. These are divided
into groups according
to the role each is to
have in society. They
range from Alphas (future
intellectuals)
to Epsilons (the lowest
manual workers).
From birth each group is
conditioned in neo-Pavlovian
conditioning rooms. In
this society there
is no place left for emotions
and passions
or desires. All that is
connected with human
passion is suppressed:
art, philosophy, literature
and institution like marriage
and the family
have been abolished; sex
being encouraged
only as a physical attraction.
Everything
is controlled by the World
Controllers whose
task is to remove all the
sources of unhappiness
even through the administration
of a hallucinogenic
drug called "soma".
Neverthless in this perfect society where
men are forced to be happy,
there is a sort
of dissatisfaction in two
characters belonging
to the highest grade of
society, they both
are "Alpha-plus":
Bernard Marx
and Helmholtz Watson. One
day Bernard and
one of his sexual partners
Lenina Crowne
decide to visit an Indian
Reservation in
New Mexico where life is
still normal and
people feel emotions and
desires, fall in
love and generation and
birth are natural.
They bring a Savage, John, back with them.
John is at first attracted
and fascinated
by the new world but he
soon revolts against
the total lack of freedom
and passion claiming
the right of men to feel
even pain and sorrow.
His conduct leads Bernard and Helmholtz to
question their society
and they find out
that the values they had
previously accepted
as the best ones now appear
artificial. They
are considered rebels and
are exiled after
they are summoned before
Mustapha Mond, the
Resident World Controller
for Western Europe.
John is kept for scientific experiments.
He falls in love with Lenina
but is incapable
to accept her popularity
as sex partner,
her free love, he runs
away and seeks refuge
in a lighthouse where he
is continually disturbed
by TV reporters and curious
people. He becomes
a victim of the perfect
society controlled
by scientific experiments
and finally commits
suicide.
Dystopian Novels
Writers like A. Huxley started to oppose
Utopian novels written
in the past which
were centred on the celebration
of science
and technology. They saw
technological progress
of modern society as a
threat to man. The
result in literature was
the production of
anti-utopian or dystopian
novels where they
describe imaginary places
in the future which,
instead of being ideal,
become nightmarish.
They represent warnings
to men in order to
obtain the effect of changing
human attitudes
to progress.
The most famous passage in Brave New World
is that in which babies
destined to become
manual workers are conditioned
to hate beautiful
things.
The emphasis given to the importance of feeling
emotions, even negative
ones like pain and
despair, is a means to
choose a "human"
life not a technological
one. John, in Huxley's
novel, struggles for freedom
also insisting
on the right of being unhappy.
Will our life become a
nightmare characterized
by clones and Frankenfood?
Will our life
be dominated by progress
which leads us to
ruin? Will it be a perfect
world ruled by
technology where there
is no room for feelings
just like the society described
in Brave
New World? Moreover, will
our society be
dominated by a Big Brother
who enters our
privacy? Has the era of
the Big Brother really
come? Are we prepared to
live a life controlled
day by day by real or virtual
spies who enter
our lives and our thoughts
as happens in
George Orwell's "Nineteen
Eighty-Four?
Is that the ideal society
progress will build?
What will our future be?
Is technology moving
too fast?
Nineteen Eighty-Four is another dystopian
novel which is about the
problem of destruction
of personal liberty.
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- NINETEEN EIGHTY-FOUR by GEORGE ORWELL
1984 is a story set in the future, the author
wrote it in 1948 reversing
the date and imagined
an anti-utopian life in
a  futuristic society as the result of a totalitarian
political system. Oceania,
one of the three
blocks which form the world,
is ruled by
a mysterious dictator called
Big Brother
who is not physically seen
but whose presence
pervades all the book and
the reader knows
him through big posters
under which we are
told there is a caption
in capital letters:
BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING
YOU. His eyes follow
every movement of the main
character, Winston
Smith. He does not even
have freedom of thought
since Big Brother conditions
all his ideas
and actions in accordance
with what the Party
needs and he is constantly
observed by telescreens,
even at night.
Winston tries to rebel but goes under conditioning
processes in which electric
current is used.
He is subjected to physical
and psychological
torture to lead him to
the confession of
his crimes. His job is
very representative
of the atmosphere in which
he is forced to
live. He is an employee
at the Records Department
of the Ministry of Truth
and has to change
old newspaper articles
according to what
the Party wants.
He keeps a secret diary which makes him guilty
of thought crime and together
with his girlfriend
he plans a revolution against
Big Brother
but eventually they are
betrayed by a member
of the Secret Service.
After being brainwashed
the two lovers denounce
each other and embrace
conformity appearing integrated
to the rule
of Big Brother. At the
end of the book Winston
is realised but he is not
the same, he does
not seem human any more
and he has only a
few memories of his past.
The author felt
that dictatorship was a
threat for future
societies and a danger
for individual psychological
freedom because it could
manipulate people's
mind.
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