ShmoopTube

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We speak student!

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This guy means business.

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Frankenstein a la Shmoop

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What's Shelley's take on

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scientific and technological advancements?

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It's pretty easy to just read Frankenstein and be like,

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"Oh! Anti-science."

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- Prometheus. - Exactly.

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I mean, that's the subtitle of the book.

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But it's kind of like,

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"Oh, hey, yeah. This guy tried to use science to create life

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and it failed miserably and everyone died."

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Okay. But, you know, I would say that Frankenstein

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isn't really a completely anti-science creed at its core.

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Clearly, Mary Shelley's living in a time

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of scientific advancement.

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She saw the benefits of it.

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But I think what we're seeing isn't this knee-jerk reaction against it,

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but more that nagging feeling

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that comes to us.

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We get that feeling now

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with all the crazy technological advancements.

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You know, that like [ hesitant sound ].

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Is this everyone being on their iPhone all the time

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gonna come back to bite us?

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Are robots going to take over the world?

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We have this nagging feeling of

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yeah, we love the Internet.

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We couldn't survive without all these technological advancements.

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But there is that nagging feeling of, you know --

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- Chernobyl. - Yeah, exactly.

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Exactly. Something terrible's about to happen.

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So I would say it's kind of more of a balance in that,

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where she's kind of saying,

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"It's not necessarily bad, but we have to, you know,

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we have to remember that there is the chance

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that it is gonna turn out badly."

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What arguments suggest Shelley was anti-science?

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What arguments suggest Shelley was pro-science?

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[ horror film echoing effect ]

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