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Frankenstein frames moral dilemma for science
The Oregonian SCIENCE Thursday, June 18, 1987
By Sharon Schuman
 To
most of us the work "Frankenstein" conjures up the villian
from a grade B movie, or perhaps a rubber mask from Halloween.
The monster has been reduced to his most dramatic feature
-- the zipper scar -- and by now we see in him more comedy
than horror.
If this process of editing out the truly horrific aspects
of the tale -- in fact, for instance, that Frankenstein is
the scientist, not the monster (who has no name) -- we have
been pleasantly satisfied with our version, which has so effectively
rendered terror safe.
Perhaps it is to restore the real horror to the legend that
I recommend turning back to the original novel written in
1816 by a precocious 19-year-old, Mary Shelley.
This daughter of famous parents, and wife of a soon-to-be-even-more-famous
husband, set out to write a tale that would "speak to the
mysterious fears of our nature." There she was in Switzerland
with Byron and Shelley, and the incessant raining had driven
them indoors where they passed the hours by each writing a
"ghost story."
To stimulate each other's imaginations they speculated about
frightening subjects' including the prospects for discovering
the "principle of life." Here the conversation turned to Darwin,
who would not publish his "Origin of Species" for almost 50
years, but who already had developed a strange reputation.
He was said to have "preserved a piece of vermicelli in a
glass case till by sole extraordinary means it began to move
with voluntary motion." This rumor (live spaghetti?) led Mary
Shelley to imagine a creature manufactured out of "component
parts" and "endued with vital warmth."
Hence the genesis of her famous story, a tale that should
hold even greater terror for us, who have witnessed the birth
of genetic engineering, organ transplants and nuclear destruction,
than it did for her l9th century readers. We who have come
to expect organ transplants as almost routine medicine should
be most receptive to a tale about a creature who is, as it
were, the "total" transplant.
More, though. The creator, young Dr. Frankenstein, is all
we would want him to be: a good boy from a fine, loving home,
and an adept learner. His first great lesson involves the
difference between ancient and modern scientists. While the
former "promised impossibilities and performed nothing," the
latter "promise very little" yet "have indeed performed miracles,"
acquiring "new and almost unlimited powers." Frankenstein
enters into this fraternity and succeeds in unfolding the
mysteries of creation.
This is a Godlike power he has uncovered, and the novel's
fascination therefore comes only partly from the portrayal
of the 8-foot monster. Rather, it is in her portrait of the
scientist, especially as he reacts to his own creation, that
Shelley excels.
Look, for instance, at Frankenstein as he witnesses the moment
of birth. After working so obsessively that for nearly two
years he has shunned all companionship (scientists, take note),
Frankenstein finally succeeds in his project.
But while he has chosen each component of the creature for
its excellence and beauty, the whole turns out to be far more
and far less than the sum of its parts: more, because it turns
out to be stronger and more intelligent than any mere human;
less, because the beautiful individual features, lustrous
hair and white teeth add up to a monstrosity. The exhausted
and terrified creator rushes out of the room, lapses into
a fitful sleep, then flees the house.
Here we see, to put it mildly, a scientist failing to take
responsibility for the consequences of his labors. The poor
monster, abandoned by his creator, is left to recapitulate
the story of Adam, but without God, and without Eden, which
is one of the novel's more interesting twists (a mini-dissertation
on the capacity of love to become hate, for Adam to become
Satan.)
Meanwhile, Frankenstein enters a long period of denial shattered
only by the death of his little brother, the monster's first
victim. Confronted unequivocally with the destructive power
implicit in his creation from the beginning, Frankenstein
must decide what to do. Thus we confront the story's second
great moral moment -- when the scientist decided not to create
an Eve for his Adam.
The monster makes an eloquent argument. He asks, "Am I not
alone, miserably alone?" and promises to disappear forever
into the wilderness of South America if Frankenstein will
only create for him a mate. "Make me happy," he argues, "and
I shall again be virtuous."
Moved by the justice of this plea, and also extorted by
the threat of future violence, the scientist agrees to create
an Eve. But he also has misgivings, procrastinates and considers
the potential consequences of this second moment of creation.
What if the female turns out to be more malignant than the
male? What if she refuses to comply with "a compact made before
her creation"? What if they wind up hating each other?
"The creature who already lived loathed his own deformity,
and might not he conceive a greater abhorrence for it when
she came before his eyes in the female form? She also might
turn with disgust from him to the superior beauty of man;
she might quit him, and he be again alone, exasperated by
the fresh provocation of being deserted by one of his own
species."
Or, worst of all, what if they had children, "a race of devils
.. .who might make the very existence of the species of man
a condition precarious and full of terror."
Trembling in these speculations, the scientist, halfway through
the task of assembling and joining the parts that are to become
the female, tears "to pieces the thing on which I was engaged."
Here the scientist-God aborts Eve as Adam looks on.
In this harrowing version of Genesis, we see just how unequal
man is to the responsibilities of God, and just how intense
is the despair that issues from the void left behind when
scientific ambition shatters on the altar of its own success.
It's not clear which is greater: the despair of the scientist,
who cannot undo what he has done, or the despair of the monster,
who cannot unbe what he is. But his portrait of despair -
not the image of the zipper-scar - is what makes the novel
a tale of horror.
Lest this message should escape us, the story itself is framed
as a tale told by Frankenstein to a young explorer as obsessed
as the scientist once was by the desire to penetrate God's
secrets and achieve what man has never achieved, in this case
a northwest passage through the polar ice. On this quest the
explorer pauses to rescue Frankenstein from a crumbling shelf
of ice just as the scientist collapses near the end of his
pursuit of the escaping monster.
As the captain listens to the scientist's tale, his ship
becomes trapped in the ice, and he is forced to consider turning
back once the ice breaks up. Unlike Frankenstein, he relinquishes
his quest, sacrificing ambition, curiosity and immortality
for the survival of self and crew.
Shelley framed hey tale in this manner so that we would not
fail to ponder the larger implications other story. Without
the framing tale, we might be tempted to see the novel as
about the potential abuses of transplant surgery.
We might be tempted to seek medical solutions for the monster's
medical problems. Cannot plastic surgery erase the zipper
scar? Cannot modern psychotherapy give us a monster who learns
to feel good about himself? Can't the people around him become
more sensitive to his special needs?
Posing questions like these, we might miss Shelley's point
altogether - that this is not a story about a creature. It
is about the scientist who can neither predict nor control
the consequences of his discoveries, who can neither resist
nor abandon his vocation. Shelley's polar explorer could turn
back toward the warmer waters of his homeland, and, by analogy,
perhaps all present scientific quests could be abandoned.
But this would not alter the fact that the monster has escaped
onto the ice, that - to dwell on one contemporary scientific
fact only - the atom has been smashed, and "the very existence
of man" has become "a condition precarious and full of terror."
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