Frankenstein essay

Katerine Gómez Alcayaga English Literature III April 12th, 2011

None but HIM, none but The One, none but The Almighty is able To Be. He said of himself: “I AM… I AM WHO I AM” thus not better said, no answer expected, from mankind, but humbleness. Let us bow down, let us raise our hands, let usrecognize: “Thou Are… just Thou are The Giver of life”.
Katerine Gómez Alcayaga

“YOU ARE WHO YOU ARE”


Mary Shelley wrote in the introduction of the first version of Frankenstein, in 1831: “I
saw the pale student of unhallowed arts kneeling beside the thing he had put together…
Frightful must it be; for supremely frightful would be the effect of any human endeavorto
mock the stupendous mechanism of the Creator of the world”1.
After reading Frankenstein novel, inevitably a question with deep implications appears
in our minds: Is man able to play God? Is man allowed to? Can man approach God, face to
Face, creator to Creator? If someone dared imagine some brilliant mind were able, after many
years of study and investigation, to create life, suchimagination would produce deep admiration
for the maker. This brilliant mind´s intellect would be considered as out of this world. But was
this what really happened to Victor? The one who reached the impossible? As Victor himself
confessed to Walton, little time before dying: “like the archangel who aspired to omnipotence,
I am chained in an eternal hell… I conceived the idea and executedthe creation of a man… but
how am I sunk!”(p´s 261,262). Why did the only one (human being) having fulfilled the coveted
achievement of producing life end in this condition? The best way to know it is making a
contrast between both creators: God and Victor, and both processes of creation: Mankind and
the monster.
The Christian Bible tells us in the Book of Genesis chapters 1 and2, the whole creation
process of heavens, earth and men. It starts (1:1,2): “In the beginning God created the heaven
and the earth… And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness…And God
said, Let there be light: and there was light”. God´s first deed of creation was
commanding existence of light. He did not make his work in darkness, contrasting to
Victor´s work, as told in thenovel: “The moon gazed on my midnight labours, while, with
unrelaxed and breathless eagerness, I pursued nature to her hiding-places.”(p.55). The Creator
worked illuminated by his own created sun, and the other creator worked just being gazed by
the moon, in obscurity and sought shadows.
In Genesis 1: 26 says: “And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our
likeness”, which impliesthat he was not isolated while creating men. Even though, being God
Almighty Himself, he did not alienate from the Two Others Equal to Him. The Trinity was
present and worked together. In contrast to Victor´s isolation while doing his work: “The same
feelings which made me neglect the scenes around me caused me also to forget those friends
who were so many miles absent” (p´s 55-56) and:“Every night I was oppressed by a slow fever,
and I became nervous to a most painful degree… and I shunned my fellow-creatures as if I
had been guilty of a crime” (p.57).
It is also said in Genesis 2:7 “And the LORD God formed man [of] the dust of
the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living
soul”. God made use of his own created resources to formmen, made used of the same
dust he had ordered to exist. Not so Victor, who: “collected bones from charnel-
houses; and disturbed, with profane fingers, the tremendous secrets of the human frame” (p.55).
the creator stole material from the Creator, that was the only way he could accomplish his
enterprise.
The greatest contrast is made the very first day Adam and the monster were...