Dangerous Knowledge in Frankenstein by Mary Shelley

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Frankenstein is a book written by Mary Shelley in 1818, that is revolved around a under privileged scientist named Victor Frankenstein who manages to create a unnatural human-like being. The story was written when Shelley was in her late teen age years, and was published when she was just twenty years old. Frankenstein is filled with several different elements of the Gothic and Romantic Movement of British literature, and is considered to be one of the earliest forms of science fiction. Frankenstein is a very complicated and complex story that challenges different ethics and morals on the apparent theme of dangerous knowledge. With the mysterious experiment that Dr. Victor Frankenstein conducted, Shelly causes her reader to ultimately ask…show more content…
Pg. 62). The letters with in the preface tell the story of Walton and his sister, and reveals that both he and his sister both put themselves in harm’s way simply to be the first to gain knowledge. The novel shows that sometimes the actions you take do not necessarily give you the outcomes that you want. This is shown in chapter four when Dr. Frankenstein was first conducing his experiment and becomes extremely obsessed with the lust to create life. Dr. Frankenstein ultimately removes all of his personal relationships and isolates himself from people who care about him. “For this I had deprived myself of rest and health. I had desired it with an ardor that far exceeded moderation; but now that I had finished, the beauty of the dream vanished, and breathless horror and disgust filled my heart.”(Chapter 5, pg. 42) It is clear that Dr. Frankenstein dislikes the monster he just created and notices that he does not make something that is beautiful but more on something that’s is monstrous. Increasingly, Shelly makes a point by giving the reader a sort of “warning” on the aspect of wanting knowledge too much She makes the effort by making Dr. Frankenstein a example for the magnitude of gaining dangerous knowledge. “A flash of lightning illuminated the object and
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