The Science of Destruction

The book Frankenstein so far has been focused on science. We can see Victor's obsession with understanding and learning everything he can about life and death. After he is creation of the monster we are forced to ask ourselves if we have gone too far. By creating this monster has he done something that cannot be retracted and will lead to unimaginable horrors.

We have made this mistake before in the exploration of science and the creation of explosives. During World War 2 we created and dropped the first dirty bomb. The Japanese Minister of War pushed for the soldiers to continue fighting, but the Emperor of Japan overruled him saying that Americans have used the first "Cruel Bomb." In a video on youtube by Vsauce he describes how horrible atomic weapons are.

According to the pop culture idea of Frankenstein the monster, Adam, is considered a thoughtless killing machine that just terrorizes villages and attacks everyone it meets. This story was written long before the first "cruel bomb" and obviously before WWII, but Frankenstein seems to be their version of the ultimate weapon. Both of these abominations were created in pursuit of pure science, but they ended up causing massive damage. From what we've read so far we can see that the monster is nothing like what we have all seen from the movies, but it may have been adapted to be like that as a commentary on how science can not be separated from what it creates. It can be seen that Dr. Frankenstein is just trying to pursue the creation of life, and not making a monster, but that is what results. The scientists leading the project on the Atomic Bomb were just creating a way to produce large quantities of energy, but it ended up being turned into a weapon. Just because the scientific work was done for the sole purpose of scientific exploration it's consequences cannot be excused.