Prose context NLMG and Frankenstein

Pieces of context for both NLMG and Frankenstein. Context linked with quotations from each text.

When was NLMG written

2005

When was Frankenstein written?

1818

What was society uneasy about during the industrial revolution?

When Frankenstein was written, they were uneasy about ‘playing God’ with reanimation experiments conducted by people such as Luigi Galvani.

“How dangerous is the acquirement of knowledge”

What did cloning debates in the late 90s and early 2000s create fears about?

After Dolly the Sheep in 1996 and other advances in biotechnology there were modern fears about ethics lagging behind the science.

What kind of writer is Shelley and how does that influence of the novel?

• Shelley is a Romantic writer - values emotion, nature and the sublime over science.

• Victor represents knowledge taken too far - warning about the progression of science.

• “I seemed to have lost all soul or sensation but for this one pursuit”

• “an artist occupied by his favourite employment”

What concerns about dehumanisation does Shelley present?

• Draws on Enlightenment debates (questions the reason by which humans understand the universe and improve their own condition).

• fears of scientific reductionism - by reducing life to mere matter.

• I had selected his features as beautiful”

What fears about dehumanisation does Ishiguro present?

• reflects more late 20th-century concerns about people becoming commodified - designer babies - creates larger socio-economic divide (rich can afford it and other’s cannot).

• “modelled from trash”

What concerns about scientific progress vs moral progress does Shelley present?

Shelley acknowledges that scientific progress does not equal moral progress

“Your lives are set out for you”

“you’ll start to donate your vital organs”

What concerns about ethics and utility does Ishiguro present?

• Ishiguro engages with utilitarian ethics with the use of clones and donors in society.

• Clones allow the extension of ‘normal’ human lives.

What questions about the role of the creator does Shelley present?

• Shelley was influenced by Milton’s paradise lost - presenting Victor as a failed God and the Creature as the devil.

• raises questions about moral responsibility for creation - is Victor responsible for the death of Elizabeth and Justine etc?

“I ought to be thy Adam, but I am rather the fallen angel”

“gnashing of teeth”

What questions about the role of the creator does Ishiguro present?

• the scientists and creators themselves are absent from the story.

• the responsibility is diffused across different institutions (schools, hospitals etc) - no individual is ever held accountable.

• “None of you will go to America, none of you will be film stars”

What happened to Shelley between 1815-1819 and how does this show in the novel?

Shelley lost three out of the four children she gave birth to in this time.

In the novel, the period over which Walton sends the letters is nine months and the Creature’s first victim, William, shares the name with her son who was still alive in 1816 when the story was thought up.

Who was Shelley’s father and what impact did he have on her?

William Godwin was a prominent political theorist and encouraged Shelley to read widely.

that would include Godwin’s own novel ‘The Adventures of Caleb Williams’ which was published in 1794. It was about the psychological struggle between a young man and his aristocratic enemy - perhaps reflecting the relationship between the Creature and Frankenstein.