Distorted humanity in isolation

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“Do you understand this feeling? This breeze, which has travelled from the regions towards which I am advancing… Inspirited by this wind of promise, my daydreams become more fervent and vivid… we may be wafted to a land surpassing in wonders and in beauty every region.” In a letter to his sister, Walton describes his feelings of intoxication of wonder and discovery through getting closer to his desire. “I shall satiate my ardent curiosity with the slight of a part of the world never before visited, and may tread a land never before imprinted by the foot of man. These are my enticements, and they are sufficient to conquer all fear or danger or death.” He describes his curiosity as a hunger to distinguish himself as a pioneer, and how this drive gives him the confidence to go through even the scariest of emotions, as if conquering his humanity. “These visions faded when I pursued for the first time, those poets whose effusions entranced my soul, and lifted it to heaven… I imagined I might also obtain a niche in the temple where the names of Homer and Shakespeare are consecrated. You are well acquainted with my failure, and how heavily I bare the disappointment.” He resolves to failure and describes what drove him as alluring, that the ideas of distinguishing himself are what drove him. This text shows the imbalance between the acquisition of knowledge and the grounded in family.

Frankenstein’s voice and ideas were developed as a result of isolation loss and grief, he like Walton hungered to change something about the world. “For when I would account to myself for the birth of that passion, which afterwards ruled my destiny, I find it arise like a mountain river, from ignoble and almost forgotten sources; but swelling as it proceeded, it became the torrent which in its course, has swept away all my hopes and joy.” With the beginnings of his consuming washed over him in a way that he was not ready for. He said, “I was required to exchange chimeras of boundless grandeur for realities of little work.” “I believed myself totally unfitted for the company of strangers … I ardently desired the acquisition of knowledge … longed to enter the world, and take my station among other human beings” Here is where Frankenstein states his idea of himself as isolated and describes himself as an outlier to nature. “I paid no visit to Geneva, but was engaged, heart and soul, in the pursuit of some discoveries … none but those who have experienced them can conceive the enticements of science.” Parallels are drawn to Waltons first experience with discovery thought Frankenstein thinks his power godly. “I was required to exchange chimeras of boundless grandeur for realities of little worth” He feels inadequate about the boundaries of knowledge and of life and death. “My attention was fixed upon every object the most insupportable to the delicacy of human feelings. I saw how the form of man was degraded and wasted … I became myself capable of bestowing animation upon lifeless matter… I wished, as it was, to procrastinate all that related to my feeling if affection until the great object, which swallowed up every habit of my nature should be completed.” Through the separation of love and companionship in the creation, an absence and distortion is present in it. Frankenstein warns “I will not lead you on, unguarded and ardent as then I was, to your destruction and infallible misery. Learn from me … how dangerous is the acquisition of knowledge, and how much happier that man is who believes his native town to be the world? than he who aspires to become greater than his nature will allow.”

Through the stories of desire and discovery in Walton and Frankenstein, Shelley brings to light the types of ideas humans have in isolation in the absence of love, and possibly humanity. This depiction reminds me of Lex Luthor, how his perspective on what is morally correct is distorted by his need to know and be the controller of this knowledge. If in love and humanity should people push the bounds, Does this presence provide a care that would better facilitate and make “right” Franken steins creation?

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