Frankenstein

Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1818) uses the audacious fantasy of science overstepping God to tear away humanity’s arrogant mask of “creation” and “control.” The young scientist Victor Frankenstein cobbles together a corpse, breathes life into it, and then flees in horror at the monster’s grotesque appearance, abandoning his “creation” to descend into loneliness and hatred as a vengeful being. The core conflict lies in “the creator’s dereliction of duty”: Victor is intoxicated by the ecstasy of creation but refuses to bear ethical responsibility. The monster’s violence is essentially a projection of the trauma of abandonment—longing for love and acceptance, it is彻底异化 (completely alienated) by its deviation from the “human standard” of appearance. Wrapped in a Gothic thriller’s eerie shell, the novel deeply interrogates scientific ethics, the duality of human nature, and social prejudice: When technology crosses moral boundaries, are humans prepared to face the consequences of “losing control”? The monster’s final journey to self-destruction in the Arctic is both a控诉 (accusation) of its fate and a tragic footnote to the loneliness of existence. As a forerunner of science fiction literature, the book presciently anticipates modern issues like technological ethics and identity politics. Its compassion and reflection on the “other” remain profoundly relevant today: How we treat “imperfect creations” may well be the touchstone of civilization.