In her novel "Frankenstein," Mary Shelley asks her audience to consider the limits to which we can expand the category of human nature, and if her creature might be best understood as "human". The implication here is that the creature should have the same rights that humans have. Victor Frankenstein manages to create his own humanoid creation vastly superior to the average man, and throughout the novel, struggles on whether or not to identify the creature as human, or keep his original thoughts of it being a regretful disgrace to the world, due to the demon-like actions that the creature commits. Shelley leaves the situation for her readers to analyze and decide whether or not this creature should be considered human. As Diana Reese states in her article, "A Troubled Legacy: Mary Shelley's Frankenstein and the Inheritance of Human Rights," "Shelley's monster moves across the shifting terrain of his own indetermination at "superhuman speed"; traversing the slash between man/citizen, reasoner/human, general/individual will in ways that pose a delicate challenge to the work of reason in Enlightenment projects for a new authorization of law" (Reese 49). Reese explains that Shelley's monster challenges the definition of a human, and he thus causes the world to reconsider what it takes to make the categorization of humans. In this paper I build upon Reese's arguments in order to suggest that Frankenstein's creature is technically human and that he deserves the same rights that humans have. By analyzing the creature's body, learning capacity, emotional capacity, and self-awareness I reveal evidence that explains why the creature is best recognized and understood as human. .
The first aspect of the creature to examine is its body, which requires Victor countless hours of study to create in the first place. Victor questions the principle of the cause of life, and realizes that, "to examine the causes of life, we must first have recourse to death.
Humans have within their grasp the ability and technology to create life. ... The liberal perspective sets cloning in the context of rights, freedoms and personal empowerment. ... Frankenstein admits that the different accidents of life are not so changeable as the feelings of human nature. . . . ... Frankenstein. ... Frankenstein. ...
In the 1931 edition of Frankenstein, written by James Whale, Frankenstein portrayed the monster as 'cruel' and oblivious, as a creation, which detained no clasp of feelings felt by human, and controlled no human potentials. ... Without a doubt, Frankenstein goes through discomfort just as much as humans do. ... I say this because it contracts quicker with its moods, and offers him with additional qualities that are more human-like. ... These arrogations usually take apart the monstrous creature through his human-like potentials, converting it to a model of a monstrous figure that Fr...
Frankenstein is defined as a Gothic novel through the many Gothic aspects it features. ... The setting of Frankenstein is a strong part of what makes the novel Gothic. ... Frankenstein's creature is a wondering figure who seeks for acceptance. ... Through murdering his human victims, the creature shows that he has the potential to cast diasters of catastrophic proportion to mankind. ... "Victor is so consumed with the possibility of creating a human life that he does not stop to consider the morality of such an action". ...
She wrote Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus by the time she was 19. ... She was the daughter of two great intellectual rebels of the 1790's and her mother wrote A Vindication of the Rights of Woman. ... From Walton to Victor Frankenstein to Frankenstein's monster. ... This gives a quick feeling to the book, but also a very deep sense of understanding, much like the human train of thought when under pressure. ... This theme is still evident in modern literature today, a perfect example is the matrix: humans got the knowledge they had been after and created AI, the ...
Frankenstein's experiments. ... Only after the process is perfected and psychological damage to the subject is minimized, Frankenstein will once again work on human subjects begin. ... First there would need to be great debate about rights for these re-animated beings. Would the new 'race' be entitled to the same rights as man brought into this would naturally? ... We have agreed to grant Victor Frankenstein funds to perform his research on non-human subjects in relative secrecy. ...
Imagine if you could clone a human just like in those "Sci-Fi" movies. ... Human cloning is expected to be put into practice soon. ... ""You"d have to be crazy not to see the bad results they've had in animals," Randolfe Wicker, founder of the Clone Rights United Front, a group in New York City that promotes human cloning says. ... A human is likely to be cloned, and soon. ... But should human cloning be feared as the next Frankenstein's monster of genetic engineering (Colvin 39), or should it just simply be used for another technical device that people could use and take advanta...
Manufacturing human bodies for spare parts? ... Frankenstein. ... The scientists will simply clone an organ and replace the faulty one in the human. ... Once again the rights of the clones come up and the thought of clone farms seem to be ridiculous. ... We would be killing innocent human lives in the process as well. ...
The prospect of mass production of human beings, compromised in their individually, identity, and self-image outweighs whatever benefits could come out of human cloning. ... Cloning is threatening these qualities and rights of what it means to be an individual. ... Human cloning would break all of these if we began this process. To me, human cloning is something not to be taken lightly. We should learn from Dolly and what might happen in the future and not pursue such a Frankenstein-like idea of mass production of human beings. ...
