Author: L. M. Sacasas

A Thought About Thinking

~ L. M. Sacasas ~ 2 Comments

Several posts in the last few months have touched on the idea of thinking, mostly with reference to the work of Hannah Arendt. “Thinking what we are doing” was a recurring theme in her writing, and it could very easily serve as a slogan, along with the line from McLuhan below the blog’s title, for what I am trying to do here.

Thinking, though, is one of those things that we do naturally, or so we believe, so it is therefore one of those things for which we have a hard time imagining an alternative mode. Let me try putting that another way. The more “natural” a fact about the world seems to us, the harder it is for us to imagine that it could be otherwise. What’s more, thinking about our own thinking is a dynamic best captured by trying to imagine jumping over our own shadow, although, finally, not impossible in the same way.

We all think, if by “thinking” we simply mean our stream of consciousness, our unending internal monologue. But, having thoughts does not necessarily equal thinking. That’s neither a terribly profound observation nor a controversial one. But what, then, does constitute thinking?

Here’s one line of thought in partial response. It’s tempting to associate thinking with “problem solving.” Thinking in these cases takes as its point of departure some problem that needs to be solved. Our thinking then sets out to understand the problem, perhaps by identifying its causes, before proceeding to propose solutions, solutions which usually involve the weighing of pros and cons.

This is the sort of thinking that we tend to prize, and for obvious reasons. When there are problems, we want solutions. We might call this sort of thinking technocratic thinking, or thinking on the model of engineering. By calling it this I don’t intend to disparage it. We need this sort of thinking, no doubt. But if this is the only sort of thinking we do, then we’ve impoverished the category.

But what’s the alternative?

The technocratic mode of thinking makes the assumption that all problems have solutions and all questions have answers. Or, what’s worse, that the only problems worth thinking about are those we can solve and the only questions worth asking are those that we can definitively answer. The corollary temptation is that we begin to look at life merely as a series of problems in search of a solution. We might call this the engineered life.

All of this further assumes that thinking itself is not inherently valuable; it is valuable only as a means to an end: in this case, either the solution or the answer.

We need, instead, to insist on the value of thinking as an end in itself. We might make a start by distinguishing between questions we answer and questions we live with–that is, questions we may never fully answer, but whose contemplation enriches our lives. We may further distinguish between problems we solve and problems we simply inhabit as a condition of being human.

This needs to be further elaborated, but I’ll leave that to your own thinking. I’ll also leave you with another line that has meant a lot to me over the years. It’s taken from a poem by Wendell Berry:

“We live the given life, not the planned.”

Reading Frankenstein: Chapters 7 and 8

~ L. M. Sacasas ~ 1 Comment

Earlier posts in this series: Walton’s Letters, Chapters 1 & 2, Chapters 3 & 4, Chapter 5, Chapter 6. 

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“Man has, as it were, become a kind of prosthetic god,” Freud famously observed. But, he was quick to add, “When he puts on all his auxiliary organs he is truly magnificent; but those organs have not grown on to him and they still give him much trouble at times.” Writing in 1968, Edmund Leach appealed to the same rhetorical trope, only with a bit more confidence and panache: “Men have become like gods. Isn’t it about time that we understood our divinity? Science offers us total mastery over our environment and over our destiny, yet instead of rejoicing we feel deeply afraid. Why should this be? How might these fears be resolved?” Leach’s comments inspired the opening line of Stewart Brand’s Whole Earth Catalog: “We are as gods and might as well get good at it.”

Mary Shelley’s genius lay in vividly materializing, in the form of the Creature, the anxieties that must always attend such aims and aspirations. Whenever mortals fancy themselves gods, Frankenstein’s Creature lurks in the shadows, troubling all such fantasies.

In chapter seven, the doom that has been so frequently foreshadowed finally begins to unfold. The chapter opens with yet another letter, this one from Frankenstein’s father reporting that William, the youngest and most idealized of the Frankenstein children, has been murdered. Frankenstein is devastated, and he immediately departs for Geneva after a six year absence. As he approaches the city, he revels in the grandeur of the Swiss Alps and the surrounding lakes, but even this sublime experience of nature cannot disperse his apprehension.

When he arrives, he finds the city gates locked, so he decides to pass the night in a nearby village. Unable to sleep, he wanders through the night and is caught in a lightning storm that ominously illuminates the surrounding mountain peaks. Then one of the flashes reveals to him the outline of an unmistakeable figure, “the wretch, the filthy daemon.” It had been two years since he’d last seen it, but immediately Frankenstein is convinced that his Creature was responsible for his brother’s murder.

At this juncture, Frankenstein considers once again whether or not he ought to tell his story, but he dissuades himself. He is sure that he would not be taken seriously and would only succeed in casting himself as a raving maniac. Even if he was believed, who could succeed in capturing the creature of preternatural strength and agility (another aspect of the Creature that the films always get wrong). He had after all just witnessed the Creature scaling the “perpendicular ascent of Mont Salêve.” So he convinces himself to keep silent as he approaches his father’s home.

Upon his arrival, he is greeted by his brother Ernest who informs him that the murderer has been apprehended. Frankenstein is stunned to learn that Justine Moritz, the Frankenstein’s faithful servant and friend, has been charged with the murder and is soon to stand trial. Twice he protests that it cannot be and alludes to some knowledge of the murderer’s identity, but his claim seems not to register and, when he learns that compelling evidence has been presented against Justine, he convinces himself once more to remain silent. “My tale was not one to announce publicly,” since no one, he conveniently assures himself, would believe him. Elizabeth is the only one with the courage to insist publicly on Justine’s innocence, even in the face of evidence to the contrary.

It is in the eighth chapter that we begin to perceive the depth of Frankenstein’s craven self-interest. Perhaps that is putting it too strongly, but his own deeds convict him. He sits through the trial and says not a word. Only Elizabeth takes the stand in Justine’s defense. He claims again and again to be wracked by guilt for William’s death and Justine’s plight. He even goes so far as to say to Walton (remember the framing) that he would have confessed to the murder himself rather than see Justine found guilty if only his known whereabouts in Ingolstadt had not rendered such a claim conveniently implausible. What he does not do is reveal the Creature’s existence.

If we are tempted to take his rationalizations at face value, his claim to be suffering more than Justine should convince us otherwise. “The tortures of the accused,” he insists with a straight face, “did not equal mine.” Such is the claim of a deeply self-absorbed man, one who is still suffering from blinding hubris. For the remainder of the chapter he goes on and on insufferably about his own despair and tribulation, even as he accompanies Elizabeth to visit Justine in prison on the eve of her execution.

It’s worth noting that Justine had admitted to making a false confession under pressure from her confessor. In explaining to Elizabeth why she had done so, she says that her confessor “threatened and menaced, until I almost began to think that I was the monster that he said I was.” This is the first time monster is used in reference to someone other than Frankenstein’s Creature, and it leads us to ask who, indeed, is the true monster in this story.

While Frankenstein watches on, Elizabeth commiserates with Justine. “I wish that I were to die with you,” she declares, “I cannot live in this world of misery.” Elizabeth here sounds a note that will become ever more pronounced, particularly in the Creature’s narrative: Frankenstein is just one instantiation of the tragedy at the core of human civilization. She and Justine have been let down by the institutions of justice and by their would-be advocates, especially Frankenstein, who had it in his power to save Justine. But he does not act.

“On the morrow,” Frankenstein informs Walton, “Justine died.” A rather too convenient use of the passive voice. The chapter closes with a melodramatic prophetic soliloquy from Frankenstein delivered in the third person and addressed, in absentia, to his family.

It’s not insignificant that this portion of the story features the lives of two women undone by Frankenstein’s recklessness and self-serving cowardice. In his discussion of Frankenstein in Forbidden Knowledge: From Prometheus to Pornography, literary critic Roger Shattuck recalls the circumstances of Shelley’s life:

“[William Godwin] hardly knew how to take care of his daughter. She knew her mother, Mary Wollstonecraft, who died in childbirth, only by the stories of her dedication to feminism, revolutionary causes, and friends in need. Percy Bysshe Shelley, the stereotype of the Romantic poet, carried Mary off at seventeen to the Continent without marrying her, to live for a time in the irregular household of another Romantic poet, Lord Byron. Surrounded by illegitimate births and infant deaths, they subsisted on high ideals to remake the world through liberation and revolution. The men in the group were intent upon achieving glory through their genius; other concerns must not stand in their way.”

Further on, he adds of Frankenstein and the Creature, “The battle to which these awful adversaries commit themselves is the struggle for glory, the driving male condition that inspired Mary Shelley to write the book in horror and in protest.”

“The resolute moral stance of Frankenstein about observing our human limits can be seen now as exceptional,” Shattuck observes. In comparing Frankenstein to Goethe’s Faust, he writes, “The Romantics often did not seek harsh judgment of their scoundrel heroes. Apparently, it took a woman to inventory the destruction caused by the quest for knowledge and glory carried to excess ….”

Mary Shelley is often given credit for inventing Science Fiction with her writing of Frankenstein. I’d suggest as well that she be credited with composing the first work of tech criticism, and she does so, in part, because of her experience as one clear-sighted woman among men of genius in search of glory. It was her genius to anticipate how such a pursuit would play out not in the realm of letters, but in the increasingly potent realm of technology. Perhaps, then, we might also dub Mary Shelley the first woman in tech.

Reading Frankenstein: Chapter 6

~ L. M. Sacasas ~ Leave a comment

Earlier posts in this series: Walton’s Letters, Chapters 1 & 2, Chapters 3 & 4, Chapter 5. 

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Last month, in the Guardian’s “My Hero” series, Neil Gaiman chose to write about Mary Shelley. His brief reflections open by recalling the circumstances that led to the writing of Frankenstein: “The cold, wet summer of 1816, a night of ghost stories and a challenge allowed a young woman to delineate the darkness, and give us a way of looking at the world.” He concludes as follows:

“The glittering promise of science, offering life and miracles, and the nameless creature in the shadows, monster and miracle all in one, back from the dead, needing knowledge and love but able, in the end, only to destroy … it was Mary Shelley’s gift to us, and we would be infinitely poorer without it.”

I like this idea of the nameless creature as Shelley’s gift to us. But what exactly is the nature of this gift? I would suggest that what Shelley has bequeathed to us is nothing less than the gift of thought. The creature is, as I see it, what some have called an object to think with, only it is an object of the imagination. It materializes, in our mind’s eye, the power conferred upon us by our knowledge, and it does so that we might think about what we can do.

At the end of her Introduction to Evocative Objects: Things We Think With, Sherry Turkle writes,

“Once we see life through the cyborg prism, becoming one with a machine is reduced to a technical problem of finding the right operating system to make it (that is, us) run smoothly. When we live with implanted chips, we will be on a different footing in our relationships with computers. When we share other people’s tissue and genetic material, we will be on a different footing with the bodies of others. Our theories tell us stories about the objects of our lives. As we begin to live with objects that challenge the boundaries between the born and created and between humans and everything else, we will need to tell ourselves different stories.”

It seems to me that, given the realities Turkle anticipates, Frankenstein is exactly the story we need. It helps us think about what we make, but primarily by helping us think about ourselves. The creature in this story is nothing if not a mirror on which we might see ourselves. Of course, so too is Frankenstein.

The sixth chapter of Shelley’s novel opens with a letter from Elizabeth. It’s worth noting, briefly, the multiple layers of narration at this point in the story. Ostensibly, we are reading Elizabeth’s words to Frankenstein relayed by Frankenstein to Walton, who is in turn relaying them to his sister, Margaret. It’s easy to lose sight of this, but keeping this framework in mind, I think, is key to interpreting Frankenstein’s self-representation. It helps us sustain a healthy suspicion of Frankenstein’s framing of the events and, by extension, to also cast a critical eye on the rationalizations and justifications we offer for our own actions and motives.

Elizabeth’s letter functions chiefly to supply details that will render subsequent events more meaningful. We learn more, for instance, about the other Frankenstein siblings, the older Ernest and the younger William. We learn as well about Justine Moritz, a longstanding household servant in the Frankenstein household, who was beloved by all of the family.

There’s a curious digression in Elizabeth’s rehearsal of Justine’s history in which she notes how the nature of Swiss political culture has “produced simpler and happier manners than those which prevail in the great monarchies that surround it.” This is to assure us of Justine’s place in the family: “A servant in Geneva,” we are assured, “does not mean the same thing as a servant in France and England. Justine, thus received in our family, learned the duties of a servant; a condition which, in our fortunate country, does not include the idea of ignorance, and a sacrifice of the dignity of a human being.”

Elizabeth goes on to speak glowingly of Ernest and, especially, of “little darling William.” All of this, of course, particularly in light of Frankenstein’s earlier claim to have lost everything, strikes us as preparation for a great tragedy.

The remainder of the chapter narrates Frankenstein’s continued recovery, which is sustained almost entirely by Henry Clerval’s loving attention. It was Clerval, Frankenstein tells us, who “called forth the better feelings of my heart; he again taught me to love the aspect of nature, and the cheerful faces of children.” Once again, well-being is presented as a kind of equilibrium between our urge to know and to do, on the one hand, and our acceptance of the world as a gift on the other. And, once again, this equilibrium is the product of friendship. Friendship is a kind of anchor that keeps us from sinking into the maelstrom of self-absorption, a victim of virtues which, unregulated, become our vices. Clerval’s particular influence on Frankenstein was twofold: he brought Frankenstein out of himself into the world, and he brought the liberal arts to bear on a scientific imagination.

But all is not well, of course. Once released into the world, our action does not simply dissipate into nothingness, whatever we might wish. The creature is still at large, and Frankenstein’s greater sin is his failure to accept responsibility for what he has made. This refusal of responsibility is reflected in the disgust Frankenstein had now developed toward his former passion: “I had conceived a violent antipathy even to the name of natural philosophy.” Just seeing the implements of his former work induced “the agony of my nervous symptoms.” While introducing Clerval to his professors, Frankenstein would become visibly agitated when they praised his talent and skill.

Shelley paints Frankenstein as a man who is racked by guilt but also unwilling to confront it. His “violent antipathy ” toward what he had previously pursued with obsessive zeal suggests profound shame and a deep desire to burry and repress his transgression. More worrisome still is his decision to keep knowledge of the creature secret, even from Clerval. It’s more than a little ironic that the man who would rip open nature’s secrets now carefully guards his own.

Nothing good follows from Frankenstein’s refusal of responsibility, only an accumulation of disasters. The question this leaves us with is this: What would it mean for us to accept responsibility for what we make and for what we do with what is made for us? Makers and users both, it seems that we are, like Frankenstein, hell-bent on refusing responsibility for what we do with the technologies that have been furnished for us. It would seem, in fact, that the general tendency of our making is to create conditions that undermine the possibility of either thoughtfulness or responsibility. Shelley’s story, however, her gift to us, provokes our thinking and may even rekindle our sense of moral responsibility.

Reading Frankenstein: Chapter 5

~ L. M. Sacasas ~ 4 Comments

Earlier posts in this series: Walton’s Letters, Chapters 1 & 2, Chapters 3 & 4. 

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In kindly plugging this series of posts on Twitter, Matt Thomas noted of Frankenstein that it was “still the scariest story ever, because it’s us.” That’s well put. It becomes more apparent as the story progresses, but Shelley persistently invites us to contemplate the monstrosity that is endemic to human nature. I’m not sure that this aspect of the story survives in most of the modern re-tellings of the story, re-tellings that continue to get churned-out at an impressive clip.

Daniel Radcliffe, who will be starring as Igor in a film version due out next October, recently suggested, to the producer’s dismay apparently, that the film should be marketed with the the following tag line, “If you loved the book, you’ll hate the movie.” This was his way of getting at the fact that this was an edgier, more modern rendering of the storyline. The Radcliffe project apparently focuses on the relationship between Igor and Frankenstein. Of course, I’m tempted to think that the edgy thing to do might be to produce a film that was, in fact, more faithful to the novel.

Relatedly, I’d like to know, if any of you could supply the answer, when the Igor character gets inserted into the Frankenstein mythos. In the cultural imagination, Igor is always a part of the story, but he is non-existent in Shelley’s novel. According to IMDB, the earliest instance of the character in film was in 1939 when he was played by Bela Lugosi in The Son of Frankenstein, which was part of the Boris Karloff Frankenstein franchise.

In any case, popular interest in Frankenstein is obviously alive and well. Along with the forthcoming film starring Radcliffe, there’s this year’s I, Frankenstein, another fanciful story in which the Monster, named Adam, becomes embroiled in an age-old battle between angels and demons. A comment on the last post also alerted me to a London stage production of Frankenstein starring the ubiquitous Benedict Cumberbatch. It first ran in 2011 and, just a few days ago, began a third encore run.

Our monsters always tells us something about ourselves and the prevailing cultural zeitgeist. I wonder, then, what we might make of this apparent revival of the Frankenstein myth. Perhaps that’s a question we can return to after we wrap up these posts. Of course, if you have any insights on the matter, feel free to share them below. But now, back to the text, beginning with chapter five.

For all of the understandable cinematic focus on the moment of creation, it is narrated by Shelley almost in passing and in all of one small paragraph. And in the novel, lightning plays no role in the animation of the built corpse (although there was a nod to galvanism earlier in the story). All we are told is that Frankenstein gathered “the instruments of life” around himself so that he

“might infuse a spark of being into the lifeless thing that lay at my feet. It was already one in the morning; the rain pattered dismally against the panes, and my candle was nearly burnt out, when, by the glimmer of the half-extinguished light, I saw the dull yellow eye of the creature open; it breathed hard, and a convulsive motion agitated its limbs.”

But rather than rejoice at the realization of his life’s ambition, Frankenstein is immediately revolted by what he has made. The “creature” quickly becomes “the wretch.” He had carefully selected parts that would render his creation beautiful–“his hair was of a lustrous black, and flowing; his teeth of a pearly whiteness”–but these same features now served only to amplify the hideousness of the creature by contrast with his “watery eyes,” “shrivelled complexion,” and “straight black lips.”

The immediacy with which Frankenstein turns on the creature, whose creation had consumed nearly two years of fanatical effort, is stunning. It’s presented to us as a wholly visceral response, as if the grotesqueness was wholly a function of movement. When the body was inert, the hideousness was latent; once it was animated, hideousness was all that Frankenstein could perceive.

“Unable to endure the aspect of the being I had created,” he remembers, “I rushed out of the room, and continued a long time traversing my bedchamber, unable to compose my mind to sleep.”

So much of what follows hinges on this decisive moment, and yet it is so fleeting and thoughtless, by which mean devoid of reflection, strictly visceral (at least as Frankenstein tells it). It is, from one angle, an aesthetic response. This is interesting in light of the earlier characterizations of Victor, Elizabeth, and Henry Clerval. Characterizations that led me to suggest that the three represented the aspects of the soul in ancient Greek thought–Logos, Eros, and Thumos, respectively–and that Elizabeth’s influence seemed to be definitive.

I’d written that it was as if Shelley, contra Plato, had wanted us to see Eros and not Logos as the facet of the soul that best guides moral action. But perhaps I lost sight of the narrator’s voice. It is Victor, after all, who so characterized himself and his two friends. But Shelley’s way of framing the story through Walton’s account constantly invites us to consider whether we should read Victor’s narrative sympathetically or rather against the grain of Victor’s telling. Perhaps some combination of the two is the best approach.

In any case, it would seem that, if we are to hold Victor morally responsible for his abandonment of the creature, it was his aesthetic sense that led him astray. Although, having said that, perhaps we can understand Victor’s fault in a threefold manner that corresponds to Logos, Eros, and Thumos. It’s entirely possible that I’m pushing this framework beyond reasonable measure, but here is what I’m just now thinking. Victor’s faults are, first, the unhinged pursuit of the mysteries of life and the animation of the creature; second, the abandonment of the creature; and, lastly, his dogged determination to see the creature dead. Consider how these correspond to Logos, Eros, and Thumos. The first fault is an abuse of the virtue of reason. The second is grounded in an aesthetic reaction to ugliness. The last can be read as a misguided, perhaps even immoral, but “spirited” pursuit of justice. This suggests again Shelley’s tragic vision: the very faculties that constitute our humanity also produce our inhumanity.

There is, returning to the narrative, a certain implausibility to Frankenstein’s decision simply to return to his bedroom and try to sleep off the disaster, unless, of course, we read it as the irrationality brought about by shock. When he finally does fall asleep, he is plagued by macabre dreams in which he kisses Elizabeth’s lips only to see them take on the “hue of death” and have her suddenly turn into the corpse of his dead mother. He then wakes up terrified only to see “the wretch” pulling back the curtains of the bed and staring at him. He “muttered some inarticulate sounds, while a grin wrinkled his cheeks.” This is surely one of the more chilling sequences in the story.

Again, Frankenstein flees from his creation, and, again, it is due to the creature’s physical appearance: “I had gazed on him while unfinished; he was ugly then; but when those muscles and joints were rendered capable of motion, it became a thing such as even Dante could not have conceived.”

In the morning, he comes upon his dear friend, Henry Clerval, just as he disembarks from a carriage. Henry had finally convinced his merchant father to allow him to pursue a liberal arts education and he had come to study at Ingolstadt with Victor. Frankenstein is relieved at the sight of his friend, and Henry is overjoyed. Very quickly, however, it becomes obvious to Henry that not all is well with his friend. Frankenstein approaches his living quarters in fear, but the creature, or “my enemy” is he now refers to it, is nowhere to be found.

Shortly thereafter, Victor descends into a fit of hysteria, “I jumped over chairs, clapped my hands, and laughed aloud.” Henry is taken aback. Then Victor imagines that the creature can hear him. When Henry asks him what is wrong, Victor insists, “Do not ask me […] he can tell.–Oh, save me! save me!”

This was the beginning of a period of several months during which Henry nursed his friend back to good health. In recalling this period of time, Victor marks his progress by noting that he slowly began to take note of the beauty of external objects. He notes the beauties of the season once again and felt the “sentiments of joy and affection revive” within him.

The chapter ends with Clerval asking to speak to Victor “on one subject.” This unnerves Victor; he suspects Clerval will finally ask about the creature. But the one subject turns out to be Victor’s family. Henry thinks it’s time for Victor to write to his family. Victor is relieved and more than happy to comply. Then Henry hands him a letter from Elizabeth, and with that the chapter ends.

Reading Frankenstein: Chapters 3 and 4

~ L. M. Sacasas ~ 5 Comments

Earlier posts in this series: Walton’s Letters, Chapters 1 & 2. 

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At the end of chapter two, Victor Frankenstein, who is narrating his story to Walton, left us with an ominous note of impending doom: “Destiny was too potent, and her immutable laws had decreed my utter and terrible destruction.” Having had his early fascination with the medieval alchemists shattered, Victor found that he was more at ease and better able to enjoy his days. But as he notes forebodingly, this was not to last.

In the first two chapters Victor recounted not only his fascination with the alchemists and their quest to unlock the secrets of nature and uncover the mysteries of life; he also recalled his idyllic childhood. In chapter three, he tells Walton of the first tragedy that befalls him and disturbs his earthly paradise, the death of his mother. He introduces this part of his story by framing it as “an omen, as it were, of my future misery.”

These instances of rather heavy-handed foreshadowing, and they are quite frequent, might come off as more than a little melodramatic and perhaps a fault of Shelley’s, but remembering that this is the voice of Frankenstein as he is relating his story to Walton suggests to me that these instances of ominous foreshadowing and invocations of dark fate operate instead as half-conscious justifications of his actions. It seems to me, in other words, that while he rues the desolation that has followed his actions, Victor is rather more resentful than repentant.

In any case, he tells of his mother’s untimely death from scarlet fever. She contracted the disease by attending, against the counsel of her loved ones, to Elizabeth, who had first fallen ill. Elizabeth recovers; Victor’s mother does not. Of course, she dies in the same saintly fashion that she lived, cheerfully resigned and thinking of others even in her last moments. Her parting words to Victor and Elizabeth reveal her long-held desire to see the two married. Soon thereafter she “died calmly.”

His mother’s death had postponed Victor’s departure for the university of Ingolstadt, but, after an appropriate time of mourning, Victor prepares once again to leave. He makes his goodbyes to Henry, Elizabeth, and his father. Henry, we are told, “deeply felt the misfortune of being debarred from a liberal education” by a merchant father who saw little to be gained from it; however, he remained resolved “not to be chained to the miserable details of commerce.”

Upon arriving at Ingolstadt, Victor introduces himself to a professor of natural philosophy named M. Krempe. Krempe informs Victor that the time he devoted to studying the old alchemists had been entirely wasted. Victor, of course, already suspected as much. Krempe tells Victor that he needs to start from scratch with his scientific education and gives him the name of a series of books with which to do so.

But Victor is disenchanted. He was contemptuous of the “uses of modern natural philosophy.” “It was very different,” he explains, “when the masters of the science sought immortality and power; such views, although futile, were grand: but now the scene was changed.” And, in his view, obviously not for the better. The earlier unattainable but grand ambitions of the alchemists fired his imagination; the viable but mundane workings of contemporary science were like a wet blanket. “I was required to exchange chimeras of boundless grandeur,” he complains, “for realities of little worth.”

This is an interesting passage in light of contemporary debates about the state of technological innovation. Frankenstein’s laments faintly echo the Techno Stagnation Angst of critics like Peter Thiel. Like Frankenstein, Thiel and others like him worry that we’ve lost our ability to imagine and actualize grand technological projects. And they’re disappointed with what we have accomplished, like the Internet, say.

But Victor is not disappointed for long. He meets another professor at Ingolstadt, one M. Waldman, who, while an accomplished practitioner of modern science, is not nearly so dismissive of the old alchemists as Krempe had been. Victor attends one of Waldman’s lectures and hears him praise the achievements of modern science in a way that manages to rekindle Victor’s imagination. He speaks, in a lingo we would readily recognize, of the “miracles” of modern science: “They ascend into the heavens: they have discovered how the blood circulates, and the nature of the air we breathe. They have acquired new and almost unlimited powers; they can command the thunders of heaven, mimic the earthquake, and even mock the invisible world with its own shadows.”

This is enough to reawaken Frankenstein’s ambitions: “So much has been done … more, far more, will I achieve: treading in the steps already marked, I will pioneer a new way, explore unknown powers, and unfold to the world the deepest mysteries of creation.” Frankenstein went on to meet with Waldman, who was happy to have “gained a disciple” and furnished Victor with all the books he required. Thus the day ended–a day that “decided my future destiny,” Victor proclaims.

In chapter four, we learn that over the course of the next two years, Frankenstein made astonishing progress in the sciences owing to his obsessive work ethic, easily eclipsing his fellow students and matching his professors in knowledge and skill. During this time, we also learn, Waldman became a “true friend” to Frankenstein. But it is the obsessive nature of Frankenstein’s work that is the focus of this chapter. He was eager and ardent in the pursuit of knowledge and frequently greeted the dawn still hard at work in his laboratory.

For a brief moment he considers returning home to visit his friends, but as he approaches a particular breakthrough, he changes his mind and remains at Ingolstadt. The breakthrough involved the origins of the “principle of life.” In order to explore this mystery, Frankenstein delves into the macabre: “To examine the causes of life, we must first have recourse to death.” He makes a study of human decomposition and of the forces of decay, and, in the midst of that darkness, “a sudden light” broke upon him, “a light so brilliant and wondrous, yet so simple.”

Assuring Walton that these were not the recollections of a “madman,” he proclaims, “I became myself capable of bestowing animation upon lifeless matter.” But, of course, he will not reveal the nature of his discovery to Walton, even though, or especially because, he notices Walton’s eagerness, wonder, and hope. Instead, he reaffirms his call for Walton to take his experience as a cautionary tale: “Learn from me, if not by my precepts, at least by my example, how dangerous is the acquirement 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.”

Frankenstein goes on to tell Walton about how he decided to create a human body so that he might animate it and become the father of a new species. “Life and death appeared to me ideal bounds, which I should first break through … A new species would bless me as its creator and source; many happy and excellent natures would owe their being to me.” And, he adds, “I might, in process of time (although I now found it impossible) renew life where death had apparently devoted the body to corruption.” Frankenstein sought the powers of creation and resurrection, and once again he set to his task obsessively.

With “breathless eagerness,” he “pursued nature to her hiding places.” He goes on to describe his dabbling among graves, torturing living animals, collecting bones, disturbing the “secrets of the human frame,” and all of this in isolation. Seasons came and went and he did not mark their beauty. The same urgency which made him unresponsive to the natural world led him to forget his friends and family. Only with preemptive defensiveness did he consider how his father might chide him for not writing.

Recalling this time, Frankenstein concludes,

“A human being in perfection ought always to preserve a calm and peaceful mind, and never allow passion or a transitory desire to disturb his tranquillity. I do not think that the pursuit of knowledge is an exception to this rule. If the study to which you apply yourself has a tendency to weaken your affections, and to destroy your taste for those simple pleasures in which no alloy can possibly mix, then that study is certainly unlawful, that is to say, not befitting the human mind.”

Interestingly, Shelley has Frankenstein add to this advice the following consideration: “If this rule were always observed […] Greece had not been enslaved; Caesar would have spared his country; America would have been discovered more gradually; and the empires of Mexico and Peru had not been destroyed.” A reminder perhaps, that Shelley is after something more here than simply a critique of technology (to put it anachronistically). Shelley, I think, is articulating a tragic vision of civilization’s unfolding. But, as I’m reading her at this juncture in the story, she is also suggesting that the root of this tragedy is a fragmentation of our knowledge of the world (and perhaps especially our “know-how”), our political or moral sense, and our aesthetic sense. Frankenstein’s descent, after all, coincides with an increasing isolation from both a community of friendship wherein the moral sense might be sustained and an increasing alienation from the beauty of the world around him.

In the next chapter, the Monster is born and things get interesting.