I want to make it very clear, in case my Prof. stumbles upon this site, that I wrote this for his class: Sci-Fi 3D03 at McMaster University. This assignment focuses on a work by George levine which can be found here: http://www.english.upenn.edu/Projects/knarf/Articles/levine3.html
George Levine’s analysis of Frankenstein reaches the conclusion that Mary Shelley’s Magnus Opus is a boundary work of fiction. Frankenstein, he claims, “embodies characteristically a simultaneous awe and reverence toward greatness of ambition, and fear and distrust of those who act on such ambition….where the manner itself seems to reject the possibility of greatness and the explicit subject is frequently the evil of aspiring to it….”[1] We have examined Frankenstein as marking the emergence of science fiction. I would assert that it marks the transition from renaissance to enlightenment values, and that Science Fiction is a result of this transition to the values of the Age of Reason. Levine’s focus is the means by which life is created, and in our analysis of science fiction we have seen a steady movement from crude forms of animation towards more fully developed fictional life forms. Where Victor creates life by almost necromantic means and thus the act of creation seems impure, later narratives will focus not on the act, but the result of creating a sentient being. It is this shift in focus from critiquing the creator, to analyzing the creation which marks Frankenstein as a work beyond the normal fantasy realm. Narratives in sci-fi will also become increasingly sympathetic to the creation’s cause which is a definite element of Frankenstein. A focus on the ethics of creating life is a theme which will not leave science fiction, but it is a theme from the renaissance era, a conflict created when man plays at being God. The focus on the feelings, the actions and the intelligence of the creation is an enlightenment consideration. The question used to be: should we create life? Now it is: yes we can create life; what does that imply?
[1]George Levine, “Frankenstien and the Tradition of Realism,” accessed July 5, 2011 http://www.english.upenn.edu/Projects/knarf/Articles/levine3.html
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