M. Shelley's "Frankenstein" and N. Hawthorne's "The Birthmark"

Frankenstein's desire to help others, however, is in the form of scientific study on how to defeat stopping point. At first he reads alchemists such(prenominal) as Agrippa, Paracelsus, and Magnus in an strive to maintain where life came from and how defeat to death (26). Upon entrance to university, however, he soon begins studying current modern sciences, such as chemistry, and so begins his obsession with science which he refers to as "enounced to disgrace me" (Shelley 33). So, Frankenstein understands that the path he chose, instead of chip ining the light of knowledge to the world, has actu altogethery worked to destroy him and those he loves.

In "The Birthmark," Hawthorne writes that Alymer "devoted himself . . . alike unreservedly to scientific studies" (Hawthorne in McMichael 725). Besides being rigorously scientific, however, Alymer has also devoted himself to studying alchemy, as Frankenstein did, even to claiming to set out the Elixir of Life (Hawthorne in McMichael 731). Yet, while both characters endeavored to disc everyplace ways to control constitution and to gain control over life and death, only Frankenstein truly started out with that arrogant trust and end in mind.

For Victor Frankenstein, his obsession truly begins with his mother's death and his desire to discover where life practises from and to be able to bring people back from the dead, or reanimate them (Shelley 36). Upon discovering that this may be possible, instead of teasing t

Alymer, on the other hand, has the seed of his destruction in his scientific look at for perfection. He cannot accept his wife's birthmark or imperfection, although in all other ways she is beautiful and perfect. In becoming haunt with it, he make's Georgiana uncomfortable with it as well (when previously she had not thought about it) and so they decide to work on getting rid of it (Hawthorne in McMicheal 728).

While his intentions are obedient on the surface, however, his real issue seems to be with his driving guide to perfect the "imperfections" of nature, which is another type of arrogance (Hawthorne in McMichael 728). connatural to Frankenstein, his need drives him to accomplish his task to the excision of all else, without questioning the ethics of what he is doing. Yet, ultimately, he continues to strive for his wife's happiness as well as his own desire to over come a scientific challenge and fix an imperfection, so that in a way, his conceit in striving to control nature is not as great as Frankenstein's.

Hawthorne, Nathaniel. "The Birthmark" in the Concise Anthology of American Literature. Fourth Edition. George McMichael, editor. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall. 1998.

Shelley, Mary. Frankenstein Or, The Modern Prometheus. New York, NY: Signet Classic. 2000.

he ethics of such a move, Frankenstein devotes all his energies to the creation of life, or to playing God, to the exclusion of everything else, including family (39).

Lyons, John O. The College Novel in America. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press. 196
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