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Slaughterhouse Five & Frankenstein

Both Shelley and Vonnegut create stories that explore ultimate human consequences of humanity's attachment to progress and technology. Frankenstein is profoundly personal inasmuch as Shelley personalizes the consequence of human technological expertise; a monster is bound to result. Slaughterhouse Five, although it focuses on the highly idiosyncratic life of Billy Pilgrim, illustrates the depersonalization or indeed dehumanization of the most personal of human experience. In both novels, a philosophy of technology is implicit, but in each novel there is evidence of a deeply felt moral philosophy as well.

How the differences in vision come about can be explained partly by the difference in prevailing world views of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. But what Shelley and Vonnegut share is an uneasiness with the notion of progress. The heroic adventure of the ancient Prometheus is one thing; the adventure of the modern Prometheus is quite another, and what it is is not heroic. For Shelley, the Enlightenment notion of the perfectibility of man, and the popularity of the view that the world can be improved by scientific progress is attached to the universal law of unintended consequences. Shelley's story demonstrates consequence of scientific action that leads to emotional and psychological isolation on the part of human beings connected with it. In seeking to create life, Victor seeks to play God by way of science, even though he is slightly disgusted by the corpse that he intends to animate. More important, however, is that the creative intent backfires. One could say Victor discovers, like a god, perhaps, that it's lonely at the top, and that playing god has unintended consequences for human beings. The monster is the most obviously isolated figure in the book, despite his ability to communicate, particularly when he demands that Victor create a mate for him. But beyond a certain point even Victor will not go:

"You must crea...

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Slaughterhouse Five & Frankenstein. (1969, December 31). In LotsofEssays.com. Retrieved 19:53, March 28, 2024, from https://www.lotsofessays.com/viewpaper/1703109.html