Writing

As individuals both Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1818) and Ridley Scot’s film Blade Runner (1982) are portrayed to challenge the established values of their time. Personal glory was an established value during the eighteenth century in pursing ‘natural philosophy’ and secret knowledge. Ridley Scott challenges the value of the twentieth century audience of pursing scientific advancement for the purpose of commerce. In both texts, the creators Frankenstein and Tyrell epidermises the dire consequences of non responsibility that leads to dehumanisation due to the established values of their time.
In a time of great influence of Romanism, Mary Shelley depicts insubordination of Victor against the aspects of nature and God in Frankenstein to heighten the consequences. to heighten the dehumanisation and contrast between the creator and creation (biblical allusions). Frankenstein further searches for the secret knowledge, “pursed nature to her hiding places” and “disturbed… the tremendous secrets of the human frame”. Shelley personifies nature to reinforce it’s almost capability of godly characteristics, and therefore heightening the aberrant Frankenstein who ‘disturbed’ nature by pursing ‘the tremendous secrets’. The negative connotation of ‘disturbed’ and ‘tremendous’ highlights Frankenstein’s almost sinful character in pursing such knowledge for his own personal glory. “Wealth was an inferior object; but what glory would attend the discovery”. Shelley expands upon the consequence of disturbing such tremendous secret by causing burden and downfall upon Frankenstein by leaving him to experience the responsibility that is ‘tremendous’ and not capable of man and therefore leads to dehumanisation.   Contrast is evidently used between the creator and creation for Shelley’s readers to distinguish the dehumanising Frankenstein being irrational “My rage was without bounds…impelled by all the feelings which can arm one being against the existence of another”, compared to the...