Mary Shelly evokes a great question: Is knowledge power? and can that knowledge be dangerous? When Victor creates the monster, Shelly demonstrates the relationship between the creator and the created:“I collected the instruments of life around me that I might infuse a spark of being into the lifeless thing that lay at my feet”(45), and the dangerous consequences of misused knowledge. In this, Victor Frankenstein "played God" through the use of his knowledge and desire to go beyond as he makes it clear that "he did not want to feed his desire for discovering with something that had already satisfied so many others”(29). His desire to gain knowledge drives him to discover more, which will always be a never ending process when dealing with science. Victor's desire becomes an obsession and the obsession resulted in him creating the monster. This is something that is different in the other stories we have read. For example in Candide, his obsession comes to a contempt, yet Victor goes on to build a continuous obsession. Victor soon finds that knowledge can be quite dangerous because once you obtain knowledge, it may cause misery. This also ties back to Candide, who finds his own happiness in cultivating his garden, while exploration may cause pain and despair.
I can agree with you on your argument on the fact that yes knowledge can be power. In the book Frankenstein by Mary Shelley, Victor stats “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” (31). This quote would be a great supportive detail on how power knowledge would be for some people in the world of today and even back then. Most people take advantage of knowledge, but back then in that time frame knowledge was everything that they needed to be able to survive. For someone as in Victor, to create such a monster likes Frankenstein, had a great deal of knowledge that he took for granted.
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