Blog Post #4: Connecting Frankenstein to Robots

In my previous blog post I wanted to attempt to connect Frankenstein to robots. I promise this will make sense in the end.

In every movie about robots taking over the world there is always a violent bloody battle of the humans vs the robots. We see this battle in films such as Blade Runner that are based upon removing all of replicants. Typically the robots have much greater capabilities that the humans do. The usually have greater strength, intelligence, and agility. In these movies we usually see that it is a small amount of robots against an entire army of humans. In the beginning of these movies the robot is very good at the job it is designed to do. It functions properly and gives the creator no trouble at all.

Frankenstein was created to be a life made from no life. Mary Shelley depicts this creature to be massive around over 7 feet tall. He has super strength that is capable of doing serious damage. In the beginning the book the creature is grateful to his creator.

See the resemblances yet? The robots in the movies only begin to revolt when they realize that they are different and can never be human. The see that they are capable of different things that humans are and they notice that they lack things humans only have. Frankenstein begins to destroy Victor's family by killing everyone he loves. He kills in order to hurt Victor because he believes that Victor made him so that no one would be capable of loving him.

I also made a connection to how R.U.R ends and how Frankenstein starts. In R.U.R, Alquist is the only human left and is forced to work all alone to assist the robots in finding a way to create more of them. In the beginning of Frankenstein, Victor is found alone at sea. He was alone in the hunt for the creature until he was picked up by a ship. I thought that this was a cool opposition. Alquist the only human left is alone in the end of the story but Victor is all alone in the beginning of the story.

A common theme that we can use to connect Frankenstein and Robots are that we as humans are obsessed with creating life ourselves. Frankenstein is creating life out of the dead. The creature was made of dead organisms whereas robots are made from technology. Both require technology to create them though. Humans want to badly to say that they have created life.

I think that this is a good point I can use in my paper in order to evaluate what distinguishes humans from the creations. I think that this could be a great outside source as well. Mary Shelley's Frankenstein is a common reading in high school and we read it my senior year. I really enjoyed the book. Frankenstein can relate to many debatable topics in the field of science. Artificial life is making its way whether we want it to or not.