Sanitarium

Perfection…will man ever reach such a level of living?  Or is that a level for God alone?  Everyday man is not content with himself, always trying to be better, will man ever be the best, or only get better?  For many millions of years, man has been trying to create man…whether it be machine, or in Victor Frankenstein’s case, man himself.  In all 4 stories, The Birthmark, The Monkey’s Paw, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, and Frankenstein, man tries to do what God does.  In The Birthmark, Aylmer wished to remove the small flaw in his wife’s appearance, her mole, in The Rime, the Mariner kills one of God’s creatures, and in Frankenstein Victor creates life!

The Rime of the Ancient Mariner and Frankenstein are both tales of life and death. In Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein, Victor Frankenstein is playing a role similar to that of a god.  He creates life, “So much has been done, exclaimed the soul of Frankenstein—more, far more, will I achieve; treading in the steps already marked, I will pioneer a new way, explore unknown powers, and unfold to the world the deepest mysteries of creation.”  On the contrary, in Coleridge’s Rime of the Ancient Mariner, the Mariner takes the life of the Albatross, “I shot the Albatross.”  After Victor creates the monster, he becomes afraid, and runs away.  That in itself shows imperfection.  In perfection, man would fear nothing.  The creature is left on its own, knowing nothing of the world, therefore doing what it must to survive.  Because of this Victor’s entire family is killed, first William, then Justine is executed as the murderer, then Elizabeth is killed, the grief kills Alphonse (his father), and finally the stress ends up killing Victor himself.  Similarly, after the Mariner kills the Albatross, bad fortune befalls the Mariner.  His entire crew is killed; he becomes stranded, and is unable to die.  By these examples, each author is trying to show that man neither has the right to create or take away life.  Man’s role in nature is to do as God has willed him to do.  These are also good examples of man being imperfect, in that perfection would have lead them to better consequences rather than miserable lives.

Compared to The Birthmark, there are multiple similarities in the characteristics of the two scientists.  They both show massive amounts of hubris throughout the stories.  Neither listening to anyone else, nor caring that the consequences of their actions are have dire affects on their families’ lives.  In Frankenstein, Victor lost his entire family, and Aylmer lost his wife due to his perception that he was perfect, therefore she needed to be perfect.  Their arrogance allows them to believe that they are perfect, and know all.  “Doubt not my powers.” –Aylmer (The Birthmark).

Another similarity is that neither scientist, nor the Mariner knew what their actions would cause.  They looked only at the immediate rewards.  The Mariner did not think that killing the Albatross would cause any misfortune, but rather good fortune.  Victor thought that by creating life, he would become a renowned and great scientist, but he did not know that his creature would destroy his entire family, and slowly, kill him.  Similarly, Aylmer did not know that by trying to remove the “hateful mark” he would end up killing his wife.  These are such consequences of actions that are not to be done by man.

Another similarity in the two stories is much gender bias.  In the Birthmark, Aylmer looks at his wife, Georgiana as an experiment to see if he can get rid of her “hateful mark” because his hubris lead him to perceive her as his which needed to be perfect.  In The Rime, there was no gender bias due to the fact that there were no women.  But this still showed that men are still weak and imperfect.  In Frankenstein the gender bias was when Elizabeth was given as a gift to Victor, “until death, was to be [his] only.”  Also, when Felix rescued the Turk’s life from execution in France, his [Felix] reward was the man’s daughter in marriage.  This shows that women were thought of as possessions to be given by their fathers to any man that wanted her.  In today’s world there are still many cultures which require that the father give the daughter their consent to marry a certain person.  Also, it wasn’t until a few decades ago that that even women couldn’t vote. 

As mentioned above, The Rime did not have any gender bias, Coleridge’s purpose was to point out that man’s eagerness to be always right, and their perception that what they do is right, is the flaw.  The Mariner thought that by killing the beast, good fortune would befall them, “I had killed the bird that brought the fog and mist.”  Followed by “T was sad as sad could be:” everything went haywire.  Coleridge is just going to show that because of man’s undoubted belief in themselves they would be willing to do something to jeopardize the lives of not only themselves, but also anyone around them.  Another difference that The Rime has from both The Birthmark and Frankenstein is that the other two stories are about creating, or perfecting life, whereas The Rime is about destroying it.  The Mariner’s consequences are that he is cursed to live alone on the open sea with a massive beast [The Albatross] around his neck, “The Albatross about my neck was hung.”

The greed of man to be perfect is one of the many flaws of man.  As these stories go to show, that to be perfect man will do nearly anything, whether it be to kill one’s own wife to find something out, create a monster that will nearly destroy man to prove to people that one is great, or if it be killing an animal because one doesn’t like it.  All of these are actions only God is permitted to take.  Perfection is not to be attained by man, but only by God.  This could be because man does not know what the future holds, therefore will only look to see an immediate reward.

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