THE PROBLEM OF CHOICE AND MORAL RESPONSIBILITY IN M. SHELLEY’S NOVEL «FRANKENSTEIN»

Abstract

Scientific discoveries strengthen a person's faith in own strength and ability to create. Writers of different eras and in a different creative manner – from fantastic to satirical and revealing – addressed the human desire to change nature. In this article, we will touch on the problem of creating a person in M. Shelley's Gothic novel "Frankenstein", which is an example of a Gothic horror novel, but is rather underestimated from the point of view of the philosophical issues of moral responsibility and the choice of a life path and position, as well as the problem of responsibility. In the creative method of M. Shelley, we trace the synthesis between the romantic-gothic appeal to the nature of human fear and the ethical and philosophical postulates of the Enlightenment. The latter consist in raising the issue of human happiness. The monster created by the scientist has an extraordinary potential that cannot be realized due to the stereotyped thinking of human society. The writer admires the scientific enthusiasm of the character, respects his desire to improve a human and the world, but emphasizes the untimeliness of such experiments. The author pays attention to the illegality of human intervention into natural processes, proving the power of nature and its ability to restore and revive after abuse, dripping the creator with the hands of his creation. The main character on M.Shelley’s novel became almost archetypal image of the personification of horror, however, according to the writer’s idea, it is not the character which is horrifying and ugly, but the experiment that brought him to life. In the process of analyzing the situations in which the main character finds himself, we found out that he is on the fringes of the universe, raising the question of the feasibility of his own birth. The study of these characteristic facts is the main goal of the study, as a result of which we come to a conclusion: the author emphasizes the illegality of human intervention in the laws of nature, which leads to a dramatic resolution.