Module a Hsc English Essay

Despite the contextual disparity, both Mary Shelley’s novel Frankenstein and Ridley Scott’s film Blade Runner reflect parallel values associated with humanity, scientific moderation and nature. While Frankenstein cautions against the ramifications that arise from transgressing the boundaries/values of societal norms, Blade Runner extrapolates these concerns forward, exploring a futuristic world where the forewarned social consequences of scientific advancement and corporate abuse are already commonplace.
Both Shelley and Scott scrutinise the importance of humanity’s sense of morality from the perspectives of their relative social and historical contexts. Induced by the American War of Independence, Shelley criticises a stratified society scarce of moral instruction. In Frankenstein the birth of the Creature alludes to The Creation of Man, the Creature reaching for Victor’s embrace, inversely mimicking God reaching out to Adam. Instead, Victor’s rejection of the Creature parallels God’s banishment of Lucifer, ‘the fallen angel’. Victor’s attitude is reactionary and domineering as he ostracises the Creature and employs diabolic epithets towards him such as ‘daemon’, completely disregarding the value of responsibility prevalent in Shelley’s era. Contrastingly, the Creature’s equitable nature is portrayed through his employment of logos, ‘Do your duty towards me, and I will do mine towards you’ and is quintessentially humanized as he utilises biblical parallelism of Paradise Lost: ‘I ought to be thy Adam, but I am rather the fallen angel’ Here, the Creature’s rational lexis is juxtaposed with Victor’s insect imagery “Begone! Vile insect”, whereby the Creature’s developed sense of morality in comparison to Victor’s tyrannical behaviour reflects Shelley’s concerns of morally deficient humans and by extension; Shelley berates the use of oppression as a means of governance.
Indeed the values of humanity in Blade Runner and Frankenstein are similar at first, but Scott...