“A maid accidentally pulled the countess’ hair while combing it; Countess Elizabeth Bathory instinctively slapped the girl on the ear, but so hard she drew blood. The servant girl’s blood spurted onto Elizabeth’s hands...the countess noticed that as the blood dried, her own skin seemed to take the whiteness and the youthful quality of the young girl’s skin.” (Rodrigues 15).
Elizabeth Bathory is known by many different names; ‘The Bloody Lady of Čachtice’, ‘The Blood Countess’, ‘Countess Dracula’, and not without reason. In the 16th century this murderess became obsessed with achieving mastery over nature; the countess had forsaken her humanity by drinking the blood of virgins for vitality and bleeding them dry to bathe in it for her skin to be clear of imperfections and signs of aging. Often the vain become delusioned that beauty and youth preserves the body forever, when in fact, life can just as easily be ripped away young than it is when old. With torture and a side of cannibalism, Countess Bathory was not the poster-woman for mental health, but her fear of death was what drove her to go to such extremes. Humans will go to endless lengths to maintain the illusion of mastery over nature and control over life and death. Throughout Oryx and Crake, Margaret Atwood explores human nature and puts forth that humans are driven by knowledge and fear of their own mortality. She argues that humans seek to play a divine role to control their own fate and in the process, sacrificing morals and ethics to quell that fear.
Bathory abandoned her morals and humanity in search of her own human advancement; five centuries later much has changed, but a lack of ethics is still prominent— notably in the field of science. In Oryx and Crak...
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...vels, "my principal design was to inform you, and not to amuse you,". The book is designed for the reader to understand that the negative consequences in the search for ultimate power and control which far outweigh the gains. Immortality and divine control may comfort the instinctual and primal fear of death, but it will do far greater harm than good. By trying to defy nature, nature will inevitably regain control; everything is temporary and nothing was meant to outlast time and space itself.
Works Cited
Atwood, Margaret. Oryx and Crake: A Novel. New York: Nan A. Talese, 2003. Print.
Das Neves Rodrigues, Aldo César. The Worst People In History. N.p.: n.p., n.d. Google Books. Google, 2012. Web. 15 Feb. 2014.
Smith, Wesley J. "The Trouble with Transhumanism." The Center for Bioethics and Culture RSS. N.p., n.d. Web. 24 Feb. 2014.
“How could it feel so good when it should be disgusting and painful?” (Butler 75) These words spoken by Theodora, an elderly white woman, about her symbiotic and sometimes sexual relationship with Shori, a black “elfin little girl” (Butler 75), express the societal fear that Octavia Butler exposes in her characterization of Shori as a monster. Shori is a monster because her very existence is a testament to the blurring of historically concrete lines. She is androgynous, vampire and human, black and white, a child with adult strength and urges. Shori’s relationship with her human symbionts and other Ina usually defies normal standards of behavior and acceptance by using pleasure instead of pain as a mechanism of control and abandoning traditional ideas about gender, sexuality, and crossbreeding.
It is in these representations of Snowman that I believe Atwood is making a definitive statement as to whether God created man or whether man creates God. Undoubtedly Atwood is suggesting that man inevitably, despite of himself, creates God, with or without outside assistance.
In society, the significance of social status and role is observable with both genders. This includes the acceptable behaviors and responsibilities for both men and women within one’s culture. It is a constant struggle to follow these established guidelines in order to preserve a good reputation and not possess a low social status. In Bram Stoker’s novel, Dracula, the different characters each represent a different stand in the transformation from “True Woman” to the “New Woman” that surfaced in the late nineteenth century. This new idea made women more independent, with their lives no longer revolving around their husbands, and most importantly created a big change in social expectations. The characters Lucy, Mina, and the three brides of Dracula play a part in revealing Stoker’s belief that social status is changed for the worse with this change in women’s roles.
Sandel addresses these views that us as humans have come to acknowledge as our own through bioethical debate. “We live in a world today where ‘science moves faster than moral understanding,’(Lewens)”
...cs and New Genetics” the ways that Factor X and human dignity spreads throughout society in the future show that it is the moral responsibility of society to continue to show others respect and dignity. Through the use of the pieces, “Human Dignity and Human Reproductive Cloning” by Steven Malby, “Genetic Testing and Its Implications: Human Genetics Researchers Grapple with Ethical Issues” by Isaac Rabino, and “Gender Differences in the Perception of Genetic Engineering Applied to Human Reproduction”,by Carol L. Napolitano and Oladele A. Ogunseitan, the decline on the amount of human dignity found in today's society as well as the regression in Factor X that can be found today compared to times past and how the increase in genetic engineering has greater caused for even more hurdles, for the spread of human dignity and Factor X to all members of society, to overcome.
‘Dracula’ is a novel that probes deeply into people’s superstitions, fears and beliefs of the supernatural. The creature Dracula is an evil being with no concern for others, he kills for his own ends and cannot be stopped, and this is what makes ‘Dracula’ truly frightening.
Rifkin, Jeremy. "The Ultimate Therapy: Commercial Eugenics on the Eve of the Biotech Century." Writing and Reading Across the Curriculum. 7th ed. Ed.
In her journal, Mina recounts that there was “undoubtedly something, long and black, bending over the half-reclining white figure." Mina sees Lucy at the climax of Dracula's attack, and when she calls for Lucy, "something raised a head, and from where I was I could see a white face and red, gleaming eyes.” Unknown to Mina, the figure bending over Lucy is Count Dracula, and his attack on Lucy, in Victorian culture, is sexual assault. Stoker plays with the underlying sexual theme by positioning Lucy reclined on the seat with Dracula bending over her as he "penetrates" her neck with his teeth. Even the bite marks on Lucy’s neck serve as a sexual innuendo of a virgin’s first sexual encounter: Lucy escapes into the night and bleeds after a man penetrates her.
Steven Pinker lays the foundation for his book by highlighting three main philosophies that permeate society’s view of humanity and their historical context: The Blank Slate (empiricism), the Noble Savage (romanticism), and the Ghost in the Machine (dualism) (2002, p. 11). Pinker is correct to challenge previous philosophical frameworks as they skew the way scientific research has been conducted. Present-day scientific and social research will only benefit from an acknowledgement of innate human nature.
As we draw towards others and follow them and their way we lose our own way and part of ourselves in the process. The Queen of the Damned is Anne Rice’s third book in The Vampire Chronicles series. In the beginning it’s all about a group of present-day immortal vampires struggles to save the mortal humans from the first vampire Akasha. She devilishly plans to enslave mankind and destroy all men on earth in order to stop wars and promote peace. She decides to save one male Lestat and his friends and that’s when the nightmare really begins. Horror is a state of mind caused by the confrontation of living or dying. In Queen of the Damned horror is demonstrated in Akasha killings and vampire resurrections.
Darkness is a main element in gothic literature. In Dracula, the darkness is projected on everything including characters and even the events that take place are all under a blanket of darkness. The presence of darkness is a relation to evil and corruption. In the novel, darkness projects itself on people, places and things and often takes form in a dark, shadowy figure, the weather and even on to time, as i...
Many people are capable of making their own decisions and sometimes these include ethical choices. This is an idea that contains making a rational decision between what is right and wrong. Most people struggle with making the right decision to get the intended, desired outcome. It is a choice that centers on personal conscience. One may know the right choice by instinct, but there are times in which people have to think about the outcome and challenge their morals. In the novel, The Devil and Miss Prym a young girl Chantal finds herself in a tough situation when a stranger visits town and offers her a choice to break her morals and steal, or give the opportunity to the village to murder for money. She tells the village and they decide to kill the eldest, Chantal stands up to them and eventually the decision is made not to murder and the stranger is forced to admit that people are neither good or evil, they are simply human. A film that also faces decisions is Sophie’s Choice where a young mother is sent
“Dracula, in one aspect, is a novel about the types of Victorian women and the representation of them in Victorian English society” (Humphrey). Through Mina, Lucy and the daughters of Dracula, Stoker symbolizes three different types of woman: the pure, the tempted and the impure. “Although Mina and Lucy possess similar qualities there is striking difference between the two” (Humphrey). Mina is the ideal 19th century Victorian woman; she is chaste, loyal and intelligent. On the other hand, Lucy’s ideal Victorian characteristics began to fade as she transformed from human to vampire and eventually those characteristics disappeared altogether. Lucy no longer embodied the Victorian woman and instead, “the swe...
In this novel, Shelley focuses on the debate between scientific discoveries, religion and the moral ethics of how far man should pursue his desire for knowledge, which reflects the society of the 19th century’s concern of where the scientific advancements were going similarly to the present day debate on whether stem cell research is valid.
...iences and thoughts. The novel concludes with the poignant truth humans often try to ignore – that time and aging are inexorable and that the answers to life will most probably never be known to any of us while on earth.