Victor Frankenstein: How Agriculture Has Changed The World

706 Words2 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: Impact of climate change on agriculture essay

Victor's creation is similar to one of man's most destructive yet advancing inventions, agriculture. When humans took advantage of agriculture 12,000 years ago, we instantly found a loophole in the Hunter and Gatherer lifestyle. That being said humans were able to permanently live in one area for the first time ever. This allowed for empires to rise, cities to be built, and technology to advance. It also allowed for our population to increase nearly exponentially straining the world's resources. Our human advancement of agriculture had drastically changed the world, mostly negative aspects. Like Victor Frankenstein, we are eager for the sensation of power that technology gave us and we were to egotistic to have the foresight of the ramifications …show more content…

An article from Journal of Anthropological Research 56 by David Kaplan talks about this more “Hunter-gatherers do have to work for a living, and they occasionally encounter periods of want when their efforts yield little, but on the whole it would seem that even the hardest possible life for a hunter-gatherer compares favorably to the most leisured life one can expect in the world’s most wealthy industrial­ized societies.”(Kaplan) Modern day humans are constantly indoors, working endlessly, and stressed. Similar to the how the creature ruins Frankenstein life after taking everything he loves away, leaving him a lost and unhappy man; agriculture also took away our relative happiness into lives of constant stress and …show more content…

Our monster, agriculture, has spread and advanced much like how Frankenstein describes the event if the creator reproduced “ … a race of devils would be propagated upon the earth who might make the very existence of the species of man a condition precarious and full of terror.”(122 Shelley) Our invention of the agriculture has left the environment endangered and it hurts the ones who supposedly were to benefit from it, humans. Yet we care very little about agriculture today, but it is crucial to our existence, but it also may to our demise. Our monster is so hideous that we the creators don’t even want to look at it, we choose to ignore or are oblivious to the problems of our creation. We foolishly lacked the foresight of imagining what the consequences of our creation could have on the

Show More
Related

  • Frankenstein Romanticism Essay

    1864 Words  | 4 Pages

    A new species would bless [him] as its creator and source, many happy and excellent natures would owe their being to [him]” (Shelley 55). Life and death are natural things, but Victor thinks that he can “break through” them and create life. He alone would be the person to “pour a torrent of light into their dark world,” as if he was God, ruling over all of the world. This shows Victor’s lack of respect towards life and how he intends to overcome the boundaries set by nature.

    Read More

  • Jared Diamond Human History

    637 Words  | 2 Pages

    Jared Diamond Argues that the worst mistake in Human History is the invention and widespread introduction of agriculture, because it has created a plethora of social, economic, and health problems for the word. One example of this is when the article states, “Hunter-Gatherers enjoyed a varied diet, while early farmers obtained most of their food from one or a few starchy crops. The farmers gained cheap calories at the cost of poor nutrition.” This illustrates that the author's main argument is that agriculture was the worst mistake in human history because it shows how agriculture has negatively impacted health of both early farmers and people today by creating mass produced bulk crops that are low in nutrition. Furthermore, another example

    Read More

  • The Effects Of Industrial Farming By Bill Mckibben And Blake Hurst

    887 Words  | 2 Pages

    On the topic of environmental impacts due to “industrial farming”, Bill McKibben and Blake Hurst share completely different perspectives. McKibben believes that industrial farming has simply left an unexcusable bad impact on the environment, saying that it is unethical and that the meat we eat is potentially killing our environment and us as well. McKibben states that “we should simply stop eating factory-farmed meat, and the effects on climate change would be one of the many benefits.” (page 201). McKibben addresses that the techno fixes brought in industrial farming are simply not enough to help our environment.

    Read More

  • Ex Machina And Frankenstein Essay

    681 Words  | 2 Pages

    The repercussions of treating sentient life as monsters or miscreation’s are disastrous. When non-human conscious life is created, it is easier to treat these creations as outsiders rather than accepting them. There are two stories that show this clearly. The novel Frankenstein, The Modern Prometheus by Mary Shelly and the film Ex Machina by Alex Garland. When self-conscious life is created, it must be treated as such.

    Read More

  • Society as the True Monster in Mary Shelley's Frankenstein

    1800 Words  | 4 Pages

    However, these spiteful reactions are inspired by irrational fears that result from the human nature of the characters to form preconceptions about the creation based on their prior experiences. The fantastical response William Frankenstein creates after seeing the creation shows how humans, when faced with the sublime, form preconceptions from their limited knowledge to "name the unnamable. " The creation approaches William, assuming he would be innocent enough to perceive kindness beyond his grotesque appearance.... ... middle of paper ...

    Read More

  • Examples Of Ignorance In Frankenstein

    1135 Words  | 3 Pages

    Humankind is unable to see that in the beginning, the creature is innately good. Also, society’s ability to make a judgement without substantial amounts of knowledge drove the creature further towards self destruction. For instance, when the creature saves a little girl from drowning, he does not receive the praises that would normally be expected. Instead, the creature is shot, and “inflamed by pain, [he] vow[s] eternal hatred and vengeance to all mankind” (Shelley 143). When the creature first gains awareness, it is not yet corrupted by the ills that society forces on him. However, society is making the generalization that ugly is equivalent to evil, which causes the creature to see himself as evil. Rosemary Jackson acknowledges that “naming the double [creature] is impossible for Frankenstein and society since it is themselves in alienated form, an image of themselves before they acquired names”(Jackson). In other words, the creature is an outsider because its name is unknown to society. Society not giving the creature a name, but referring to him as a “monster, ugly wretch [and] an ogre” it is telling the creature that he is wicked because they are associating his appearance with things that society sees as evil (Shelley 144). Thus, the creature realizes that he must be malicious because he does not have a name to define

    Read More

  • Analysis of the Worst Mistake in Human History by Jared Diamond

    773 Words  | 2 Pages

    Jared Diamond makes the argument that when humans decided 10,000 years ago to no longer be hunter-gatherers and made the decision to become sedentary and start domesticating their animals and crops, the result is that the human race has experienced a steady downfall. Diamond makes the point that “with agriculture came the gross social and sexual inequality, the disease and despotism that curse our existence,” (Diamond). While the present system certainly is far from being perfected, Diamond’s various complaints and solutions certainly would not be of much use in the present time either.

    Read More

  • Analysis Of The Omnivore's Delusion By Blake Hurst

    857 Words  | 2 Pages

    These changes, from difficult manual labor to chemicals and genetically modified products, are in his opinion a necessary and modern action. When faced with the duty of feeding the world it would be a hard pressed farmer who could be individually responsible for every plant and small field under their care, I agree. Pulling away from nature is not ideal in the least, but with such a large population and so few farmers it feels like we do not really have much of a choice in the matter. These advancements, however, do allow for farmers to made less of an impact on the nature around them, which is a positive since we only have a single world around us to live in. Destroying it is not really a solution to any problem, no matter how large. “…We have to farm ‘industrially’ to feed the world, and by using those ‘industrial’ tools sensibly, we can accomplish that task… while protecting the land, water, and air around us” Hurst explains, pointing out that it is a responsibility that every farmer must undertake to be sensible with these newer and potentially harmful tools and to have some form of forethought of the consequences (The Omnivore’s Delusion,

    Read More

  • Persuasive Essay On Sustainable Farm

    1075 Words  | 3 Pages

    The cutting down on the uses of pesticides and fertilizers is one on the next great step we have to make as a society. It will take a long time to implement these changes and there will be Problems along this journey. The sooner we start this long journey. The longer we have to work out the Kinks in sustainable farming. We at least should think about the future generations that will live on earth. This is the one place we all have to call home and it’s our job to take care of it for the next generations. We can’t give them a problem that take a long time to fix because it could be too late to fix the problems in a generations or two. This is why we need to push the world to a sustainable farm

    Read More

  • Ecocriticism and Frankenstein

    1210 Words  | 3 Pages

    Given the deep ties to nature that Mary Shelley explores within Frankenstein, the principles and methodology of ecocriticism can be applied in many different ways. The interaction of humanity and nature is a concept explored throughout the novel, relating directly to a core tenet of ecocriticism, "directly relat[ing] who we are as human beings to the environment" (Bressler 231). Being as there is no "single, dominant methodology" (235) within ecocriticism, the extent to which we can use ecocriticism to interact with Frankenstein contains considerable depth. However, I will look to a few main methodologies of ecocriticism to look at Frankenstein in detail to uncover how the novel deals with the changing attitudes of humanity and nature in early 19th century England.

    Read More

  • Analysis Of Garrett Hardin's The Tragedy Of The Commons

    983 Words  | 2 Pages

    It is a known fact that the world population is increasing without bound; however, there is a debate if this increase is a good thing or if it will prove catastrophic. The article “The Tragedy of the Commons” by Garrett Hardin discusses how the ever-increasing world population will exhaust the world of its natural resources, and eliminate human’s capability for survival. On the other side of the argument is Julian L. Simon who wrote “More People, Greater Wealth, More Resources, Healthier Environment.” This article proposes the theory that with an increase in population, humans’s quality of life is amplified. One particular issue that they both mention and have drastically different views on is the future of agriculture and human’s ability to sustain it.

    Read More

  • Free Essays: The Themes of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein

    1717 Words  | 4 Pages

    The passing of time from when Victor first began his creation and finished it is also significant.

    Read More

  • Progress and the Total Destruction of the Earth

    984 Words  | 2 Pages

    The culture of hunter/gatherer society was the least damaging to the environment in the long term before humans developed agriculture. There are several reasons for this. First, human population was much smaller in comparison to what it became during the agrarian age. Second, hunter/gatherer societies tended to be largely nomadic, which allowed the environment time to recover and regenerate whatever natural resources were used. Third, humans simply did not have the technologies to further exploit the environment. Human population was much smaller during the time of hunter/gatherer societies due to high rates of infant morality, infectious diseases, and social morality - infanticide, geronticide, and warfare (Southwick 128). Fewer people mean fewer demands on the environment. With growth in human population, the grasses and animal populations humans used for sustenance did not have time to recover, which turned into humans using the earth's natural resources in an unsustainable manner (class discussion 02.14.03). Humans living in agrarian society do not necessarily use the environment's resources in an unsustainable manner, but the greater the population density, the more land will be needed to support that population in a sustainable manner. As resources become more and more scarce, field owners will be less willing to let land lay fallow (class discussion 02.21.03). Humans then found a "tech fix" with the development of agriculture and the domestication of animals. Cipolla calls it the first great economic revolution (Cipolla 18). The development of agriculture lead to the development of communities, city-states, civilizations, and other settlements. The social structure that formed around agriculture brought about the possibility of specialization within a society, since not everyone had to hunt and gather all the time. Instead of living in an ecologically sustainable manner like the hunter/gatherers, people started living in an economic manner (Southwick 128). Specialization enabled the development of social institutions such as religion and government, and agriculture necessitated the development of irrigation.

    Read More

  • Effects of Agriculture on the Environment

    2078 Words  | 5 Pages

    So overall, Agriculture is playing a very important role in changing the lifestyle of different people. Agriculture might have made everything easy for us but it still has its cons. We see the effects of agriculture and how it affects the lives of other species and the environment.

    Read More

  • The History of Agriculture

    1781 Words  | 4 Pages

    Agriculture is quite possibly the most important advancement and discovery that humanity has made. It produces the one thing that we need the most: food. It has been around since 9500 BC, and can be the oldest sign of mankind’s acumen and the development and evolving of our minds and creations. Agriculture has been mastered throughout hundreds of years and is one of our most important resources on Earth, along with water and fossil fuels. Although the older farming methods from ancient times seem somewhat mediocre and barbaric, they were very ingenious and advanced for that time period. Over thousands of years, we have improved the way agriculture is used, how land is cultivated, the various techniques of farming and irrigation, and the tools and mechanics used. Numerous things that we see as aboriginal today, such as using a hand plow, were extremely contemporary in ancient times, and played key roles in the development of man and society, since quick labor was not abundant before this time. We are now extremely advanced in agriculture and irrigation and the tools used to farm and grow and harvest crops. We have learned from our past and ancestors how to grow and evolve in our methods and have advanced forward greatly.

    Read More

More about Victor Frankenstein: How Agriculture Has Changed The World

Open Document