Our most recent project in World Studies was looking at the industrial revolution and researching, as a team, a modern innovation (my team chose “hive minds”), while reading and comparing them to Frankenstein. While we read the book, we had to look through it thinking about different thematic topics. The topic that stood out the most to me was alienation.
Alienation and being isolated from society can go many ways, it can help to get things done but it can also lead to being lonely and depressed. For example, in Frankenstein or the Modern Prometheus, the protagonist, Victor makes himself isolated for a large portion of the novel. The downside with him doing this is that he is alone with his thoughts which start to drive him crazy and he ends up getting very sick. He does this to himself because this way he can learn and work without distractions and nobody can get hurt. Victor worked on most of his real scientific innovations while he was alone. This could be because he didn’t want anybody to know about it and so they wouldn’t get hurt but it could also be that this is how he got the work done. You can see this a lot with many scientists in history and today. Often, the best work is done with total concentration and not having any distractions. If you were to ask me “Would alienation be humankind’s tragic flaw?”, I would have a hard time answering this. If you look at it with our innovation, hive minds, where there is absolutely no alienation and everyone had their mind taken over by society, then there is no individuality. Over all, I think people need to be able to isolate themselves every once and a while. With this reasoning, alienation would not be our tragic flaw. On the other end of the spectrum, some people just completely separate themselves from others and this could be very unhealthy and drive them to make questionable choices. Considering this, alienation could influence a tragic flaw. Seeing both sides, I personally can not answer this question.
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