and supporting themselves, they grow more and
more resentful, with Gregor’s father even resorting
to violence. Gregor’s death sets them all free, and
the family ends the story with thoughts of finding
sister Grete a husband, who presumably will take
responsibility for them all.
Unlike Gregor, Victor Frankenstein in Mary
Shelley’s Frankenstein has lived a life of bliss
and privilege. Sadly, he uses this privilege irrespon-
sibly and becomes obsessed with creating life. The
creature he creates kills everyone whom Victor loves,
and when he comes to the realization that it is he,
not the creature, who is truly responsible for their
deaths, the pain is almost too much for him to bear.
It is only at this point in the novel that Victor actu-
ally takes on the mantle of responsibility and hunts
the creature until his death. Additionally, in his
faithful telling of the story to Walton, Victor passes
on his cautionary tale, another act that demonstrates
his newfound accountability.
Although Frankenstein was written in the 19th
century, its themes regarding the responsible use of
science and technology echo loudly here in the
21st century. Some philosophers have argued that in
the contemporary era, everything has become our
responsibility—nature, war, death, global poverty. As
the range of human action is much broader than it
ever was before—that is, what we can do is greater
and more fantastic than what could have been imag-
ined in the past—our responsibilities have widened
to an almost limitless point. While the need to do
the right thing by those to whom we are responsible
has not changed, what that right thing might be has
grown more confusing, and the number of those to
whom we might be held responsible has increased
exponentially.
See also Davies, Robertson: FiFth business;
Dinesen, Isak: out oF aFrica; James, Henry:
daisy MiLLer; Machiavelli, Niccolò: prince,
the; Shakespeare, William: kinG Lear; Virgil:
aeneid, the; Vonnegut, Kurt: cat’s cradLe;
Thoreau, Henry David: “Resistance to Civil
Government”; Wilder, Thornton: our town;
Williams, Tennessee: GLass MenaGerie, the.
FURTHER READING
French, Peter A. Responsibility Matters. Lawrence: Uni-
versity Press of Kansas, 1992.
Jonsen, Albert R. Responsibility in Modern Religious
Ethics. Washington, D.C.: Corpus Books, 1968.
Swinburne, Richard. Responsibility and Atonement.
Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989.
Moran, Gabriel. A Grammar of Responsibility. New
York: Crossroad, 1996.
Jennifer McClinton-Templescience and technology
While science and technology play key roles in
human affairs, they tend to recede into the back-
ground of daily life. We seldom think about the
structures and practices of scientific institutions or
about the social and environmental costs of our tech-
nologically textured lives. But as canonical literature
from medieval times to the present makes abun-
dantly clear, cultural responses to and attitudes about
scientific developments and engineering break-
throughs have always been potent, complex, and
multiple. Literary works by authors from Geoffrey
Chaucer to Don DeLillo have variously reflected,
reinforced, and (in some cases) destabilized these
larger societal responses and attitudes. Studying this
literature, therefore, occasions valuable opportunities
to better understand the taken-for-granted back-
ground of science and technology.
Many literary texts foreground the complex rela-
tions between science, technology, and society by
calling attention to fundamental problems of defini-
tion and recognition. The term science, for instance,
poses considerable problems precisely because of its
privileged status in mainstream culture. We associ-
ate it with “reality,” “truth,” and “reason,” and when
individuals or institutions speak on behalf of sci-
ence, lay audiences often assume that what is being
conveyed is factual, trustworthy, and authoritative.
Unfortunately, distinguishing between “genuine”
and “mock” science is no easy matter; scores of unsci-
entific practices and products announce themselves
as thoroughly scientific simply to gain acceptance or
to influence consumers. Even in early modern times,
when science referred generally to any systematic
acquisition of knowledge, differentiating between
real and fake science could be tricky. Geoffrey
Chaucer dramatizes this problem in “The Canon’s
Yeoman’s Tale” of The canterbury taLes by critiqu-
ing mutually reinforcing entities within medievalscience and technology 95