Comparing Science and Religion in Frankenstein, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

The Struggle Between Science and Religion in Frankenstein, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and Metropolis From Frankenstein to Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde to Metropolis, the mad scientist is one of the modern world's most instantly recognizable and entertaining cultural icons. Popular culture's fascination with demented doctors, crazed clinicians, and technologically fanatical fiends have dominated the major motifs of popular literature and film for most of the 20th century and this fascination will continue into the 21st century. An archetypal outcast, the mad scientist represents all that modern culture holds mysterious and fascinating, intriguing and sinful, and, to say the least, romantic. Popular culture has completely desensitized the blasphemous, heretical, epileptic shocks of tampering with "things that should not be tampered with" and has made them, instead, into common, everyday occurrences. The Romantic struggle between theology and science still wages today--only today's theology has become a religion of materialism and the worship of the monetary system; and through mass media this neo-theology has appealed to societies appetite and captivated an audience desirable by any deity. When we think of 'Mad Science,' the modern, stereotypical, Hollywood vision of mad science floods the mind-of Dr. Frankenstein (Frankenstein); Dr. Jekyll (The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde); and Rotwang (Metropolis); along with many others-and for good reason. Many of these characters we know by heart, either from literature, theater, or film, while many others we've hardly heard of and are thus marked mundane and unimportant in our minds. Mad science is synonymous with 'the insane scientist' who blew up his lab, but is ecst... ... science and symbolism pertaining to sex roles, marriage, and the family. With the reformed tolerance and leniency of the 19th century, especially that of religion, the gateway was opened and the chaos that is modern horror was set free to terrorize the land. Works Cited Carroll, David , and Kyla Ward. "The Horror Timeline." < http://www.tabula-rasa.info/DarkAges/> October 13, 2003. Lovecraft, H.P. "H.P. Lovecraft Library." William Johns, 2002. October 15, 2003. Perkus, Aaron Keith. Mythos Journal No. 6: Myths of Science and Technology: Dr. Jekyll Hyeding in the Garden of Eden. October 15, 2003. Skal, David J. Screams of Reason: mad science and modern culture. New York, NY: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 1998. Stevenson, Robert Louis. Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. New York, NY: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 2003.