Character Analysis Of Mary Shelley's The Mortal Immortal?

Mary Shelley’s timeless tale, The Mortal Immortal, is a tale of immortality and the commonly unmentioned pitfalls that those who have it face. Mary Shelley herself is quite unusual as a writer. She lived from 1797 to 1851 and female writers at the time were uncommon and usually used male pseudonyms to avoid their ideas being discarded as worthless. Even so, she was successful as a writer during her lifetime and many of her famous stories have survived the test of time. The Mortal Immortal is undoubtedly one of her great successes and is intriguing for its analysis of the true value of eternal life. The story was written in 1833 and starts with the main character Winzy looking back at the more than 300 years of his immortal life. This perspective

The first of these that are presented in the story is Winzy’s master, Cornelius Agrippa. This Agrippa from the story lived at the same time as the famous German chemist Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa and is almost certainly a reference to him. The Cornelius Agrippa from history was famous for dabbling in the occult, particularly through chemistry and philosophy. This makes him a perfect character to discover the secret to the creation of the fabled elixir of life. This elixir of life is the second aspect that Shelley uses from history. While the elixir of life was clearly never real, it was searched for throughout the dark ages. Intriguingly, some reference to a drink that would grant the consumer immortality has shown up in almost every culture. This has turned the elixir of life into an icon today that regularly shows up in our pop

I believe that one of the components that have made humans successful is our ability to control our own evolution. Most animals are perfectly adapted to survive in a specific environment. Humans on the other hand, compared to the animals, fare rather badly in a specific environment. But this is where human success has come from. Where an animal may thrive in that one specific environment, humans can survive virtually anywhere. In a way, this is evolution’s greatest invention. Humans have adaptability and this adaptability is what allows us to control our evolution. First, we adapted to the extreme temperatures of winter with clothing and shed our fur. Then, we domesticated animals and gained the ability to produce lactase throughout our lifetimes giving us the ability to drink milk after our childhood. Perhaps our final step in controlling our evolution will be to conquer aging and end evolution