Dinornis

The dinornis egg of "Was He Dead?" seems to me to be very symbolic of the mystery ascribed to science in many of our readings thus far. In the story the egg goes beyond mysterious to almost mystical. It hovers over the heads of the men when they meet, and at one point is even wreathed in smoke. Also, there is no greater symbol of birth than that of a giant egg, and what could be birthed out of such an unusually large egg besides something monstrous and unknown.

There is the same aura of mystery surrounding the two births we have encountered in our reading thus far namely the criminal in "Was He Dead?" and obviously the monster in Frankenstein. Both of these births are regarded as unnatural, in large part I believe because they enter unexplored territory, their outcomes are largely unpredictable until the experiment is actually carried out. Fear of the unknown is the most primal aspect of human emotion that an author can appeal to, and it is this that made stories such as Frankenstein so horrifying in their day. When characters such as Frankenstein or Purpel willfully dive into the unknown they, and by proxy their science, seem to us as unnatural.