In most of our readings so far science has been mainly portrayed as easily abused and a forbidden fruit like temptation which ends up corrupting many of its practitioners. A second main theme is that science is unnatural, an artificial opponent of organic thought and human emotion. However, I believe that in the our recent reading "The Monster" both of these themes are contradicted, at least to some extent.

Crane's description of the fire to me suggests a contradiction of the second point mentioned above. Fire, which is about as natural an entity as they come, (in the old days it was thought of as one of the principal natural elements, its one of the prime ingredients used to make Captain Planet who is known to be a defender of nature, etc.) tears through Trescott's house. In most of the house the fire is simply a raging inferno, destroying everything in its path. However, when nature, (the fire), and science (the lab, and particularly the chemicals in the lab) meet, they form a surreal symbiosis, creating a fantastical garden of burning flowers populated by various ethereal woodland creatures. To me this differs from the depiction of the garden in Rapaccini's Daughter, in that Rapaccini's garden was depicted more as a perversion of nature rather than the fire garden in the lab which was simply the natural consequence of two different elements coming together.

In regards to my first point, most of the monsters or experiments we have thus far read about have been the product of an irrational or morally errant scientist and they have been abhorred by a rational moral society (Frankenstein, Rappacini's Daughter, Was He Dead, etc.). Conversely in "The Monster" the actions of Trescott and their subsequent negative repercussions in the town seem to be the effects of a rational morally grounded scientist working within an irrational society.