Rewinding Frankenstein and the body-machine: organ transplantation in the dystopian young adult fiction seriesUnwind

While the separation of body and mind (and the entailing metaphor of the body as a machine) has been a cornerstone of Western medicine for a long time, reactions to organ transplantation among others challenge this clear-cut dichotomy. The limits of the machine-body have been negotiated in science fiction, most canonically in Mary Shelley9s Frankenstein (1818). Since then, Frankenstein9s monster itself has become a motif that permeates both medical and fictional discourses. Neal Shusterman9s contemporary dystology for young adults, Unwind , draws on traditional concepts of the machine-body and the Frankenstein myth. This article follows one of the young protagonists in the series, who is en…