Industrialization and the Age of Reason benefitted society in many ways, but also created an atmosphere of dehumanizing mass production. The Romantic literary movement rose up to assert the value of emotion in a modern world, and praised science as a marvel whose discoveries bounded on magic made real.
Frankenstein's monster discovered three books that shaped his understanding of the world, including the Sorrows of Young Werther. Werther's unrequited love for a woman eventually leads him to commit suicide. Frankenstein's monster wants to experience love as well, but Mary Shelley has her own critique of this idea of love.
Ways that we dream about the world sometimes create a shared vision that we start to believe is real. When William Gibson first explored these "semiotic ghosts" of a pristine American future in the Gernsback Continuum, he showed how these visions of modern technology can separate us from our own reality and the personal meaning our world should hold for us.