Mary Shelley´s Frankenstein; Or, the Modern Prometheus, an Analysis of the Subtitle

"Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus" is a sci-fi novel composed by Mary Shelley. This is the story of a science understudy, Victor Frankenstein, who made a beast amid one of his trials. This beast ends up being an inconvenience for Victor. The creature depicted as a living being with all the emotions and feelings, and his appearance of beast was a huge issue when he felt that individuals dreaded him, and they abhor him. He would not like to murder individuals; indeed he attempted to spare a young lady, yet because of dread a man attempted to execute him as a beast. Victor 's sibling additionally attempted to shout when he saw him, in his endeavor to keep the kid calm, he strangled the kid. To stay away from all these killings, he asked Victor to make him a female with the goal that he can leave this spot with his mate and will never come in broad daylight. Victor concurred, however when he understood the results of this entire type of creatures, he slaughtered the fragmented female. Creature attempted to take reprisal and murdered Victor 's wives. The story was an incredible achievement and confronted negative feedback before all else. Commentators consider it as a sickening awfulness story; however with its prosperity it got different positive remarks.

Frankenstein, a novel first published in the year 1818, stands as the most talked about work of Mary Shelley’s literary career. She was just nineteen years old when she penned this novel, and throughout her lifetime she could not produce any other work that surpasses this novel in terms of creativity and vision. In this novel, Shelley found an outlet for her own intense sense of victimization, and her desperate struggle for love. Traumatized by her failed childbirth incidents, troubled childhood, and scandalous courtship, many of Shelley’s life experiences can be seen reflected in the novel. When discussing the character and development of the monster, Shelley launches an extensive discussion on the

Mary Shelley's Frankenstein is subtitled "The Modern Prometheus", and rightfully so. Prometheus, the Titan of Greek mythology that created man and gave them fire, is a fitting symbol for Victor Frankenstein, the man who created a "monster" and gave him life. The most obvious aspect of the similarity between Frankenstein and the Prometheus myth is the underlying theme - both stories deal with ill-fated actions with tragic consequences. The classic Prometheus stories, as told by Aeschylus, Percy Bysshe Shelley and summarized by Edith Hamilton, contain symbolic and thematic elements that closely parallel Mary Shelley's "modern Prometheus."

Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein as a modern day version of the legend of Prometheus. Prometheus created men out of clay and taught them the "arts of civilisation" (Webster's World Encyclopedia CD-ROM 1999). Zeus, the chief god of the Titans, wanted to destroy Prometheus' creation but Prometheus stole fire from heaven to help mankind. Zeus punished Prometheus by chaining him to a rock where an eagle would feed on his liver during the day and each night the liver would grow back. Prometheus was able to bargain for his release because he knew a secret which concerned Zeus' future. Heracles shot the eagle and so Prometheus gained release. Victor Frankenstein is Shelley's modern Prometheus in that

Mary Shelley was a writer, novelist, and biographer, best known for her Gothic novel Frankenstein. She had already written many stories and short novels, and even edited and promoted the works of her husband, Percy Bysshe Shelley . But Frankenstein; the Modern Prometheus was her first work to achieve popularity and great success, despite the initial bad reviews, claiming the novel to be ''a tissue of horrible and disgusting absurdity''. Frankenstein recalls the events of the fictional Victor Frankenstein and of his becoming an unholy creator of life. When the novel was written, science was highly debated; and Frankenstein was the first novel to give the impression that one day, science will destroy mankind. The subtle mixture of the

In order to illustrate the main theme of her novel "Frankenstein", Mary Shelly draws strongly on the myth of Prometheus, as the subtitle The Modern Prometheus indicates. Maurice Hindle, in his critical study of the novel, suggests, "the primary theme of Frankenstein is what happens to human sympathies and relationships when men seek obsessively to satisfy their Promethean longings to "conquer the unknown" - supposedly in the service of their fellow-humans". This assertion is discussed by first describing the Promethean connection. Thereafter, the two forms of the myth, Prometheus the fire-stealer and Prometheus the life-giver are reviewed in the context of Shelly's use of the myth in her novel

MJ DeMarco, author and entrepreneur, related choices in life to hitting a golf ball. If the club is rotated even a fraction of a degree when it hits the ball, the ball has a trajectory that diverges further away from the golf course until it is nearly impossible to get back on track. (Pros) At first the change is hardly noticeable, but later its consequences are so devastating that its new course is completely transformed from the course it used to be on. (Pros) Like this situation, DeMarco says that one bad choice can set one’s trajectory off by only one fraction of a degree today, but in the future the error is magnified and has monumental consequences. (Pros) What appears to be a good choice, ends up being a bad choice in the end. This idea connects to two of the main themes in Frankenstein or A Modern Prometheus: the dangerous pursuit of knowledge and fate versus free will. The choice to pursue knowledge may be appealing, but it has life threatening consequences, like fate for instance. In Frankenstein or A Modern Prometheus, Mary Shelley uses the motif of light to illuminate and connect the themes of fate vs. free will and the dangers of the pursuit of knowledge.

The foil is a person or thing whose traits, by differences and similarities, help to emphasize and enhances the qualities and actions of the protagonist. Many characters, such as Elizabeth Lavenza, Henry Clerval, Robert Walton and Frankenstein’s creature, in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, Or, The Modern Prometheus qualify as foils for Victor Frankenstein, the protagonist. However, Frankenstein’s creature is the most effective foil for Victor Frankenstein. The creature’s similarities and differences with Frankenstein along with his actions and traits allow him to be a more effective foil than Walton, and contributes to the meaning and structure of the novel.

On the time of conception of Frankenstein, Mary and Percy Shelley were living outside Geneva at a cottage on water at Cologny. They were the visitors at a nearby “villa diosatui” where Lord Byron and his physician, Clair Clairmont and John Polidori were living at that time. The group remained indoors due to an incessant rainfall. One of the evenings, when they were sitting around reading ghost stories, they agreed to write their own terrible tale (Zimmerman, 2007, 65-123). Mary tried to imagine such a story for several days to come with Frankenstein. Provided the very unconventional group of friends assembles that June, there is no surprise that a unique story of Frankenstein was created.

Frankenstein is a story full of questions and excitement. What is interesting about Shelley’s novel is the absence of God and multiple female characters. She ignores the proper way of conception and birth. Due to this, the science of what Victor accomplished had gone awry. His goal while creating the monster was a perfect race in which they would help mankind, “even though the dream of the new race is...exploded” in the end (Levine 12). Victor Frankenstein

Nineteen-year-old Mary Shelley didn’t know when she began it that her “ghost story” would become an enduring part of classic literature. Frankenstein is an admirable work simply for its captivating plot. To the careful reader, however, Shelley’s tale offers complex insights into human experience. The reader identifies with all of the major characters and is left to heed or ignore the cautions that their situations provide. Shelley uses the second person narrative style, allusions both to Coleridge’s “Rime of the Ancient Mariner” and the legend of Prometheus, and the symbols of both light and fire to warn against the destructive thirst for forbidden knowledge.

Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein or The Modern Prometheus is often thought to be the classic “Monster Movie” horror story. However, it actually has close ties to a classic Greek myth, that of Prometheus, as the subtitle suggests. Each of these two characters created life by some means, and then tended to their creation in their own methodology, ultimately though, yielding a similar result in both cases. Shelly put careful consideration into the ties between these two stories, and they can be seen throughout the novel in many situations pertaining to the Monster, and his creator, “The Modern Prometheus” and the “modern” qualifier can be seen in the contrast between the methods by which the characters aid their creations.

Did Mary Shelley initially title her work about Victor Frankenstein and his creation The Modern Prometheus solely because of the glaring similarities between their stories? That is a question that is often discussed, but a conclusion rarely arrives. One of the possible reasons for this could be because there are many different interpretations of the Promethean myth, which are mainly based on the ambiguous nature of the story. The parallels between the Promethean myth and Frankenstein are obvious, and that, in combination with her subtitle, The Modern Prometheus, indicates that Mary Shelley did have the myth in mind as she wrote the story.

In Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and the Greek mythological story of Prometheus, there exists intertextuality. In Frankenstein, Mary Shelley includes concepts and follows the basic principles of the story of Prometheus. In fact, the story of Victor Frankenstein has been labeled as the “Modern Prometheus” for its striking similarities to Mary Shelley’s creation. Intertextuality highlights a particular passage and provides significance. This significance is present in Prometheus through the writing of Shelley in Frankenstein.

In Mary Shelley’s “Frankenstein,” she provides the readers a subtitle “The Modern Prometheus,” in order to show the allusion she has drawn between Victor Frankenstein and the Titan god Prometheus throughout the novel. Prometheus was one of the few Titan gods that sided with Zeus during the war to take control and wasn’t banished to Tartarus. He became the god of forethought and crafty counsel who was given the task to create and protect mankind. Because of a trick played upon Zeus at Mecone, Zeus became infuriated and took fire from the humans as punishment. As the protector of mankind, Prometheus stole the fire from Zeus and gave it back to the humans, subsequently he caused the creation of Pandora, the first woman, and all the evils to be