Prometheus And Frankenstein Comparison Essay

The gift of life is widely sought, but at what price? There are consequences for every action, and in Mary Shelley’s novel, Frankenstein, Victor Frankenstein learns this lesson the hard way. After giving life to a creature of his making, Victor is sent into a downward spiral of terrible events. Likewise, in the myths of ancient Greece, the Titan Prometheus creates humans - provoking a string of misfortune onto himself. The relation between these two characters is not a coincidence however; the original title Shelley gave to her novel was The Modern Prometheus, a name that continues to effectively link these classic stories. The first, and perhaps most obvious, connection between these two tales is the life that each of the protagonists bestowed upon their creation. Though Prometheus created the human race from clay while Frankenstein assembled collected body parts, the relation is still clear. Even more importantly; however, is their high-achieving status in the field of science. According to Greek mythology, “Prometheus became a symbol of striving towards the scientific knowledge and the risk of …show more content…
If Prometheus had not created humans, he never would have had to withstand the cruelty of punishments doled out by Zeus. The physical torture of being chained to a rock and having an eagle eat his re-growing liver every day for three thousand years was a hefty price to pay for the development of humans (Cartwright). Similarly, though Frankenstein’s torture was emotional, his pain was just as significant as the pain of Prometheus. The loss of his loved ones, in addition to the guilt of having his creation be the reason for their demise, certainly tormented him until the end of his days. In a phrase much like the myth of Prometheus, he hopelessly declared to a friend, “I am chained in an eternal hell” (Shelley