Frankenstine

Nowadays scientists are trying to create parts of a human in order to develop cures for diseases to extend life. There are many critics of the ethics of the science. If you can make a new heart, lungs, blood and skin, what is keeping science from creating new life or even clones? This ethical battle plays out in many movies and books including Mary Shelley's novel Frankenstein; The Modern Prometheus. Mary Shelley develops an extremely intelligent character Victor who creates new life, and she follows him and his life after the creation to develop the idea of what could happen if we scientifically create life. In the novel Frankenstein the author uses parallelism through the subtitle of the novel “ The Modern Prometheus” and combines this with the use of non similar symbol pairing in order to accurately foreshadow the downfall of the main character Victor Frankenstein.

The author Mary Shelley uses parallelism through the subtitle of the novel “The Modern Prometheus” to foreshadow the downfall of the main character Victor Frankenstein . The story of Prometheus is a Greek myth about a Titan named Prometheus. To fully understand her use of parallelism between the two stories you must first know the story of Prometheus.

The story of Prometheus begins with a war between the Gods and the Titans. Since siding with Zeus, the victor of the war, Prometheus was deemed the protector of mankind. In an event called Trick at Mecone, Prometheus tricked Zeus by offering him one of two offerings; the first was beef hidden inside of the stomach of an ox, (something pleasing inside something repulsive) and the second was bones covered in fat (something repulsive hidden inside of something delectable); Zeus chose the fat covered bones,and he became mad at mankind and Prometheus. As punishment for man kinds trickery he hid fire from them. Prometheus, being the protector of mankind, took it upon himself to save mankind, so he stole fire from the gods and gave it back to man. Zeus was furious. He punished man by creating the first woman Pandora who was guaranteed by Hesiod to bring troubles to mankind. He also punished Prometheus by tying him to a rock and had birds eat his liver all day, he would never die because he was immortal. Prometheus is punished until he is rescued by the demigod Hercules (Mythology, 1)

The novel Frankenstein was written with the same structure as the myth Prometheus. Victor resembles the character Prometheus in many ways. Prometheus in Greek means “forethought”; Ironically in the myth he seems to lack a sense of forethought when deciding to trick Zeus. Similarly Victor lacks a sense of forethought. Victor is a very intelligent man who is well studied in