Prometheus Vs Frankenstein

Prometheus- the Titan who created humans. Frankenstein- the human who created a monster. What are the similarities and differences between these two iconic figures of myth and sci-fi?

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Sources
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lkv1pDmN7JY&ab_channel=WeirdHistory

https://www.history.com/news/frankenstein-true-story-mary-shelley

Greek Myths that Shape the Way We Think Richard Buxton
 Pandoras Jar- Nathalie Haynes
 Frankenstein or the Modern Prometheus- Mary Shelley
 https://www.sparknotes.com/lit/frankenstein/summary/
https://www.britannica.com/explore/savingearth/the-hidden-history-of-greco-roman-vegetarianism

https://mythologysource.com/how-are-prometheus-and-frankenstein-alike/ 

Transcript

Hello and welcome to Greeks and Geeks, the podcast where I take us on a persnickety but fun journey deep diving into the lore behind our favourite stories. I’m your host Sabrina and today we’re going spooky with a look into Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein or The Modern Prometheus, which is actually the full title of the book. But why did Mary Shelley name her book after the famous Greek titan? Why did she open up comparisons between the original creator of humans and the creator of one world famous Halloween monster? And why do so many people think Victor Frankenstein is a Doctor when he’s never held a medical license in his life (as always the blame lies with Hollywood) Let me explain…

So who is Prometheus? Prometheus is a Titan, one of the divinities who pre-dated the Olympians. The Olympians warred with, and eventually won against, the Titans in a huge war called the Titanomachy- a name which always makes me feel like Nemo trying to pronounce anemone. But despite this war, Prometheus was an ally of Zeus. In some interpretations he’s considered one of Zeus’ close friends. Prometheus also means “forethought” and in many his stories, he knows what’s going to happen if he acts a certain way yet he does it anyway. Hold onto this knowledge because it’s a surprise tool we’re going to use later.

Prometheus was involved in quite a number of myths, which, duh of course he is. Why am I saying such an obvious thing Sabrina? Newsflash! Famous Greek Myth character involved in numerous stories! Groundbreaking. Truly, I am doing myth and fantasy explaining. Basically, what I was trying to state, in the most obtuse way possible, is that I’m going to focus on the most famous myths as well as the ones I feel are most relevant to the topic at hand.

The first myth, and the one Prometheus is most well known for, is the time where Prometheus steals fire and gives it to the humans. Which omg I basically just summarised that like a sitcom episode title didn’t I? Remember that episode of Friends? The One Where They Discover Fire! Sorry. Anyways Zeus is angry with the humans for a trick Prometheus has played on him which means the humans can sacrifice the worst bits of their food to the Olympians whilst keeping all the best bits for themselves. So Zeus having a certifiable Zeusy temper tantrum, stomping his giant Olympian God feet, withholds fire from the humans and Prometheus, perhaps feeling guilt, perhaps a fondness for people, stole fire and gave it to the freezing humans. Now that was one deception too many for Zeus and he punished both Prometheus and humanity.

According to Hesiod’s Works and Days, (Hesiod being a poet who probably predated Homer- the Odyssey/Iliad writer) Zeus punished humanity by *sigh* creating the first woman. We’ll deep dive into the Pandora myth another time but Pandora and her jar (jar not box), was given to the humans and was welcomed by Prometheus’ brother Epimetheus (whose name means Afterthought) despite Prometheus’ warnings and strong advice to NOT DO EXACTLY THAT BECAUSE ZEUS IS BIG MAD BRO YOU CAN’T TRUST ANYTHING HE SAYS/GIVES YOU. But Epimetheus doesn’t listen. After all, a young, beautiful woman (the FIRST ever woman) of marriageable age, crafted and made exactly for you? Of course, you’re going to accept that gift right? I mean, based on my observations of the scarier parts of the internet, I THINK that’s the dream for certain types of guys, but I didn’t stay there too long cause it freaked me out. So Epimetheus accepts the gift of Pandora from Zeus, delighted, and who cares about whatever that jar is? It’s probably just a jar to store all her womanly things like- quick hold on we need to invent womanly things so we can dismiss them as bad womanly things- errr…lipstick? Sure lets roll with that. Anyways the jars not important right…right?

Well he should have cared because that jar contains all the bad things that could exist in the world. You know this part of the tale but Pandora opens that jar and humanity has suffered ever since, with hope remaining behind in the jar.

But how do you punish an immortal Titan? Well Zeus’ idea was genuinely horrible, and particularly nasty, even for Zeus, who’s not exactly light on cruelty in myths. For the crime of defying Zeus and saving humanity from freezing to death by giving them the gift of fire, Prometheus is tied to a rock and his liver is picked out by an eagle every day, only to regrow at night. An eternity of endless boredom, dread and suffering. Eventually Heracles saved Prometheus though, but that was a LONG time later.

Another Promethean myth I’m going to talk about, the one I think is most relevant to this episode in comparison to Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, is that of Prometheus’ role in creating humans. This story pops up in the tales written by famous ancient Romans. For example, in Ovid’s Metamorphoses. Prometheus mixes earth with rainwater to create humans in the image of the gods. Aesop, too, wrote in one of his fables that Prometheus mixed earth with tears to create people, showing creation and suffering in equal measure. Was Aesop saying that creation of anything godlike Ieads to suffering? Was he saying that Prometheus’ creation of humans would ultimately be his downfall? Or was he saying that Prometheus was an emo edgelord, like those types of pretentious creatives who think you have to be depressed to create your magnum opus? It’s a mystery… we’ll never know… you can’t see me but I’m waving my arms all mysteriously right now. Woooo~

But in all seriousness, stories of creation were a subject of fascination in the medieval and early modern period. Despite Christian writers explaining that no no, GOD created humans, Prometheus only created statues you see, to which past Sabrina made me laugh by writing “lol retcon” in the margins of my research. At least I make me laugh. The French Revolution made the Prometheus myth relevant to the modern anti-monarchist but it was Romantic English and German poets who really held up Prometheus as a rebel of injustice and tyranny, inspired by the ancient Greek playwright Aeschylus. The famous and controversial horndog- I mean- POET Lord Byron’s take on Prometheus, published in 1816, was of a character who suffers intensely but whose speaker is eternally grateful for his sacrifice on behalf of the humans against their oppressors. It is in this environment that Mary Shelley wrote her now world-famous novel Frankenstein or The Modern Prometheus. Literally. Her husband was besties with Byron.

Speaking of Mary Shelly, lets look at the conditions which inspired her to begin with. 

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To understand the conditions which inspired Frankenstein, we need to go to a couple of years before she wrote the novel, to a catastrophe that killed 100,000 people initially. That was the Mount Tambora volcanic eruption of 1815 in Indonesia. It was the largest recorded eruption in human history. The eruption was so loud it could be heard 900 miles away. As the ash cloud swept across the world, it put even more pressure on local communities (bear in mind this is the time of the Napoleonic wars, so not the most stable of eras anyway). In the aftermath, the global climate dropped three degrees and 1816 was described as the year without summer where fog and frost covered most of Europe. Crops failed and millions of people died of hunger or disease such as the giant cholera outbreak. It was just straight up not a good time. And this continued for three years after the initial eruption. But like all major disasters, it inspired a litany of artists. Like 9/11 helped kick started the era of emo music and grimdark films, Mount Tambora inspired artists to create things that were dark, mysterious, foreboding and for most of them, this was the work which they’re best remembered for.

Such was the case of Mary Shelley. In 1816 she was travelling with her husband, the poet Percy Shelley, and their newborn when they met up with Byron and decided to stay at Lake Geneva together along with one of Byrons pregnant ex-lovers whom he’d grown bored with (he was SUCH a swell guy) and another friend John William Polidori who went on to write a short story The Vampyre, which then partially inspired Dracula. Yes really. 

The terrible weather, including many thunderstorms, brought about by the aftermath of the volcano, created the perfect spooky atmosphere for their many discussions. Mary Shelley herself listened in intensely as the men debated one of the biggest scientific discussions at the time- whether it was possible to reanimate a corpse. Tensions rose as the days went on and they continued to be trapped by the weather so they distracted themselves with ghost stories. The conditions in which Frankenstein was inspired could have been a novel itself in my opinion! 

To be honest, I’m about to get REALLY embarrassing here and admit that I’ve thought about this in way too much detail. But this rainy Genevan villa holiday is totally one of my spots to travel back in time with. But here’s the thing. I hate those “if you could go back in time to see any events where would you go?” questions because if I went back in time I would change things! Like in the Butterfly Effect or any of the Back to the Future movies. If I went back there I’d risk distracting Mary Shelley from LITERALLY CREATING THE SCI FI GENRE. And that’s not something I could risk, because its an argument I keep in my back pocket for whenever some rude guy gets all snooty about Star Trek at me. A 19 year old girl created your beloved genre, Steve, and she would have shipped Kirk and Spock together so SHUT UP. No but really, Mary Shelley had women lovers after her husbands death and also helped her lady friends get fake passports so they could run away to France together. So no! I could never risk travelling back in time, no matter how curious I am. However if I could go back in time and be an invisible observer, I absolutely would do that. Just to quietly watch but also to maybe smack Polidori on the back of the head for getting a bit too love sick over Mary and giving her the creeps. I’m invisible. He’d probably just think I was a ghost.

It was on one of these stormy nights that Byron issued a challenge to all those present- to write a story scarier than the ghost stories they’d shared. Polidori immediately went to work writing the Vampyre, which was published in 1819. Although Mary was initially embarrassed because she struggled to find an idea, the inspiration for Frankenstein came to her on a sleepless night during another thunderstorm, where she saw a vision of the story she would come to write. Perhaps she was inspired by the hubris of the men in her company along with their discussions of reanimation. Either way, her novel which was then published anonymously in 1818 and has never once been out of print since, changed the literary landscape forever.

The novel she called Frankenstein or the Modern Prometheus, though most people refer to it as simply Frankenstein. I have to do the boring disclaimer that Frankenstein is not the monster, but rather Frankenstein is the man who created the monster. Although I really think that people know this. To me, saying that feels really patronising. When I discussed the novel with my 8 year old students (we have a little book club where we talk about what we’re reading), even they told me “Miss! You know that Frankenstein isn’t the monster, right?” so if 8-year-olds know, I feel weird for pointing it out, considering I’m pretty sure most of you aren’t 8. But I knew if I didn’t say it, it would be like a youtuber omitting “don’t forget to like and subscribe!” from their script. Just weird. One delightful discovery I didn’t realise until I read the book last year, however, was that Victor Frankenstein was never a doctor. He was just some student with delusions of grandeur! Which to me, is absolutely perfect and which my students found hilarious. To quote Buzz Lightyear “I don’t believe that mans ever been to medical school.” But enough bout the backstory, let’s now talk about the story…story.

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The basic plot of Frankenstein or The Modern Prometheus is about Victor Frankenstein, a young student who attempts and ultimately succeeds in creating a creature out of various body parts. However when he looks at the monster he’s created, he’s horrified and abandons the creature. From there on his story descends into suffering as his life unravels. The creature is responsible for killing his loved ones. However unlike movie depictions, the monster is eloquent, able to communicate with the “cruel creator” who has shunned him. He insists Victor create him a mate, someone exactly like him, as he has been shunned by society no matter how kind or educated he attempts to be. After A LOT of back-and-forth and intense Hamlet like internal suffering (and I mean that in the most derogatory way possible) Victor finally agrees. But then he changes his mind when he’s almost finished, because the creature grins creepily at him and scares him out of his mind. In revenge, the monster kills Frankenstein’s new bride and shortly after, Victors father dies of grief. This in turn leads Victor on a quest to hunt the monster down and destroy him, but he ultimately dies as he grows too sick and weak. The monster returns, weeps over Victor’s body and, full of remorse, he travels to the freezing north to die.

It's an incredibly deep, dark and depressing tale full of hubris, suffering and death. I don’t think I was wrong when, during a later book club, after another student asked me “miss how did Frankestien end?” I replied “Pretty much everyone died. It was great.” Which, again, they found funny. Bless them for humouring me.

You may have already seen a basic link between Victor Frankenstein and Prometheus. Prometheus being the creator of humans and Frankenstein a creator of a human-like creature. However Prometheus is a god, a Titan, and Frankenstein is just a man. So is Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein a tale of caution for men? A warning that if you attempt to act like a god, you will fail horrendously? Hubris leading to the downfall of man isn’t exactly an uncommon story, especially not in Greek mythology. I think its safe to say that Shelley was conveying this in her story. Victor is a young man full of arrogance and ego, convinced of his own brilliance despite the trepidation of those around him, those who dismiss him or warn him against following the path he’s on. And come on, look at the egos she was surrounded with. She was trapped in a house with LORD BRYRON for goodness sake- that’s like THE EGO. Despite generally liking Byron, she had to be at least inspired by how highly the men in her company thought of themselves. It also goes without saying that all those men died long before she did, though she couldn’t have known that at the time- I just thought it was kind of poetic in a horrible way.

But I also think there’s more to it than simply mankind ego bad= all are punished. Prometheus, after all, is forethought, and Victor Frankenstein doesn’t have any sense of forethought. I’m reminded of Jurassic Park, in that Frankenstein was so wrapped up in whether or not he could he didn’t stop to think about whether or not he should. In fact, you could compare him also to Epimetheus, afterthought, too- Prometheus’ brother who accepts Pandora and therefore the downfall of man.

But going back to Prometheus and Frankenstein, both of them show defiance against the divine. For Prometheus, he defies the will of Zeus to give life-saving fire to the humans. For Frankenstein, he defies the will of the Christian God’s control over life and death by creating life himself. Both Prometheus and Frankenstein ultimately suffer for their defiance. However, Prometheus’ suffering is often seen as tragic, romantic, and he is seen as a hero helping to save man. He is seen as a creator of man in a time before Pandora, when humans generally lead peaceful happy lives. Eventually, his good deeds towards humans are rewarded in spite of his defiance of Zeus’ will. It is a human, or at least a demigod, Heracles who ends up freeing him after all. Frankenstein doesn’t share such a fate. He is destined to suffer until he dies. His creation, too, starts off kindly and eventually turns monstrous due to the world and society rejecting him. Frankenstein’s creature is born to suffer and die after nothing but a miserable existence.

These comparisons are not unintentional. We know that Mary Shelley read Ovid and the Shelleys followed the Pythogorian philosophy of vegetarianism. Pythagoras believed that vegetarianism was a path to a civilised society and believed that eating meat was a sign of barbarism. For him, Prometheus was a villain. He gave humans fire, which could not only be used to destroy each other, but could also be used to cook meat. So Prometheus gave us the tools of our own destruction. It’s interesting that one of the first lessons the monster learns is that fire burns, fire is hot, and the monster himself is a vegetarian. In fact this is what the creature says about his encounter with fire:

One day, when I was oppressed by cold, I found a fire which had been left by some wandering beggars, and was overcome with delight at the warmth I experienced from it. In my joy I thrust my hand into the live embers, but quickly drew it out again with a cry of pain. How strange, I thought, that the same cause should produce such opposite effects!

Here he comments on the fact that fire has the potential to comfort and destroy. This is symbolic for mankind as a whole, especially at the time of Shelley’s writing. Shelley was a pretty goth lady, but she had a good reason. Surrounded by death throughout her young life, she was fascinated by the scientific discussions of her time. In particular she thought it interesting how scientists had been able to make dead frog limbs move by electrifying them. At this time there was a lot of anxiety about the scientific community, the idea that they’re meddling in things they shouldn’t be. Questions were raised about what happens if the scientific community goes too far.

And yet one cannot deny the good intentions of both Prometheus and Frankenstein either. Even Frankenstein, full of hubris as he is, was attempting to find ways to end sickness and human ailments. Yet both are punished for it. Both go too far one way or another. But here the similarities end.

Because the whole point of Frankenstein is that he doesn’t stop to think about the consequences of his actions. As I mentioned before, there is very little forethought to his actions and a heck of a lot of afterthought. Most of the book is him recounting his tale to a sailor, he is journeying back through all the mistakes which lead him to that point, unable to stop his past self from making those mistakes. This is the key difference between Prometheus and Frankenstein. When Victor finally stops and sees oh no! Consequences! He does what any arrogant, wealthy student hucked up on his own self-importance and getting by on his daddies money would do. He runs away with his tail between his legs. He doesn’t care for the creature he’s created, he rejects it and makes it fend for itself and in return, it destroys his life. Prometheus, on the other hand, loved the humans he created. He cared about them so much he put himself at risk in order to save them and I just realised that I’m saying them instead of us, like I’m not a human. Surprise twist Sabrina is a sentient owl! Hoot hoot! But regardless, Prometheus knew that his actions would end in his suffering. He knew he wouldn’t be able to get away from Zeus wrath yet he did it anyway.

But seriously, Victor Frankenstein is a desperately selfish, egotistical man. There are so many opportunities he has to accept accountability and every time he fails. He allows a young lady to be executed for a murder he knows his creature committed, he says he will create a mate for the creature and yet acts all surprised pikachu face when the creature kills his best friend and his new bride after he goes back on his word. There were many times I wanted to reach through the pages and throttle him. I’m wondering if I’m channelling any Mary Shelley energy from her watching her male companions argue over the concept of reanimation during those stormy nights in Geneva.

So calling Frankenstein the modern Prometheus makes sense to me, in that Victor Frankenstein is just a man, with similarities to Prometheus and his myths yet, he is still only a man. He is not a god or a titan, and he is destined to fail in his pursuit. There are similarities to Prometheus yes, but I think there are more differences too, like they are two sides of the same coin. Prometheus accepts his fate but Victor continues to run from it, yet suffering comes for them both. Both make choices to create humans, Prometheus with love and care, Frankenstein with good but egotistical intentions. Shelley borrows from Promethean myth, but doesn’t copy it entirely.

In fact there are other similarities too, with Frankenstein considering himself a modern God. He imagines being worshipped by a litany of creations before deciding that oh no! My creature is scary! Run away run away! Because NEWSFLASH FRANKENSTEIN, YOU AREN’T GOD, YOU DIDN’T EVEN FINISH UNIVERSITY YOU STUPID COLLEGE DROP OUT. UUUUGH. Sorry I just hate him so much. I mean, Victor Frankenstein in the modern era would totally be a podcast bro you know what I mean (she’s says whilst she’s also now technically a podcaster) Ugh. Anyways, the creature too, adopts this and refers to himself as a new Adam. But really, he’s less of an Adam and more of a Lucifer. Because Frankenstein abandons his creation, the creature becomes angry and defiant and wants to destroy him, much the same way Satan wishes to destroy god. Also Mary Shelley’s story proves that, unlike the myth of Pandora, men don’t need women actually! They can destroy their own lives all on their own! So THERE! Checkmate, Ovid.

So in summary we have a tangle of Greek mythology mixed with Christianity mixed with the scientific fears of Mary Shelley’s time, all wrapped up in the dreadful aftermath of one of the biggest natural disasters of the early modern era and sparked by days of endless debates with some of the most insufferable but also very talented men of the era. That’s the recipe for creating a new genre of fiction apparently.

Speaking of new genres of fiction, next week is the penultimate episode of the first series of Greeks and Geeks, where we’ll be taking a look at the cozy fantasy genre, a genre of fantasy rapidly growing in popularity. From The Hobbit to Legends and Lattes, we’ll be discussing the rise and rise of this lovely genre and explaining why people are so drawn to it.

The question for this episode is 

Until next time thank you for listening to this episode of Greeks and Geeks: Myth and Fantasy explained. I’m your host Sabrina and I’m Geeking Out! Bye!!!