Prometheus Essay
When I was reading “Prometheus”, I came upon a lot of similarities between the story and Frankenstein: The Modern Prometheus. I believe Frankenstein: The Modern Prometheus was a good name for Mary Shelley’s book for multiple reasons. One reason was that both Prometheus and Victor, despite what people said, gave very valuable but dangerous things to both society and individual persons. Another reason might be that both Victor and Prometheus had to suffer for their bad decisions. Both Frankenstein: The Modern Prometheus and “Prometheus” share many similarities through both their tone and morale.
In Frankenstein: The Modern Prometheus, the tone of the subject to the author simply screams disapproval and a little bit of appreciation. When Mary Shelley first writes of Victor creating the monster, she shows excitement through her writing when she brings up the idea that life could be created in a lab and given to a lifeless being. But, later on in the book, when she is writing for Victor’s character, she clearly expresses more hatred and disapproval of the idea of the giving of life to lifeless beings.
She expresses these ideas through Frankenstein’s obvious anger and pain that is caused because of his reckless choice to create life. In terms of morale, Shelley makes it clear life is not meant to be created and given away. Life is supposed to be a very valuable thing to be appreciated every day. But yet, she still shows that good can come from a bad situation. These are some of the examples of Shelley’s intentional moral and tone in Frankenstein: The Modern Prometheus. In “Prometheus” the author’s tone also shows disapproval, but it presents positive thoughts about the gift of fire.
When Prometheus first gives fire to the people of the earth, the author expresses both his approval and disapproval of the situation through Zeus’s character and Prometheus’s character. When Zeus says, “Now that they have that gift, there’s no telling what they’ll do. Soon they will be so proud of their accomplishments, that they will think they are as great as gods. Who knows, they might even try to storm Olympus itself”, the author obviously is glowing with disapproval of the idea. However, the author admits that some good could come out of it, when Zues decides to give the humans a chance ather than burn them in their own flames. Now we are to the point where I must state both the stories’ similarities. Both the “Prometheus” and Frankenstein: The Modern Prometheus are similar in so many ways; I easily understand why Mary Shelley named her novel based on the Greek Myth. One of the most obvious reasons is the close similarity in the plot. Both Victor and Prometheus are punished for their decisions they had make. They also both think their choices will contribute to society, instead of being a menace to society. Another major similarity is that the authors of both stories present the same lesson throughout each story.
The lesson is that some things are meant to be left alone or else major consequences will follow because of the decision to tamper with those things. In Frankenstein: The Modern Prometheus, Victor tampers with the matter of life; his consequence is the torture of being responsible for the murder of those he loves. In the Greek Myth Prometheus, Prometheus tampers with the matter of fire; his consequence is being tortured every day for the rest of eternity by excruciating physical pain. Those are a couple of the many similarities between the two classic stories.
Both the Greek myth “Prometheus” and novel Frankenstein: The Modern Prometheus were good stories to read. They both provided very good life lessons. One is that if one is doing something that requires unwanted lying to those they love, one probably should not be doing it in the first place. Another is that one needs to take responsibility for his or her actions and accept it with open arms because it was due to their one decision. After reading these stories many similarities arose for me that helped me make the decision that Mary Shelley’s novel was appropriately named.
