Shelley, Mary - Frankenstein (3)

Victor has always been interested in science and in the mysteries of creation .
After a happy childhood, when he goes to Ingolstadt university he gets in touch with grief for the first time in his life.
In fact, Victor is the “Modern Prometheus”, who he had believed he could produce by himself and without love a new humanity, but who is in reality a bearer of death .
From that moment his identity breaks up : the utopian boy of the past that hides the other secret Frankenstein.
Victor is the perfect figure of the good scientist that wants to contribute as much as possible to science and human development , without any hidden purpose and above all without any intention of breaking the rules of civil community life .
Inside himself, Victor lives a conflict between good and evil, between possible and impossible, between reason and belief, first in an unconscious form of a longing for something new and important , but the creation is imperfect .
Frankenstein changes the established order only because he wanted to try the creation of a new man.
He replaces another creator in the universal order, in this way he does an act of daring pride, typical of the nineteenth century romantic man, and he will pay for this action.
Frankenstein ‘s real fault was trying to find to extend the man ‘s power, not only beyond the “laws” established by the religious tradition , but beyond the limit set by the reason too : now that his turn has come , he was becoming unreasonable and the origin of evil for humanity .
His crime was supplying the monster with the best and the worst feelings that could be in a man, to render him from an intellectual viewpoint a real man, without giving him the corresponding physical qualities.
Victor realised that he has made a terrible mistake only after he had heard the Monster’s long story, maybe because he ‘s privileged, because he’s got his parents, some friends, the love of a girl or maybe because he was too busy with his scientific research.
At the beginning he tries to find a remedy for his mistake, he commits himself to create a companion for the Monster.
It ‘s no longer science that inspires him in this second creation, but compassion, the human care for the being that he created, that was claiming the parent – child relationship towards him (in fact he tries to set up a relationship with Victor without any results ) .
After his meeting with the monster on the mountain, Frankenstein isn’t overcome by a guilty feeling but by the logic of reason, that shows him how abominable is the action that he’ s going to do towards humanity and evolution .
He’s aware of the sacrifice he is damned to , but he is not so much aware of the sacrifice his family are damned to, in the name of reason, of scientific correctness and universal good for humanity :it is better his death or the death of his relatives and friends than a scourge for humanity .

Myth
The word myth derives from “mythéo”, Greek term that means" tell or narrate" and in fact it consists in a fantastic narration of deeds carried out from divine figures or ancestors.
The myth can give an apparently rational explanation of the natural phenomena, a legitimization of social institution, and more generically a solution to those problems that the religious experience places the collectivity.
The main characteristics of the myths are that they spread orally before being written and that they perpetuated themself in the tradition of people.
Two typologies of myth can be distinguished: naturalistic which has the purpose of giving a meaning to the phenomena of nature, in particular of explaining the historical origin of the cosmos, historical myth which explains meaning of social life and the fundamental institutions of the State.
The myth we are dealing with is of historical type.
Prometeo is the protagonist of the myth which explains the origins and the first form of civilization of humanity.
Relatively late traditions narrate that Prometeo had modelled the first man and the first animals with water and clay.
In Platone’s"Protagora" we can find a modified version of the probably more ancient myth: gods created the first man and the first animals underground, then asked Prometeo and his brother Epimeteoto to take the light and distribute quality and ability to men.
Epimeteo with irresponsible attitude gave everything to the animals and the man remained defenseless and naked.
Prometeo, whose name in Greek means" provident" to help them stole the fire in the attemp to improve their existence, just as Frankestein takes possession from God of the power to give life to a lifeless body to allow, as the same scientist declares,"the persons who love themselves not to have to leave".
That of Prometeo becomes therefore a sort of figure of connection between divine plan and human plan of the existence.
Considering now Prometeo’s noble behaviour comparing him with the man it is possible to make one distinction between the god of Mount Olympus and Frankenstein.