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Posted: 11/2/2011
The word 'Frankenstein' has come to mean 'monsters of our own creation' but more generally, monsters beyond our control. 'Frankenstein' symbolizes a Faustian bargain made by man with his own technology. The '50's Sci-Fi classic, Forbidden Planet, echoed Shakespeare's The Tempest which, likewise, dealt with a related theme.
The world is now threatened with several forms of extinction: a slower demise from the disregard with which we have treated our environment, and the quick but not painless end from nuclear annihilation. Both monsters threaten to destroy us utterly. Both are our own creations. Both are the by-products of the Faustian bargain mankind has made with the universe. Both are 'Frankensteins' of our creation.
Since Mary Shelley published her story, Frankenstein's monster has usurped the name Frankenstein. Dr. Frankenstein, of course, had been a 'precocious student of natural philosophy from Geneva, where Mary Shelley was living with two gifted poets, her husband, Percy, and George Gordon, Lord Byron, the poet who wrote 'The Prisoner of Chillion'. It was at this time that the strange Gothic tale was given life.
The subtitle, 'The Modern Prometheus,' suggests a the three-fold tale in which the author makes the analogy between young Frankenstein's desire for scientific recognition and the Christian tale of Satan's fall from grace.