Post-Postmodern Prometheuses

Rob James

November 1, 2025

I own not one but five versions of Frankenstein, but I hadn’t noticed that Guillermo del Toro. the director, writer and co-producer of the current release, had penned years ago an introduction to one of them: The New Annotated Frankenstein (edited by attorney Leslie S. Klinger, as with so many of the Norton classics; afterword by my Stanford English professor Anne K. Mellor, 2017). “All storytelling is autobiography,” del Toro writes, and sees the historic achievements of Romanticism as evergreen. A woman born in a world of men, a latter-day Pygmalion creating a Galatea, the teenage Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (1797-1851) “concoct[ed] a most contemporary, modern parable that is impossible to outgrow and almost impossible to capture fully in an other medium.” (I would say he has done very well in the latest cinematic foray.) “The impossibility of death is, for me, the greatest of the tragedies for the monster.”

Here is my own summary and reactions—spoilers galore, but this is A Work That Everyone Should Read.(TM). My post title alludes to “The Post-Modern Prometheus” episode of The X-Files (S5 E5, 1977).

Frankenstein; or, the Modern Prometheus (1818)

The epigraph is from John Milton’s Paradise Lost—”Did I solicit thee/From darkness to promote me?” Shelley’s 1831 introduction tells story of rainy Geneva summer of 1815 (during the global cooling occasioned by the eruption of Tambora) with ghost stories told by Lord Byron, Percy Bysshe Shelley, John Polidori (whose tale “The Vampyr” gives rise to Bram Stoker’s later Dracula) and Mary.

VOL. I   Brief Preface by Mary herself, to an epistolary novel in the form of letters written by Captain Robert Walton to his sister Margaret Walton Saville (initials “MWS,” get it?).

Walton, questing for glory, travels toward North Pole via St. Petersburgh and Archangel. Stuck in midocean ice he sees a huge figure sledding in the distance, and later he picks up nearby Victor Frankenstein, who tells Walton the following story, which Walton conveniently transcribes and sends to Margaret:

The creator’s tale, by Victor Frankenstein. (We are now in a book inside a book, starting with Chapter I.)

I. Genovese. Father saves merchant and marries the latter’s daughter. The father’s sister marries an Italian and leaves a cousin Elizabeth Lavenza. Victor has schoolfriend Henry Clerval and younger brothers Ernest and little William. Fascinated by alchemy and electricity, seeks glory.

II.  Attends University of Ingolstadt in Bavaria, Ridiculed for alchemy. Mother dies (as had Mary’s own mother in Mary’s infancy), focusing Victor on secret of life.

III.  “After days and nights of incredible labour and fatigue, I succeeded in discovering the cause of generation and life; nay, more, I became myself capable of bestowing animation upon lifeless matter.” (I always admire Mel Brooks for having Gene Wilder quote this in Young Frankenstein (1974). As Klinger says, “As is the case in so many works of speculative fiction that followed Frankenstein, the ‘secret’ is never revealed.”) Makes eight-foot-tall creature out of body parts.

IV. Runs away from creature, awakes to see him pawing at bed curtains. Sleeps outside. Clerval arrives.

V.  Elizabeth’s letter: Justine Mortiz governess to William.

VI.  Father’s letter: William has been murdered. Elizabeth had given him a portrait of his mother and it is missing, presumably stolen by murderer; Elizabeth blames herself. Victor and Clerval walk to Geneva and along way Victor sees the creature, and knows the creature murdered his brother. But who will believe it?  Justine has been found with the portrait and is accused of murder.

VII.  Victor knows Justine is innocent but cannot prove it. Justine is eloquent and confesses to a crime she did not commit in order to receive absolution for her other sins. She is presumably hanged.

VOL. II.  I.  Victor lives in feat of what wickedness the creature might do next.

II.  Travels to Chamonix and Mont Blanc. Quotes Percy Shelley on fleeting joy and sorrow. Creature appears, demanding that Victor listen to his tale, which Victor now conveniently quotes so that Walton can conveniently re-quote it:

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The creature’s tale, by the creature. (Now we have a book inside a book inside a book!)

III.  Recalls coming to life, running away, finding cloak. Discovers fire can be both a friend and an enemy (like science, eh?). Hides behind hut of blind old man [De Lacey] and his daughter Angela and young man Felix. Sound of violin, later guitar, enchants him.

IV. Creature secretly helps with firewood, learns language.

V.  Arabian woman Safie arrives on horseback. She is taught French, conveniently, and the creature learns as well. Learns history, develops sense of friendlessness.

VI.  Tale of De Lacey and the Turks, and the kindesses extended by De Lacey to Safie’s father.

VII.  Creature reads Plutarch, Paradise Lost and The Sorrows of Young Werther. Creature finally speaks with blind De Lacey, but Felix, Safie and Angela arrive and and horrified by him; though he could kill Felix he leaves instead.

VIII.  Travel.  Shot, recovers from bullet wound. Near Geneva, he sees a beautiful child whom he resolves to seize and educate as his companion; the boy protests that he is the son of M. Frankenstein, so the creature kills him and takes the portrait. Plants the portrait in pocket of poor Justine’s dress.

[The end of The creature’s tale.]

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Creature orders Victor to create a companion for him, a female “who would not deny herself to him.”

IX. Victor refuses, but yields consent when the creature offers to go to South America with his bride and never again trouble humanity.

VOL. III.  I.  Victor resolves to visit a scientist in Britain, will marry Elizabeth on his return.

II.  Victor with Clerval travels to London, Oxford, Derby, Lake country, but neglects his promise. Thence to Edinburgh, Perth to visit the scientist, then faroff Orkneys where he begins his loathsome task.

III. Has second thoughts: what if the female hates or loathes the creature? What if she too is evil? What of their offspring? Sees creature, who had followed Victor the whole way. Victor destroys the partially completed bride, breaks his vow. The creature commands him to resume: “You are my creator but I am your master.” [Note that Shelley’s novel was banned in South Africa.] Victor refuses, whereupon the creature threatens: “I shall be with you on your wedding-night.” Victor escapes by ship, perhaps with Clerval, and comes ashore not in England or Scotland but in Ireland.

IV. Cleval washes up in Ireland dead. Victor is accused of murder and languishes in Irish prison. Father arrives, to see Victor freed because he has an alibi in the Orkneys. They travel to Dublin.

V.  From Dublin to Portsmouth to Le Havre back to Geneva. Victor tells his father that he himself is the cause of the deaths of William, Justine and Clerval. Elizabeth letter: do you love another? Victor letter: “I will tell you my tale the day after we wed.”

VI.  Creature kills Elizabeth at inn. Victor tells the magistrate his story, but the magistrate thinks he is crazy.

VII.  Victor leaves Geneva, chased by or chasing the creature. Goes down Rhone to Mediterranean, Black Sea, Tartary, Russia and thence north towards the Pole.

[The end of Victor’s Frankenstein.]

[Back to the rest of Walton’s letters to Margaret.]

Victor and Walton have a more general conversation. Victor regrets that he wasted his life trying to overturn science and life. Sailors force Walton to agree to head back south. The ice breaks and Victor resolves to keep heading north to find the creature. Walton enters his cabin later to find the creature has just murdred Victor. “I have destroyed him by destroying all he loved.” The creature declares that he will forthwith kill himself by immolation. [Cue image of Terminator in the T2 movie, lowering himself into the molten steel.] Vows “I shall die,” jumps overboard.  [Ah, but did the creature ever follow through on his vow? Mary Shelley doesn’t say.]

{The end of Walton’s letters to Margaret.]

{The end of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein novel.]

PREVIEW OF COMING ATTRACTIONS (“let’s all go to the lobby, let’s all go to the lobby…”)

Bram Stoker, Dracula (1897).

Robert Louis Stevenson, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1886).