What is Frankenstein or--The Modern Prometheus about?

Answer 1

Frankenstein, or--The Modern Prometheus is about a Swiss student of "natural philosophy," or what would now be called science, named Victor Frankenstein, who stumbles onto the cause of generation and life in the course of his studies, and, indeed, gains the capability of bestowing animation on lifeless matter. Using this knowledge and this capability to create a manlike creature whom he assembles from fragments of corpses in a frenzy of mad pride, the vain, reckless Victor finds his creation repulsive once the creature is completed, becomes terrified, and will not meet his responsibilities to his own creation.

The creature, after living almost two years with the De Lacey family of disgraced French aristocrats, discovers that his own creator has abandoned him and obtains his revenge by killing, or causing the deaths of, all of Victor's innocent loved ones, but when Victor dies aboard a ship whose captain, Robert Walton, had been on a quest of his own only to have his crew convince him to abandon it, the Frankenstein "monster," as he has by this time become, mourns his own very guilty creator, whom he had refused to kill directly.

The family name "Frankenstein" has become a reference to a creator destroyed by his own creations. The numerous film versions, however, beginning with the 1931 version directed by James Whale for Universal Pictures under Carl Laemmle Jr.'s funding and starring Colin Clive as the creator, named "Henry" Frankenstein rather than Victor, versus Boris Karloff as the "monster," have resulted in wrongful references to the creature, rather than his creator, by the name "Frankenstein."