Ms. Clark
12 AP Lit.
Understanding the Allusions in Frankenstein
Or, The Modern Prometheus
The Roman version of the legend of Prometheus as written by Ovid in Metamorphoses states:
Whether with particle of heavenly fire,
The God of Nature did his soul inspire;
And, pliant still retain’d th’ethereal energy:
Which wise Prometheus temper’d into paste,
And, mis’t with living steams, the godlike image caste…
From such rude principles our form began;
and earth was metamorphosed into man.
Prometheus created man, without woman, and according to Edith Hamilton’s Mythology, he
…thought out a way to make mankind superior. He fashioned them in a nobler shape
than the animals, upright like the gods; and then he went to heaven, to the sun, where he lit a
touch and brought down fire, a protection for men, far better than anything else, whether fur or
feathers or strength or swiftness.
Zeus was angry at Prometheus’ actions and reacted out of revenge:
…For a long time, certainly throughout the happy Golden Age,
only men were upon the earth; there were no women. Zeus created these later, in his anger at
Prometheus for caring so much for men. Prometheus had not only stolen fire for men; he had
also arranged that they should get the best part of any animal sacrificed and the gods the worst.
Zeus created woman, through Pandora, as an “evil to men, with a nature to do evil.” Although
beautiful to look at, Pandora (whose downfall was her curiosity) opened a box given to her by
Zeus. She was told never to open the box. But because of her overwhelming need to know, she
opened it and all the evils of the world – plagues, sorrow, and mischief – flew out to torment
mankind. However, one good thing was left in the box as she slammed the lid – Hope.
After Zeus had punished mankind through the creation of Pandora, a woman, Zeus turned his attention to
Prometheus and punished him by having his servants, Force and Violence, bind Prometheus,
To a high-piercing, headlong rock
In adamantine chains that none can break,
and told him,
Forever shall the intolerable present grind you down.
And he who will release you is not born.
Such fruit you read for your man-loving ways.
A god yourself, you did not dread God’s anger,
But gave to mortals honor not their due.
And therefore you must guard this joyless rockNo rest, no sleep no moment’s respite.
Groans shall your speech be, lamentation your only words.
Sources: http://www.dartmouth.edu/~milton/reading_room/pl http://www.wwnorton.com/college/english/nael/17century http://education.iinl.gob/bep.english/11/smyth.html Greenblatt, Stephen, ed. Norton Anthology of English Literature. New York, NY 2006 Paradise Lost by John Milton
The setting of Milton’s great epic encompasses Heaven, Hell, primordial Chaos, and the planet earth. It
features battles among immortal spirits, voyage through space, and lakes of fire. Yet its protagonists are a
married couple living in a garden, and its climax consists in eating of a piece of fruit. Paradise Lost is
ultimately about the human condition, the Fall that caused “all our woe,” and the promise and means of
restoration. It is also about knowing and choosing, about free will. Milton’s central characters – Satan,
Beelzebub, Abdiel, Adam, and Eve – are confronted with hard choices under the pressure of powerful
desires and sometimes devious temptations. This is a poem in which Satan leads a revolution against an
absolute monarch and in which questions of tyranny, servitude, and liberty are debated in a parliament in
Hell. Nothing in the epic tradition or in biblical interpretation can prepare us for the Satan who hurtles
into view in Book 1, with his awesome energy and defiance, incredible fortitude, and, above all,
magnificent rhetoric. For some readers, including Shelley and Blake, Satan is the true hero of the poem.
The poem’s truly epic action takes place not on the battlefield but in the moral and domestic arena.
Milton’s Adam and Eve are not conventional epic heroes, but neither are they the conventional Adam and
Eve. Their state of innocence is not childlike, tranquil and free of sexual desire. instead, the first couple
enjoy sex, experience tension and passion a, make mistakes of judgment and grow in knowledge. Their
task is to pune what is unruly in their own natures as they prune the vegetation in their garden, for both
have the capacity to grow wild. Their relationship exhibits gender hierarchy, but Milton’s early readers
may have been surprised by the fullness and complexity of Eve’s character and centrality of her role, not
only in the Fall but in the promise of restoration.
Milton's great epic (1667) is built upon the stories and myths — in the Bible and in the classical tradition
— through which Western men and women have sought to understand the meaning of their experience of
life. The foundation story, of course, is the Genesis account of the Creation of the world and of Adam and
Eve, culminating in the drama of their temptation and Fall.
Milton’s Hero: Unlike classics such as the Iliad and the Aeneid, Paradise Lost has no easily identified
hero. The most Achilles-like character in the poem is Satan…Another possibility for the hero of Paradise
Lost is the Son of God, but although he is an important force in the poem, the story is not ultimately about
him. The most likely possibility, therefore, is Adam. Adam resembles Aeneas in many respects: he is the
father of a new race, responsible for founding civilization on earth. But unlike Aeneas, Adam's primary
heroic act is not heroic at all: it is the first act of disobedience…If the quiet Adam is the true hero of
Paradise Lost, and Satan with all his heroic oratory is not, then Milton is simultaneously entering into a
dialogue with previous works about the nature of heroism, reconfiguring the old model, and effectively
redefining notions of heroism for his seventeenth-century English Protestant audience.
Milton’s God: Unlike the gods and goddesses of classical epics, whose desires and disagreements often
mirror those of humans, Milton's God is invisible and omnipresent, a being who cannot be considered an
individual so much as an existence. Milton's underlying claim in Paradise Lost is that he has been
inspired by his heavenly muse with knowledge of things unknowable to fallen humans…The Romantic
poet Percy Bysshe Shelley writes that Milton "alleged no superiority of moral virtue to his God over his
Devil" (A Defense of Poetry 527). Empson agrees, writing that God's "apparently arbitrary harshness is
intended to test us with baffling moral problems" (Empson 103), such as why a hierarchy is necessary in
Heaven at all, or why God would establish a complex arrangement of demonic and angelic guards to
prevent an adversary from traveling from Hell to Eden, only to call them off "as soon as [they] look like
succeeding" (112). One can explain these problems by recalling that God does not simply want absolute
obedience in his subjects, he wants the obedience of free beings. In his own words, "Not free, what proof
Sources: http://www.dartmouth.edu/~milton/reading_room/pl http://www.wwnorton.com/college/english/nael/17century http://education.iinl.gob/bep.english/11/smyth.html Greenblatt, Stephen, ed. Norton Anthology of English Literature. New York, NY 2006 could they have givn sincere / Of true allegiance, constant Faith or Love." (PL 3.103-4). Yet at times,
God's complexities do make him difficult to find trustworthy, while Satan's seemingly logical challenges
to his authority are quite appealing.
William Blake found Milton's depiction of God so far inferior to his depiction of Satan that he considered
Milton to be an unwitting Satanist (Flannagan, The Riverside Milton 322). There seems to be good
evidence for it: God's language is "flat, uncolored, unmetaphorical," compared with Satan's vivid and
inspiring rhetoric (321). But Stanley Fish presents a different theory: his thesis is that Milton deliberately
lets Satan seduce not only Adam and Eve, but the reader as well. Fish writes, "The reading experience
becomes the felt measure of man's loss" as the reader is first seduced by Satan's powerful and impressive
logic, then slowly realizes that the logic is in fact twisted and nonsensical (Surprised by Sin 39). The
reader emerges from the experience renewed with a greater sense of faith, which is the ultimate goal of
the poem.
Milton’s Marriage: John Milton's epic of theology and politics, heaven, hell, creation, free will, and
redemption features a human relationship at its center. Paradise is lost after Adam chooses to disobey
God, choosing, in Milton's imagination, Eve instead. Milton's Adam exclaims to Eve: "How can I live
without thee, how forgoe / Thy sweet Converse and Love so dearly joyn'd" (PL 9.908-9). In Genesis, the
story of Adam and Eve's fall is told in a single line: "she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave
also unto her husband with her; and he did eat" (Genesis 3:6). In Paradise Lost, Adam eats the fruit of
knowledge two hundred fourteen lines after Eve. Milton imagines an intervening mental strife unequalled
in the history of the world as Adam comes to choose love and death over rational knowledge of God. The
story is no longer one of disobedience, but man's disobedience of God in favor of a human
relationship…The newly created Adam desires any fit companion and laments "In solitude / What
happiness, who can enjoy alone…?" (PL8.364-5). Thomas Luxon observes that Adam, unlike God, is
incomplete without companionship, and this "single imperfection" (PL 8.423), unless it is overcome, will
occasion mankind's downfall (Single Imperfection 107), as the need for companionship will obstruct the
rational choice to prefer obedience to God above other necessities…Adam's progression from loneliness,
to inseparable devotion to a single partner, to his choice of Eve over God, is a theme that Milton develops
throughout his major poetic works…Thus, while Adam condemns Eve's actions, he seeks no other
companion: "Should God create another Eve, and I/ Another Rib afford yet loss of thee / Would never
from my heart… and from thy State / Mine never shall be parted, bliss or woe" (PL 9.911-16). After the
fall, however, lust quickly perverts the pure assertion of devotion and the wish for satisfying and
instructive conversation: as "that false Fruit/9… Carnal desire enflaming" (PL 9.1011-13). The fatal flaw
left an opening for the more dangerous human carnal desires that would distort human relationships. In
emphasizing the value of conversation, and other examples drawn from classical friendship, Milton
suggests a way to recreate the purity and fulfillment of the original marriage in a postlapsarian world.
Milton’s Knowledge: When Raphael comes to earth in Book 5, he explains to Adam the difference
between human knowledge, which is attained through discourse, and angelic knowledge, which is
attained through intuition. He says that the two types of knowledge differ "but in degree, of kind the
same," suggesting that if humans remain obedient they will eventually attain intuitive knowledge (PL
5.490). He is eager to explain to Adam the story of the war in Heaven and the creation of earth, but he
stops when Adam asks about the nature of the universe. He tells Adam, "Solicit not thy thoughts with
matters hid, / Leave them to God above, him serve and feare" (PL 8.167-8).
Sources: http://www.dartmouth.edu/~milton/reading_room/pl http://www.wwnorton.com/college/english/nael/17century http://education.iinl.gob/bep.english/11/smyth.html Greenblatt, Stephen, ed. Norton Anthology of English Literature. New York, NY 2006