The Herculean Echoes in Frankenstein
Many critics have discussed the echoes of Faust and Prometheus in Mary Shelley's masterpiece Frankenstein, the Modern Prometheus, exploring the limits of ambition and rebelliousness and their moral implications. However, there is a mythological resemblance in this novel that has received almost no critical comment. In many ways, Victor's forlorn and unnatural creature offers poignant echoes of Hercules, the greatest and most fearsome of all the heroes in the Greek mythology, yet also one of the loneliest and most tragic figures in the Western canon. Keywords Hercules; misfit; self sacrifice; majestic