Of gods and men: Monsters in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and Ridley Scott’s Prometheus

Abstract

This article is a comparison between Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and the 2012 Ridley Scott movie Prometheus focusing on the destructive consequences of the conflict between the creators and the created each deeming the other as monstrous. Both the novel and the movie are about finding answers to fundamental questions as to one’s nature of existence motivated by a human curiosity and desire for immortality leading to a conflict with one’s creator. The main concern here is to lay bare the blurriness of the lines allegedly separating the monsters from their creators, elucidating the monstrosity of the creators themselves as a product of hubris which eventually leads to a transgression of the boundaries between God/man, man/monster, good/evil and so forth.