The story of Frankenstein or modern Prometheus

The deep night of the torrential rain, the corpse has been revived, something evil has awakened, his body is huge, yellow hazy eyes, a monster with a horrible look is rushing towards an innocent scientist, as if wanting to touch him! Mary Shelley had such a strange dream. 200 years ago today, Frankenstein created the world's first science fiction as a result of this dream.


It is a mystery how such an unprecedented idea came to the mind of 19-year-old Mary Shelley. In the summer of 1817, while retiring to Lakeside, Switzerland, he turned his attention to literature. At this time Mary Shelley, her husband Percy Bishie Shelley, the poet Lord Byron and Dr. John Polydary made a very interesting bet on who could write a good ghost story. Undoubtedly Mary Shelley won that bet! Although at first he had no idea. According to his commentary, thinking about this he fell asleep and had a strange dream.


First page of the first edition of Shelley Frankenstein (Vol. 1)

In 1818, Frankenstein was first published as a three-volume science fiction without the author's name! The full title of the book was Frankenstein or the Modern Prometheus. In Greek mythology, the god Prometheus created flesh-and-blood people from clay, which coincided with Victor Frankenstein, the protagonist of this fiction. Many thought that the author of the fiction was Percy B. Shelley. But in 1831, Mary Shelley's name appeared in the second edition of the book and it became very popular.

The book has been translated into hundreds of languages ​​and more than 130 films have been made based on Frankenstein's story. In 1910, Thomas Edison made the first film about Frankenstein, which was silent and only 12 minutes long. In addition, many characters in English literature are inspired by Frankenstein. Charles Dickens’s Great Expectations or Robert Louis Stevenson’s ‘Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde's characters are indebted to Frankenstein.


‘Frankenstein’ is a German word. ‘Frank’ is basically the name of a Germanic tribe and ‘Stein’ means stone. There is also a castle in Germany called Frankenstein. There was a crazy scientist named Conard Dippel who used to dig graves and do research. According to many, Mary Shelley heard about this castle and scientist in Germany, although she herself did not say anything about it.


Yet we use the word Frankenstein to mean something terrible or evil. But the funny thing is that the main character in this story is a scientist, his full name is Victor Frankenstein. And according to the story, no name of the monster created by him is mentioned. The big lesson of this story is how to lose everything in order to fully unravel the mystery of nature.