The Spark of Life
“I beheld a stream of fire issue from an old and beautiful oak… and so soon as the dazzling light vanished the oak had disappeared, and nothing remained but a blasted stump… eagerly inquired of my father the nature and origin of thunder and lightning. He replied, “‘Electricity.’”
- Victor Frankenstein to Robert Walton Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus, 1818
In Mary Shelley's day, many people regarded the new science of electricity with both wonder and astonishment. In Frankenstein, Shelley uses both the new sciences of chemistry and electricity and the older Renaissance tradition of the alchemists' search for the elixir of life to conjure up the Promethean possibility of reanimating the bodies of the dead.
expand the boundaries of the known world. It is Walton who first encounters Victor Frankenstein in the Arctic desperately searching for the monster he has created. The explorer becomes the only person to hear Victor Frankenstein's strange and tragic tale.
Victor Frankenstein, the monster finds himself "wretched, helpless, and alone."