Frankenstein
Prompt #20 · Frankenstein
Prompt Type: Symbol/Motif
Paradise Lost appears explicitly in the Creature's education and implicitly throughout the novel's structure and themes. Analyze how Shelley uses allusions to Milton's epic to explore questions of creation, fall, and the relationship between creator and created being. Explain how it contributes to the meaning of the work as a whole.
Quote 1
“Remember that I am thy creature; I ought to be thy Adam, but I am rather the fallen angel, whom thou drivest from joy for no misdeed.”
Chapter 10
Argument
This quote directly invokes Paradise Lost's central figures—Adam and Satan—as the Creature explicitly positions himself between these two Miltonic archetypes, revealing his awareness that Victor has failed as creator by denying him the Edenic innocence Adam enjoyed, forcing him instead into Satan's role of the unjustly expelled.
Quote 2
“Many times I considered Satan as the fitter emblem of my condition, for often, like him, when I viewed the bliss of my protectors, the bitter gall of envy rose within me.”
Chapter 15
Argument
Here the Creature's education in Paradise Lost evolves as he identifies Satan as 'the fitter emblem' of his condition, demonstrating how Milton's epic provides him the language to articulate his envy and exclusion from the domestic paradise he observes in the De Lacey family.
Quote 3
Letters, Walton, _in continuation._
Argument
Victor's self-comparison to Milton's 'archangel who aspired to omnipotence' completes the novel's structural parallel to Paradise Lost by casting the creator himself as a fallen Satan figure, inverting the expected roles and suggesting that ambition, not creation itself, constitutes the true fall.
Quote 4
“Satan had his companions, fellow devils, to admire and encourage him, but I am solitary and abhorred.”
Chapter 15
Argument
This quote explicitly references Paradise Lost's Satan while emphasizing the Creature's even greater isolation—he lacks even the 'fellow devils' who accompanied Milton's fallen angel, demonstrating how Shelley uses the epic to explore the relationship between creator and created by showing Victor has denied his creation the companionship even Hell afforded.
Quote 5
“The fallen angel becomes a malignant devil. Yet even that enemy of God and man had friends and associates in his desolation; I am alone.”
Letters, Walton, _in continuation._
Argument
In the novel's final pages, the Creature's reference to 'the fallen angel becomes a malignant devil' traces his complete transformation through the Paradise Lost framework, showing how his fall from innocent Adam-figure to 'malignant devil' mirrors Milton's Satan while emphasizing that Victor's abandonment has left him more utterly alone than any figure in the epic.