What Victor is saying is that in order to create a living being from the dead, he must haunt the graveyards like a human ghoul and experiment on live animals to "animate" "lifeless clay," being the deceased remains of human beings. From this admission, it is abundantly obvious that Victor, like Prometheus, sees "clay" as the foundation for creation, a substance which is part of the earth itself and which allows skilled hands to mold it into any shape or form desired.
In Chapter Five of Frankenstein, "on a dreary night of November," Victor describes "the accomplishment of my toils" while surrounded by "the instruments of life." This is the pivotal creation scene in the novel which some scholars have mentioned as having "not enough substance related to exactly how Victor created his monster" (Smith, 256). In this setting, Victor, full of anxiety and fearful of the unknown, attempts to figure out how "I might infuse a spark of being into the lifeless thing that lay before my feet." Certainly, the use of electricity in the form of galvanic batteries was his only option, and at "one in the morning" by the "glimmer of half-extinguished light," Victor observes "the dull yellow eye of the creature open" amid heavy breathing and much movement of its "agitated" limbs (Shelley, 45).
Once again, we can sense of presence of Prometheus as he breathes life into the lifeless clay of the earth which lies before his feet. Incidentally, Victor describes his newly-risen Creature as having yellow skin, black hair and lips and pearly-white teeth, colors which are most closely associated with the earth, such as in yellow ocher clay used for modeling purposes by sculptors. In addition, this creation scenario is replete with regeneration, meaning that the Creature, composed of dead body parts from the graveyard, is much like the liver/heart of Prometheus which regenerates itself on a daily basis so that the eagle can feed on it as Prometheus lies bounded to the rock.
As described by the playwright Aeschylus, Prometheus was an "immortal god," an "omniscient seer," and a "heroic sufferer" and possessed an "inflexible mind," traits which are certainly present in the form of the Creature, whom Victor sees as a "devil" and a "daemon." For example, in Chapter 10 of Frankenstein, upon their first meeting in the "cold gale of the mountains," the Creature states that he is "miserable beyond all living things" and relates "Have I not suffered enough that you seek to increase my misery?" (Shelley, 73). In this scene, the reader is inundated with much discussion that borders on some type of romantic treatise written by Lord Byron or Percy Shelley. For instance, the Creature tells Victor "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...I was benevolent and good; misery made me a fiend" (Shelley, 74).
Without a doubt, the Creature is an "immortal god," for he cannot die a mortal death and is doomed to wander the earth amid the "desert mountains and dreary glaciers," he is also...
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