A Narratological Comparison of the Morals of Herbert West and Victor Frankenstein : Traces of Prometheus through Shelley towards Lovecraft

Abstract: This essay explores the influence of contemporary values in two iterations of the Greek Prometheus myth and argues that the events portrayed in the two texts follow the structure of the myth and that the discourse in the texts shows traces of contemporary moral values. Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1818) is used as a starting point, but the focus is on Howard Phillip Lovecraft’s “Herbert West: Reanimator” (1922) as a later iteration of the Prometheus myth.The method for comparison is centred on disassembling the texts in accordance with the instructions found in Mieke Bal’s Narratology: Introduction to the Theory of Narrative (1997) to form tables of events. The functions of the events found in the Prometheus myth will then be used to sort the events from Lovecraft’s and Shelley’s work to assert focal points for comparing the moral values in the discourse.