Examine the concept of the heroic personality as manifested in the fictional figures of Prometheus, Frankenstein, and Faust

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

Nineteenth-century intellectuals and Romantics celebrated the heroic personality, especially in its dedication to the causes of liberty and equality. In literature, writers created fictional heroes whose moral strength was tested by the forces of evil. The myth of Prometheus served as a popular model for this hero. According to legend, Prometheus challenged Zeus by stealing from his home on Mount Olympus the sacred fire (source of divine wisdom and creative inspiration) and bestowing this great gift upon humankind, an act that ennobled him. Romantic writers embraced the figure of Prometheus as the suffering champion of humanity—a symbol of freedom and a deliverer whose noble ambitions had incurred the wrath of the gods.
This character recurred in many novels, such as Mary Shelley's novel Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus. The scientist Frankenstein, a modern Prometheus, suffers punishment for his ambitious designs when the creature, excluded from the normal life of ordinary mortals, betrays his creator. Like the fallen Lucifer, Frankenstein's creation ultimately becomes a figure of heroic evil. Goethe's Faust was perhaps the most compelling representation of the Romantic hero. In Faust, Goethe uncovers the tragic tension between heroic aspirations and human limitations. Faust is a character with an insatiable appetite for all knowledge and experience. His unquenched thirst for experience leads him to pursue a life of action for the public good, undertaking a vast land-reclamation project, which provides habitation for millions of people. In this Promethean effort to benefit humanity, the aged and near-blind Faust finally finds personal fulfillment. He dies, however, before fully realizing his dream, thus never declaring the satisfaction he craves. The heroic Faust is a timeless symbol of the Western drive for consummate knowledge, experience, and the will to power over nature.