Download Frankenstein Study Guide

Frankenstein Study Guide
Honors English 10 – Ms. Peckins
I. Background:
What were Mary Shelley’s motivations in writing the novel? What connections exist between her own life and the
book?
II.. Frankenstein Literary Terms (on worksheet) – know the definitions and examples of all of the terms.
allusion
frame tale
Romanticism
dramatic irony
metaphor
science fiction
dynamic character
foreshadowing
character
mood
simile
static character
antagonist
protagonist
narrator
theme
epistolary novel imagery
setting
III. Foil characters. How are they similar and different?
Victor and the creature
IV. Discussion and Short Answer:
Victor and Elizabeth
Victor and Henry
1. How is the monster like humans?
What does he want from life?
2. How have the creature’s experiences shaped him?
3. What does the creature want from Victor?
4. How do you feel about the creature in the beginning, middle and end of the novel?
Do you like him? Do your
feelings change?
5. How does Victor Frankenstein view personal responsibility?
6. Why is Frankenstein’s creature never given a name?
7. Do you think the creature is justified in declaring an “ever-lasting war” against the human species and his creator?
Support your answer with specific evidence .
8. Does the creature bear responsibility for the suffering he causes, or is Frankenstein ultimately responsible?
9. Why is companionship or love an important part of the human experience?
10. Why does the creature choose to die at the end of the novel? What does his choice suggest about his
connection to Frankenstein?
11. Place Frankenstein’s creature in modern times. Suppose he had a family that raises him, includes him, and even
enrolls him in school. How might today’s society treat Victor’s creature differently? How would it mimic the time
period of the novel?
V. Important Quotes. Explain speaker, context, literary devices, and significance.
1. “I feel a cold northern breeze play upon my cheeks, which braces my nerves, and fills me with delight. Do you
understand this feeling? This breeze, which has travelled from the regions towards which I am advancing, gives me
a foretaste of those icy climes.”
2. “I have no friend, Margaret: when I am glowing with enthusiasm of success, there will be none to participate my
joy; if I am assailed by disappointment, no one will endeavour to sustain me in dejection.”
3. “Unhappy man! Do you share my madness? Have you drunk also of the intoxicating draught? Hear me – let me
reveal my tale, and you will dash the cup from your lips!”
4. “Learn from me, if not by my precepts, at least by my example, how dangerous is the acquirement of knowledge
and how much happier that man is who believes his native town to be the world, than he who aspires to become
greater than his nature will allow.”
5. “A human being in perfection ought always to preserve a calm and peaceful mind, and never to allow passion or
a transitory desire to disturb his tranquility. I do not think that the pursuit of knowledge is an exception to this rule.
If the study to which you apply yourself has a tendency to weaken your affections, and to destroy your taste for
those simple pleasures in which no alloy can possibly mix, then that study is certainly unlawful, that is to say, not
befitting the human mind. If this rule were always observed; if no man allowed any pursuit whatsoever to interfere
with the tranquility of his domestic affections, Greece had not been enslaved; Caesar would have spared his country;
America would have been discovered more gradually; and the empires of Mexico and Peru had not been destroyed.”
6. “I cannot describe to you the agony that these reflections inflicted upon me: I tried to dispel them, but sorrow
only increased with knowledge. Oh, that I had forever remained in my native wood, nor known nor felt beyond the
sensations of hunger thirst and heat!”
7. “Nothing is more painful to the human mind as a great and sudden change. The sun might shine, or the clouds
might lower: but nothing could appear to me as it had one the day before. A fiend had snatched from me every
hope of future happiness: no creature had ever been so miserable as I was; so frightful an event is single in the
history of man.”
8. “You hate me, but your abhorrence cannot equal that with which I regard myself. I look on the hands which
executed the deed; I think on the heart in which the imagination of it was conceived, and long for the moment
when these hands will meet my eyes, when that imagination will haunt my thoughts no more.”
9. “’That is also my victim!’ he exclaimed: ‘in his murder my crimes are consummated; the miserable series of my
being is wound to its close! Oh, Frankenstein! Generous and self-devoted being! What does it avail that I now ask
thee to pardon me? I, who irretrievably destroyed thee by destroying all thou lovedst.’”
VI. Themes:
Theme Topic
What is the author saying about this topic?
Romantic Themes:
Theme Topic
What is the author saying about this topic?
VII. Essay:
1. Frankenstein and his creation are two tormented souls. What role does nature play in their lives?
2.Examine the use of frame tale in this novel. How are parallel structures, events, characters, etc. used? To what
effect?
3. What roles do female characters play in the novel? What does is Mary Shelley revealing about women’s roles in
the 19th century? 19. What role does Elizabeth play? How does her death contribute or detract from this role? Also
consider the character of Justine Moritz. While her story only takes two chapters of the novel, her role as a
secondary character is significant. What is Shelley’s purpose in telling Justine’s story? What truths about her time is
Shelley revealing?
4. Find at least two examples of Victor thinking, acting, or experiencing the world in the same way as his creature.
Why is this significant?
the monster.
. Like most people, you probably began reading Frankenstein thinking the title referred to
Is there any symbolic truth to this common error?
5. Why are there so many references to sickness and fever in Frankenstein? Trace these references throughout the
novel. What broader theme might Shelley be expressing?
6. Ice is a prevalent image and an integral plot device in Shelley’s Frankenstein.
How is it appropriate that the
novel ends in ice? What is the symbolism of ice for the characters and the story?
7. The patriarchal society of Frankenstein is one in which men pursue their goals against hopeless odds. In light of
this work ethic, is Robert Walton a failure when he turns his ship around at the end of the novel? How would
Victor Frankenstein answer this question? What would Mary Shelley say? What do you think?