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For Wednesday: Shelley, Frankenstein, Vol. II (pp.69-123 roughly)



NOTE: If you don’t have our text, try to finish at or around the chapter that begins, “The being finished speaking, and fixed his looks upon me in expectation of a reply.”

Answer TWO of the following:

Q1: The Creature’s education is largely undertaken by reading a series of books, notably Paradise Lost, Plutarch’s Lives, and The Sorrows of Young Werther. Why these books in particular (since Shelley could have chosen any)? What does the Creature reveal about these books that adds something significant to his education and sense of himself? Additionally, how do we know that these might have been crucial for Shelley’s own inspiration in writing the book?

Q2: Many find the story of the De Lacys somewhat puzzling and out of place in the narrative. Why does Shelley include it? Though it seems hopelessly unrealistic, how might it, too, become a crucial part of the Creature’s education?

Q3: At what point does the Creature become a “monster”? While Victor might argue that it was always a monster, how does the Creature’s own narrative contradict this? At what point did he consciously make the decision to become the “demon” the world takes him for?

Q4: At the end of Volume 1, Victor claims that “I bore a hell within me, which nothing could extinguish” (68). Thinking of Monos and Daimonos (1830), is it possible to read the Creature as Victor’s doppleganger—a double that torments him and follows him because he is him? What clues or passages seem to support this reading (we can discuss problems with this reading in class).

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