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For Thursday: Finish Frankenstein! Last questions rescheduled



NOTE: These questions will be due for Thursday instead, since we missed class this Tuesday. So if you haven't turned them yet, no worries. The questions are always due on the day we discuss a work, so if class is cancelled, it gets pushed back. 

Answer two of the following: 

Q1:Why do you think Victor is so unwilling to believe that the Creature could ever intend to kill Elizabeth? As he says, "if for one instant I had thought what might be the hellish intention of my fiendish adversary, I would rather have banished myself for ever from my native country, and wandered a miserable outcast over the earth" (185). Is he really this naive, or is this a narrative feint for Walton's approval? (or, did Walton add it himself)? 

Q2: When Victor finds Elizabeth slain by the Creature, he “rushed toward her, and embraced her with ardour” (189). This is the only time he embraces her in the novel! Her also spends quite some time in describing her body as left flung lifelessly across the bed. Why might Shelley add this detail to the novel? How does it compare to the dream of his mother when he gives life to the Creature?

Q3: Victor claims that his narrative is a warning for Walton, so that “the gratification of your wishes may not be a serpent to sting you, as mine has been." However, the end of the novel seems to contradict his aim in telling his story, especially when he says, "swear to me, Walton, that he shall not escape; that you will seek him, and satisfy my vengeance in his death" (202). Why is he suddenly bequeathing his doomed quest to Walton? Is there another way to read his seemingly contradictory intentions? 

Q4: Why does the book end with Walton confronting the Creature himself on his ship, and watching him disappear into the Arctic wasteland? Is it merely to prove that the Creature did indeed exist? Or could this also be a cleverly contrived fiction? Other reasons that Shelley might have included this in the book? 

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