For Tuesday: Shelley, Frankenstein, Opening Letters & Chapters 1-5 (pp.7-59)

 

NOTE: Try to read as much of the first FIVE chapters of Frankenstein for Tuesday's class. There's SO MUCH to discuss here, so we can't possibly be through it all. The questions below are a kind of 'wish list' of what I hope to discuss, and where you might focus your reading as you wade through the opening chapters. Use the questions as a kind of guide if you find yourself lost and aren't sure what to look for and/or think about. But you only have to answer any TWO of them. Bring them to class on Tuesday if possible, but you have until 5pm on Tuesday to turn them in. 

 Answer TWO of the following: 

Q1: Most first-time readers of Frankenstein are surprised to find that the novel begins with a frame narrative: that of Walton, the arctic explorer, who is writing home to his sister, Mrs. Saville. Why do you think Shelley found this a necessary intro to the story? Why not simply open up with Frankenstein’s story? Also, why is a narrator like Walton a horror (or Gothic) convention even in films and books today? 

Q2: According to the story of his early education that Victor gives to Walton, what set him on the path of creating new life? How did he go from an earnest, naive young man to a “modern Prometheus” who would “pour a torrent of light into our dark world”? In other words, what went ‘wrong’ in his life, considering he had a good family, wealth, and the support of his parents? 

Q3: Immediately after he creates his “monster,” Victor ends up falling asleep and has a nightmare of Elizabeth, where as soon as he kisses her, “her lips...became livid with the hue of death; her features appeared to change, and I thought that I held the corpse of my dead mother in my arms" (84). How do you read this strange dream in relation to the events of the story? What might this say about his mission or his motives? 

Q4: How does Frankenstein react to his first meeting with his Creature? Since he created it to be beautiful and powerful, why is he so horrified by it? And related to that, shouldn't he have known what it looked like all along? What else is unusual about the appearance and disappearance of his Creation in Chapter 4? 

Q5: In the movies of Frankenstein, we always see the way the Creature is created: through scientific gadgets and lightning, etc. Here, we get a single sentence at most about the science of making life, and then it's never referred to again. Why do you think Shelley largely sidesteps how the Creature was made? Does this undermine the believability of Frankenstein's narrative (remember--he's telling this story to Walton)? Did Walton simply leave that part out of the story? Or might there be another reason for the lack of science in such a scientific narrative?