Print at 100% scale on letter paper, with no added margins.
Frankenstein
Mountaineers · 10th–12th
Was man, indeed, at once so powerful, so virtuous and magnificent, yet so vicious and base? He appeared at one time a mere scion of the evil principle and at another as all that can be conceived of noble and godlike.
I was, besides, endued with a figure hideously deformed and loathsome; I was not even of the same nature as man. I was more agile than they and could subsist upon coarser diet; I bore the extremes of heat and cold with less injury to my frame; my stature far exceeded theirs. When I looked around I saw and heard of none like me. Was I, then, a monster, a blot upon the earth, from which all men fled and whom all men disowned?
Read both passages aloud. The first passage starts with a question, and the second ends with one. Both questions begin with “Was”. What has changed between them?
Narration Tell the chapter back, from Felix’s sad face on a spring day to the last line, where he calls the cottagers his protectors.
1. Safie arrives with only one word the family knows: Felix’s name. Within hours the whole cottage is glad. What wins her that welcome?Inference
2. He boasts that he “improved more rapidly than the Arabian.” Safie does not know she is in a race with him. What does he get from coming first?Character
3. He asks, “And what was I?” He lists what he lacks, and then what he has: he is quicker, hardier and taller than people. What turns those strengths against him?Inference
4. He says no father watched over him as a baby, and no mother blessed him with smiles. Then he adds, “or if they had.” Why does he leave that door open?Character
Make a Connection Think of a story, or a time you know of, when someone learned a skill in secret by watching others being taught. What did they learn that the lessons never meant to teach?
He appeared at one time a mere scion of the evil principle and at another as all that can be conceived of noble and godlike.
I heard of the discovery of the American hemisphere and wept with Safie over the hapless fate of its original inhabitants.
I was, besides, endued with a figure hideously deformed and loathsome; I was not even of the same nature as man.
He had chosen this work, he said, because the declamatory style was framed in imitation of the Eastern authors.
1. Volney’s history gives him a way to rank people. At the top is “a great and virtuous man.” At the bottom is the vicious man, lower than “the blind mole or harmless worm.” Where does he belong on that scale?
2. The chapter ends with him calling the cottagers his “protectors.” They have never seen him, and he admits the name is “self-deceit.” What does Shelley gain by ending the chapter on that admission?
3. The creature says that “sorrow only increased with knowledge.” Yet he goes on listening to every lesson Felix gives. Why does he keep learning what hurts him?