Frankenstein

Chapter 16

Mary Shelley · Mountaineers 10th–12th

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Copywork

This was then the reward of my benevolence! I had saved a human being from destruction, and as a recompense I now writhed under the miserable pain of a wound which shattered the flesh and bone. The feelings of kindness and gentleness which I had entertained but a few moments before gave place to hellish rage and gnashing of teeth.

In spite of my malignity, it softened and attracted me. For a few moments I gazed with delight on her dark eyes, fringed by deep lashes, and her lovely lips; but presently my rage returned; I remembered that I was for ever deprived of the delights that such beautiful creatures could bestow and that she whose resemblance I contemplated would, in regarding me, have changed that air of divine benignity to one expressive of disgust and affright.

Read the two passages aloud. Find the place in each where the feeling turns. What makes one turn land harder than the other?

For the educator Two passages, five sentences: the cry after the shot at the river, and the portrait found on the dead boy. The first opens on an exclamation, “This was then the reward of my benevolence!” The sentence after it sets a deed against its return: he “had saved a human being from destruction”, and “as a recompense” he writhed under a wound. Recompense is a word for payment, and the payment is a gunshot wound. The third sentence puts a long subject first, “The feelings of kindness and gentleness which I had entertained but a few moments before”, so the turn arrives with the short verb “gave place to”. It then ends on a second pair of nouns, “hellish rage and gnashing of teeth”, set against the first pair. The second passage opens on a concession, “In spite of my malignity”, before its main clause. The long sentence after it moves in three parts joined by semicolons: the delight in her face, given in detail; the turn, “but presently my rage returned”, short and at the centre; and the reason, which ends on another pair, “disgust and affright”. Malignity and benignity share a form and mean opposite things: he names his own malignity, and imagines her benignity turning to disgust. The words benevolence and malignity are in the vocabulary. For the talk prompt, listen for a student who hears the river turn as harder because a gun causes it, and one who hears the portrait turn as harder because nothing outside him causes it at all. Both can be argued from the page.

Discussion

Narration Tell the chapter back in your own words, from his night of rage in the wood to the being he tells Victor he must create.

On the night after the attack, he swears war on the whole human race. Later, at the empty cottage, he says revenge and hatred fill him “For the first time”. How can it be the first time? Character
One spring morning on his way to Geneva, he “dared to be happy”. Why would being happy take daring? Character
He pulls a girl from the river. A man tears her from his arms and runs into the wood. The creature follows, “I hardly knew why”. What might he have wanted from them? Character
He hopes the boy is too young to have learned “a horror of deformity”. Where does the boy’s horror come from? Theme
He looks at the dead boy and feels triumph. Then he finds a portrait on the boy, and for a few moments it softens him. Why does the picture soften him when the dead boy does not? Character
He asks Victor for a companion “as deformed and horrible as myself”. Why ask for the defects too? Character

Make a Connection Think of a story, or a time you know of, when someone did a kind thing and was punished for it. What did that person do with the hurt?

Vocabulary

benevolence: This was then the reward of my benevolence! The wish to do good to others, and the kind acts that come from it (from Latin words for wishing well). He uses the word in his cry after the shot at the river. It names his own good will, and the cry measures it against what it earned: a wound.
malignity: In spite of my malignity, it softened and attracted me. A settled wish to do harm; malice that has taken root. It shares its root with malign and malignant (Latin malus, bad) and is the opposite of benignity, the word the same passage uses for the look on the woman’s face. He names his own malignity in the very sentence where the portrait softens him.
glutted: I could with pleasure have destroyed the cottage and its inhabitants and have glutted myself with their shrieks and misery. Fed until stuffed, past all need; a glut is too much of something. He uses an eater’s word for the revenge he imagines on the first page: he would have fed on the family’s “shrieks and misery”. Later in the chapter the boy screams that the creature wants to eat him.
impotence: But this was a luxury of sensation that could not endure; I became fatigued with excess of bodily exertion and sank on the damp grass in the sick impotence of despair. Powerlessness; the state of being unable to act or to make anything happen (from Latin, not able). After a night of fury he sinks into “the sick impotence of despair”. Rage and helplessness take turns in him all through the chapter, and the fire is lit, he says, because he is “unable to injure anything human”.
imprecate: Oh, earth! How often did I imprecate curses on the cause of my being! To call down evil on someone; to pray that harm will fall on them. It is close to curse and the opposite of pray for. On the winter road he imprecates curses on “the cause of my being”, his maker, the man he is walking towards for help.
succour: From you only could I hope for succour, although towards you I felt no sentiment but that of hatred. Help given to someone in need or danger; relief (the British spelling of succor). He hopes for succour from the one man he says he hates, and the sentence holds both at once: he needs his maker and cannot forgive him.
epithets: The child still struggled and loaded me with epithets which carried despair to my heart; I grasped his throat to silence him, and in a moment he lay dead at my feet. Words or phrases that label a person; here, insulting names such as “monster”, “Ugly wretch” and “ogre”. The creature says the boy loaded him with them, as if they were a weight, and the grip that kills the boy is, in his telling, to stop them.
sanguinary: Thanks to the lessons of Felix and the sanguinary laws of man, I had learned now to work mischief. Bloody; ready to shed blood or causing it (from Latin sanguis, blood, the root of sanguine). Laws are sanguinary when they punish by death. He calls the laws of man sanguinary in the barn, at the moment he means a sleeping stranger to bear the punishment for his own crime.

Critical thinking

He tells the boy, “you shall be my first victim.” The boy keeps calling him names, and he takes him by the throat to quiet him. When, if ever, did he decide to kill?
Over the boy’s body he cries, “I too can create desolation”. The last words of the chapter are “This being you must create.” What has the word create come to mean to him?
The creature says he learned “to work mischief” from “the lessons of Felix and the sanguinary laws of man”. Did people teach him the harm he does, or does he choose it?