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Frankenstein
Mountaineers · 10th–12th
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?
The tension The morning after the attack he blames his own haste (“I had certainly acted imprudently”) and plans to try again; by the chapter’s last night he lays his own murder on a sleeping young woman: “The crime had its source in her; be hers the punishment!”
Rejection after rejection, and the swings between gentleness and fury, from the night after the cottage to the boy’s death, the portrait hidden in the barn and the demand.
The creature goes on with his story to Victor. Driven from the cottage, he spends the night raging in the wood and declares everlasting war against mankind, and above all against his maker. By day he grows calmer, blames his own haste, and resolves to go back and win over the old man. But the family never comes out. He overhears Felix tell the landlord that they can never live there again: his father’s life is in danger, and his wife and sister will never recover from their horror. Alone, the creature weeps at the thought of his friends, then turns to rage. Unable, he says, to hurt anything human, he destroys the garden and, once the moon has set, burns the cottage. With nowhere to go, he sets out for Geneva, Victor’s native town, which he knows from Victor’s papers, finding his way with the geography Felix taught Safie. He travels through late autumn and winter by night, growing more bitter the nearer he comes. On one of the first days of spring, walking by daylight through a wood, he feels gentleness revive and dares to be happy. A girl slips into a river; he saves her, and the man who comes for her shoots him. He vows hatred and vengeance against all mankind and spends weeks nursing the wound. Near Geneva, at evening, a small boy runs into his hiding place. Hoping the boy is too young to fear him, the creature seizes him to make him a companion. The boy screams, calls him a monster, and threatens him with his papa, M. Frankenstein. At the name the creature calls him his first victim; as the boy goes on struggling and calling him names, he grips his throat, and the boy dies. The creature exults. On the boy he finds a portrait of a lovely woman that softens him until his rage returns. In a barn he finds a young woman asleep and whispers to her as a lover. When she stirs, afraid she will wake and denounce him, he hides the portrait in her dress and flees. After haunting the place for some days he wanders to the mountains, and he ends with his demand: Victor must create a companion for him, of his own kind and with his own defects.
Before reading, ask what it would take for someone who has been turned away many times to try once more, and what might stop them. Then read the chapter as a journey with stops: the wood, the empty cottage and the fire, the road, the river, the boy, the portrait, the barn, the demand. At each stop, note what the creature feels first and what he does. Do not settle whether he is a monster or a victim, and bring in no names or outcomes from other chapters: this one names neither the boy nor the young woman.
Retell The student retells the chapter in five stops: the night in the wood and the morning plan; the empty cottage and the fire; the road and the river; the boy and the portrait; the barn and the demand. At each, look for what he feels first and what he does next.
Imitate the author After copying, the student writes two sentences of their own. The first sets a good deed against what came back for it, as “I had saved a human being from destruction, and as a recompense I now writhed” does, so that the word for the reward carries the irony. The second is one long sentence in three parts joined by semicolons, in which the short middle part turns the feeling, as “but presently my rage returned” does in the portrait sentence.
Debate Take sides on the last written question. One side argues that people taught him the harm, and gathers the empty cottage, the shot after the rescue, the boy’s scream and his own naming of Felix and the laws. The other argues that he chooses it, and gathers the wait for the moon, the threat to the boy, the exultation and the reasoning in the barn. Each side must answer the other’s best line, and neither may claim a remorse the chapter does not show.
Purpose Close on the two sentences that frame the chapter’s change: “I had certainly acted imprudently” on the morning after the attack, and “The crime had its source in her” in the barn. Ask why Shelley has him tell both to the maker he is about to make a demand of, and leave open what Victor, or the reader, should make of the tale.
Easier Read aloud the river paragraphs, the paragraphs about the boy and the portrait, and the barn. Retell, in order, each time he is turned away or hurt and what he does next. Talk through the third, fourth and fifth discussion questions, then answer the last written question aloud before writing it.
On level Talk through all six discussion questions in order, then write all three written questions as a thesis, the strongest objection and a revised thesis, each with lines from the chapter.
Harder Ask for one argued essay on the last written question that weighs the fire, the river, the boy, the portrait and the barn, and answers the best reading on the other side. Then ask the student to test the creature as a teller: every word of the chapter reaches us as his speech to Victor. Where does the telling plead for pity, and where does it confess more than it needs to?
1. 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
What it asks It asks the student to square two moments in the creature’s own telling. On the night after the attack, he says, “my feelings were those of rage and revenge”, and he declared “everlasting war against the species”. By morning the sunshine has calmed him; he blames his own haste and plans to go back and win over the old man. Then the family does not come out, and he hears Felix tell the landlord they can “never again inhabit your cottage”. Only now does he say that “For the first time” revenge and hatred filled him, and that he did not “strive to control them”. Soon after, “unable to injure anything human”, he destroys the garden and burns the cottage. The student decides how this can be the first time. The card should not settle which way the two lines fit together.
The first rage did not last. He calls that night “a luxury of sensation that could not endure”, and by morning he is calm and blaming himself. A revenge that one night’s sleep can undo has not yet filled him. What is new at the empty cottage is that the hope is gone, and the old man with it, and he lets the feeling stay. The first time is the first time it settles.
But this was a luxury of sensation that could not endure;
For the first time the feelings of revenge and hatred filled my bosom, and I did not strive to control them,
What is new is whom he hates. The night’s war was against “the species” and against his maker, people he has never been close to. At the cottage the hatred turns on his “protectors”, the people he loved and watched for so long. Hating strangers is one thing. Hating his friends is the first time.
No; from that moment I declared everlasting war against the species, and more than all, against him who had formed me and sent me forth to this insupportable misery.
My protectors had departed and had broken the only link that held me to the world.
A strong answer A strong response shows how both lines can stand and grounds it. One reader says the first rage did not last: he calls it “a luxury of sensation that could not endure”, and by morning he blames himself and plans to try again; at the empty cottage the hope is gone, and this time he does not “strive to control” the feeling. Another says what is new is whom he hates: the night’s war was against the species and his maker, and now it is his “protectors”, who have broken “the only link that held me to the world”. The best answers notice that he is telling this to Victor, and ask what he gains by dating his hatred from the day the family left.
2. One spring morning on his way to Geneva, he “dared to be happy”. Why would being happy take daring?Character
What it asks It asks the student to weigh one word in the gentlest paragraph of the chapter. All through the winter journey, he says, “The mildness of my nature had fled”, and he travels only at night, “fearful of encountering the visage of a human being”. Then, on one of the first days of spring, he walks on after sunrise. He feels “emotions of gentleness and pleasure” revive, and “forgetting my solitude and deformity, dared to be happy.” He weeps with thankfulness toward the sun. The student decides why happiness, for him, is a dare. The word comes before the girl falls into the river, so the answer should rest on what he knows that morning, not on what follows.
Because happiness is a risk he has learned to fear. He has been hiding by day, and simply walking on after sunrise is something he “ventured”. To be happy is to lower his guard in the open. His hopes at the cottage ended in the scene that haunted his sleep, the women flying and Felix tearing him from his father’s feet, and then in an empty house. Joy itself feels dangerous.
I travelled only at night, fearful of encountering the visage of a human being.
One morning, however, finding that my path lay through a deep wood, I ventured to continue my journey after the sun had risen;
Because to be happy he has to forget what he is. The sentence says so: the joy comes by “forgetting my solitude and deformity”. Happiness takes daring because it is a kind of make-believe, and it holds only while he forgets himself. The feelings are real, but they “had long appeared dead”, and they take him by surprise.
Half surprised by the novelty of these sensations, I allowed myself to be borne away by them, and forgetting my solitude and deformity, dared to be happy.
I felt emotions of gentleness and pleasure, that had long appeared dead, revive within me.
A strong answer A strong response says what the dare risks and grounds it. One reader says happiness is dangerous for him: he has learned to hide by day, and walking on after sunrise is a venture. Another says the dare is in the forgetting: he is happy only by “forgetting my solitude and deformity”, so the joy lasts while he forgets what he is. The best answers notice that he lets himself be “borne away” by joy in the same words he used for revenge, and ask what the two have in common for him.
3. 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
What it asks It asks the student to account for a step the creature cannot account for himself. He drags the girl from the river “with extreme labour” and is trying “by every means in my power to restore animation” when a man comes on them, “probably the person from whom she had playfully fled”. “On seeing me”, the man tears the girl from his arms and runs into the wood. The creature follows, “I hardly knew why”, and when the man sees him “draw near”, he fires. The student decides what the creature might have wanted when he followed. The man never speaks, and the chapter gives none of his thoughts, so the card must not supply them.
Something back for what he did. He has just saved a life, and moments after the shot he calls his wound “the reward of my benevolence” and its cause “ingratitude”. Those are the words of someone who thought a return was owed. He follows to be seen for what he has done, perhaps to be thanked.
This was then the reward of my benevolence!
My sufferings were augmented also by the oppressive sense of the injustice and ingratitude of their infliction.
Only not to lose her yet. She is in his arms one moment and torn from them the next. That morning he was happy by “forgetting my solitude and deformity”, and he follows as if he still forgot them, the way anyone might follow to see that a girl pulled from a river is safe. He does not stop to think how he looks, running after a man who has just carried her off.
On seeing me, he darted towards me, and tearing the girl from my arms, hastened towards the deeper parts of the wood.
I followed speedily, I hardly knew why; but when the man saw me draw near, he aimed a gun, which he carried, at my body and fired.
A strong answer A strong response names a want and grounds it. One reader says he wanted something back: his own words after the shot, “the reward of my benevolence” and “ingratitude”, say he thought a return was owed. Another says he wanted only not to lose her yet, and followed, still forgetting what he looks like; the man fires when he sees him “draw near”. The best answers notice that even as he tells it he says “I hardly knew why”, and ask whether the reward he names was in his mind before the shot or only after it.
4. He hopes the boy is too young to have learned “a horror of deformity”. Where does the boy’s horror come from?Theme
What it asks It asks the student to test the creature’s last hope of a human companion. Near Geneva, a small boy runs into his hiding place, and an idea seizes him: the boy “was unprejudiced and had lived too short a time to have imbibed a horror of deformity”. He means to take him and “educate him as my companion and friend”. As soon as the boy sees him, he covers his eyes and screams. Then he calls him “monster” and “ogre” and says he wants to eat him. The student decides whether that horror was learned, as the creature’s word “imbibed” assumes, or came before any learning. The chapter does not name the boy, and the card should not.
Learned. The boy’s words are a nursery’s words: an ogre who wants to “eat me and tear me to pieces”. A boy that age has heard such stories. He also leans on a father, a syndic, who will punish. The creature was wrong only about how early the lesson comes.
You wish to eat me and tear me to pieces. You are an ogre.
My papa is a syndic—he is M. Frankenstein—he will punish you.
Before any learning. The scream comes first, before the creature has said a word; the names come after. If horror is this quick even in someone so young, it may not be taught at all. In that case the hope was built on a mistake about where horror comes from.
As soon as he beheld my form, he placed his hands before his eyes and uttered a shrill scream;
Suddenly, as I gazed on him, an idea seized me that this little creature was unprejudiced and had lived too short a time to have imbibed a horror of deformity.
A strong answer A strong response locates the horror and grounds it. One reader says it is learned: an ogre that wants to eat him comes from stories, and the boy already leans on a father who will punish. Another says it comes before learning: he covers his eyes and screams “As soon as he beheld my form”, before a word is spoken. The best answers notice that the creature’s own word, “imbibed”, is a theory about where horror comes from, and ask whether the scene proves it or breaks it.
5. 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
What it asks It asks the student to set two gazes side by side. Over the body, “I gazed on my victim, and my heart swelled with exultation and hellish triumph”. Then, with his eyes still on the body, he sees something glittering on the boy’s breast: a portrait “of a most lovely woman”. “In spite of my malignity, it softened and attracted me”, and he gazes “with delight” on her eyes and lips, until “my rage returned” at the thought that she would have looked at him with “disgust and affright”. The student decides why the picture reaches him when the dead boy does not. The chapter names neither the boy nor the woman, and the card must not read remorse into this chapter.
Because a picture cannot turn away. The boy covered his eyes, screamed and called him “monster”; every living face in the chapter has fled, fired or screamed. The woman in the portrait cannot look back, so for a moment he can look at a lovely face without being refused. The softness is real, but it lasts only until he pictures her look for himself, and then the rage returns.
For a few moments I gazed with delight on her dark eyes, fringed by deep lashes, and her lovely lips;
she whose resemblance I contemplated would, in regarding me, have changed that air of divine benignity to one expressive of disgust and affright.
Because the picture shows what he wants, and the boy shows what he has done. The portrait softens him toward the “delights” he is “for ever deprived” of. To feel for the boy he would have to see himself as the one who killed him, and he has chosen triumph instead. His softness is longing for himself, not pity for anyone else.
I remembered that I was for ever deprived of the delights that such beautiful creatures could bestow
I gazed on my victim, and my heart swelled with exultation and hellish triumph;
A strong answer A strong response explains the difference and grounds it. One reader says a picture is the one face that cannot refuse him: the boy screamed and called him “monster”, while the portrait lets him gaze “with delight” until he imagines her “disgust and affright” for himself. Another says the portrait stirs longing for what he is “for ever deprived” of, and that feeling for the boy would mean seeing himself as the killer; he chose “exultation and hellish triumph” instead. The best answers notice that the rage comes back even before a face that cannot turn away, and ask where the rejection now comes from.
6. He asks Victor for a companion “as deformed and horrible as myself”. Why ask for the defects too?Character
What it asks It asks the student to account for the shape of the chapter’s last request. After the barn and the mountains he tells Victor that “man will not associate with me”, but that “one as deformed and horrible as myself would not deny herself to me.” His companion “must be of the same species and have the same defects.” Earlier in the chapter he hoped to make a human boy his “companion and friend”, and he whispered a lover’s words to a young woman asleep. The student decides why he now asks that the companion share his defects. The card must not say whether Victor will agree; the chapter ends on “This being you must create.”
Because it is the only way she will not turn away. Every face in the chapter has taught him the rule: the young and the lovely recoil from him, or would. In the barn he fears the sleeper will wake and “curse me”. A companion as ugly as he is has no reason to. The defects are not a wish but a condition, the price of not being denied.
I am alone and miserable; man will not associate with me; but one as deformed and horrible as myself would not deny herself to me.
Should she indeed awake, and see me, and curse me, and denounce the murderer?
Because he has come to see himself as men see him. The boy screamed “monster! Ugly wretch!”, and now he calls himself “deformed and horrible”. After the river he felt he “was not made for the enjoyment of pleasure”. He no longer hopes for someone who will see past his form, as he hoped of the boy. He asks for a mate who shares it, as if the defects were what he is.
My companion must be of the same species and have the same defects.
all joy was but a mockery which insulted my desolate state and made me feel more painfully that I was not made for the enjoyment of pleasure.
A strong answer A strong response gives the defects a reason and grounds it. One reader says they are a condition: only someone “as deformed and horrible as myself would not deny herself to me”, and every face in the chapter has taught him that. Another says he has taken the verdict of the people who fled and screamed as his own, so “horrible” is now his word for what he is. The best answers set the request beside the boy he once meant to make his “companion and friend”, and ask what has narrowed between the two.
1. 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?
What it asks It asks the student to place a decision inside the killing. He seizes the boy to take him, and tells him, “Boy, you will never see your father again; you must come with me”, before he hears the name. When the boy names “M. Frankenstein”, he answers, “you shall be my first victim.” The boy struggles and loads him “with epithets which carried despair to my heart”. He grasps the throat “to silence him”, and “in a moment he lay dead at my feet.” Then his heart swells “with exultation and hellish triumph”. The student builds a thesis on when, or whether, he chose to kill, meets the strongest objection, and revises. The chapter never names the boy, and the card should not.
At the name. Until then he means to take the boy, not to kill him. The name makes the boy kin to “my enemy”, and he says the sentence aloud. The grip carries out what he has already declared, and the triumph after it is the triumph of a threat made good.
‘Frankenstein! you belong then to my enemy—to him towards whom I have sworn eternal revenge; you shall be my first victim.’
this death will carry despair to him, and a thousand other miseries shall torment and destroy him.
Not in the grip itself, but afterwards. His own account says he grasped the throat “to silence him”, to stop names that “carried despair to my heart”, and death came “in a moment”. The words “first victim” may be a threat thrown in anger, like his vows of war against the species. What he chooses, fully, is what he does next: he looks on the body as “my victim” and exults.
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.
I gazed on my victim, and my heart swelled with exultation and hellish triumph;
A strong answer A strong thesis places the decision and argues it from the page. A student might argue that he decides at the name: “you shall be my first victim” is a sentence passed aloud, and the grip carries it out. The strongest objection is his own account of the grip, “to silence him”, with death coming “in a moment”, which makes the killing quicker than any decision. A good revision might say the killing outran the choice but the exultation did not: whatever happened in the grip, he chose to claim the death as his.
2. 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?
What it asks It asks the student to follow one word across the chapter’s two high points. He names Victor by his making from the first line, “Cursed, cursed creator!”, and again on the road, “Unfeeling, heartless creator!” Over the dead boy he claps his hands and cries, “I too can create desolation; my enemy is not invulnerable”. The chapter ends on a command: “This being you must create.” The student builds a thesis on what “create” has come to mean to him, meets the strongest objection, and revises. The card must not say whether Victor will do it.
Power answering power. “I too” sets him beside his maker. Victor made a being, and with it the creature’s misery; now the creature can make misery too. By the end he speaks to his creator as one who can wound him, and the demand is an order, not a plea. To create has come to mean to change another life by force.
‘I too can create desolation; my enemy is not invulnerable; this death will carry despair to him, and a thousand other miseries shall torment and destroy him.’
We may not part until you have promised to comply with my requisition.
The one thing he cannot do himself. All he can create is desolation: ashes, a dead boy, a portrait hidden on a stranger. A companion, a life, only Victor can make. The last sentence hands creation back to the maker, and behind the command is an admission that the creature can destroy but not make.
From you only could I hope for succour, although towards you I felt no sentiment but that of hatred.
This being you must create.
A strong answer A strong thesis gives the word a meaning and argues it. A student might argue that “create” has become a word of power: “I too” sets him beside his maker as one who can also make misery, and the closing “you must” is a command. The strongest objection is that the only thing he can create is desolation, while the companion he needs can come only from Victor: “From you only could I hope for succour”. A good revision might say the word carries both. He has learned to make ruin, and the chapter ends on the one making he cannot do.
3. 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?
What it asks It asks the chapter’s whole question. In the barn he hides the portrait in the dress of a young woman asleep, so that “not I, but she, shall suffer”, and he says: “Thanks to the lessons of Felix and the sanguinary laws of man, I had learned now to work mischief.” He names his teachers. The chapter gives the reader the lessons: the attack he relives in his dreams, the empty cottage, the shot after the rescue, the boy’s scream. It also gives the choices: the morning when he blames his own haste, the planned fire, the threat to the boy, the reasoning in the barn. The student builds a thesis, tests it against the strongest other reading, and revises. The chapter names neither the boy nor the young woman, and it does not say what happens to her.
People taught him. He comes to each meeting hoping for kindness, and each time he is answered by flight, a gun or a scream. Even the crime in the barn is a human lesson: he names Felix and the laws of man as his teachers. The chapter’s swings back to gentleness, the tears for his friends, the spring morning, the portrait, show a nature that keeps trying until people teach it otherwise.
This was then the reward of my benevolence!
Thanks to the lessons of Felix and the sanguinary laws of man, I had learned now to work mischief.
He chooses it. Each harm comes with time to think: he waits for the moon before he lights the fire, he names the boy his “first victim”, and in the barn he reasons his way to a stranger’s ruin and calls it her crime. The morning after the attack he could see his own part. By the barn he lays his murder on a sleeping woman. Blaming his teachers is the last step of that reasoning, not an account of it.
I had certainly acted imprudently.
The crime had its source in her; be hers the punishment!
A strong answer A strong thesis takes a side and earns it. A student might argue that people taught him: each hope in the chapter, the morning plan, the rescue at the river, the boy he hoped to keep, is met by an empty house, a gun or a scream, and he names his teachers himself. The strongest objection is that every harm he does comes with time to choose: the wait for the moon, the threat to the boy, the reasoning that makes a sleeping stranger pay. A good revision might hold that people gave him the lessons and he chose which ones to keep, and might notice that the teller who once said “I had certainly acted imprudently” now says “The crime had its source in her”.
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.
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.
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.
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”.
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.
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.
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.
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.