Chapter 17

Frankenstein

Mountaineers · 10th–12th

Copywork

I am malicious because I am miserable. Am I not shunned and hated by all mankind? You, my creator, would tear me to pieces and triumph; remember that, and tell me why I should pity man more than he pities me?

The stars shone at intervals as the clouds passed from over them; the dark pines rose before me, and every here and there a broken tree lay on the ground; it was a scene of wonderful solemnity and stirred strange thoughts within me. I wept bitterly, and clasping my hands in agony, I exclaimed, “Oh! stars and clouds and winds, ye are all about to mock me; if ye really pity me, crush sensation and memory; let me become as nought; but if not, depart, depart, and leave me in darkness.”

Read both passages aloud. Both speakers talk about pity. What does each one want pity to do?

For the educator Two passages, five sentences: the creature’s answer to Victor’s refusal, and Victor’s cry at the fountain on the way down the mountain. The first opens on a short claim of cause, “I am malicious because I am miserable”: two adjectives that share their first sound, joined by “because”. A rhetorical question follows, “Am I not shunned and hated by all mankind?”, which allows only one answer. The third sentence sets two clauses on either side of a semicolon and ends on a question built on a reversal, why he should “pity man more than he pities me”. The same verb runs both ways, and the sentence asks for a fair trade. The second passage sets the scene in one long sentence in three parts joined by semicolons, and the third part steps back to judge it: “a scene of wonderful solemnity”. Then comes the cry. Victor speaks to the stars, clouds and winds as if they could hear him, a figure called apostrophe. The cry offers them two choices: “if ye really pity me”, crush his feeling and memory; “but if not”, the doubled “depart, depart”. The words shunned and nought are in the vocabulary. For the talk prompt, listen for a student who hears the creature’s pity as something owed in return and Victor’s as a wish to stop feeling, and for one who notices that both men ask for pity within a few hours of each other.

Discussion

Narration Tell the chapter back in your own words, from the creature’s demand for a companion to Victor’s return home to Geneva.

1. Victor’s first answer is no. He would rather be “the most miserable of men” than “base in my own eyes.” Whose good is he protecting?Character

2. In the middle of his argument, the creature admits that “the human senses are insurmountable barriers to our union.” Why admit that when he wants Victor to say yes?Inference

3. The creature calls his picture of their life in South America “peaceful and human”. What in that picture is human?Character

4. Victor finds that he cannot sympathise with the creature. Because of that, he decides he has “no right to withhold” what the creature asks. How can failing to feel for him take away Victor’s right to say no?Moral reasoning

5. Back home, Victor feels “placed under a ban”, as if he had no right to his family’s sympathy. Why would saying yes on the mountain cost him that?Theme

Make a Connection Think of a story, a piece of history, or a moment from your own life when only one person could give someone what they asked for. How did that person decide?

Vocabulary

shunned Am I not shunned and hated by all mankind?

nought I wept bitterly, and clasping my hands in agony, I exclaimed, “Oh! stars and clouds and winds, ye are all about to mock me; if ye really pity me, crush sensation and memory; let me become as nought; but if not, depart, depart, and leave me in darkness.”

inextinguishable I will revenge my injuries; if I cannot inspire love, I will cause fear, and chiefly towards you my arch-enemy, because my creator, do I swear inextinguishable hatred.

abhorred Yet even thus I loved them to adoration; and to save them, I resolved to dedicate myself to my most abhorred task.

Critical thinking

1. The creature says he will reason with Victor “instead of threatening”. In the same speech he swears “inextinguishable hatred” against him. What part does that threat play in his argument?

Thesis

Objection

Revision

2. The creature promises that his companion “will be content with the same fare.” He is speaking for someone who has not been made. What is that promise worth?

Thesis

Objection

Revision

3. The creature demands a companion “as a right which you must not refuse to concede”. Does Victor, as his maker, owe him one?

Thesis

Objection

Revision