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Frankenstein
Mountaineers · 10th–12th
The grand jury frees Victor, yet he calls himself Clerval’s murderer. Who is right about his guilt, the jury or Victor?
The tension The magistrate who first suspected Victor gathers the witnesses for his defense, and a grand jury clears him on plain proof that he “was on the Orkney Islands” when the body was found, while over the coffin and in his fever he names himself “the murderer of William, of Justine, and of Clerval.”
Two hearings in one chapter: the case the witnesses build before the magistrate, and the one Victor holds against himself.
Victor stands before Mr. Kirwin, a mild old magistrate who looks at him with some severity. A fisherman tells how, putting in at a creek on a dark night, he stumbled on the body of a young man, not wet and not yet cold, apparently strangled, with the black mark of fingers on his neck. At the mention of the fingers Victor remembers his brother’s murder and trembles so that he must lean on a chair, and the magistrate reads it against him. Daniel Nugent swears he saw a boat with one man in it close to shore, the same boat, as far as he could judge by starlight, that Victor landed in; a woman saw such a boat push off from the spot; other men judge that the north wind could have driven Victor back to the shore he left. Kirwin has Victor taken to the inn to see what the sight of the body will do to him. Victor goes calmly, knowing he was with people on his island when the body was found. In the coffin lies Henry Clerval. Victor throws himself on the body, crying that his “murderous machinations” have killed Henry too, and that he has already destroyed two others, and he is carried out in convulsions. A fever follows. For two months he raves, calling himself the murderer of William, Justine and Clerval and begging for help against a fiend; only Kirwin understands his language. He wakes in a prison cell, sorry to be alive. A hired nurse tells him he would be better dead, since it will go hard with him for the gentleman he murdered, and says she does her duty with a safe conscience. Victor learns that Kirwin has given him the best room in the prison, a physician and the nurse, though he seldom visits. In his gloom Victor thinks of declaring himself guilty. Kirwin comes, gentle now, says evidence will surely free him, and tells him he has written to Geneva and that a friend has come. Victor, sure the murderer has come to taunt him, cries “Oh! Take him away!”, and Kirwin hears guilt in it, until the visitor proves to be Victor’s father. His father’s coming helps him mend, though he speaks of a horrible destiny he must live to fulfil. After three months in prison he travels to the assizes. Kirwin gathers the witnesses and arranges the defence, and the grand jury rejects the bill, since it is proved that Victor was on the Orkney Islands when the body was found. His father rejoices. Victor feels only darkness, sees Henry’s eyes and the monster’s by turns, and more than once tries to end his life. One duty brings him back: to go home to Geneva, guard the people he loves, and lie in wait for the murderer. They sail from Ireland at midnight. On deck he goes over his whole life and weeps. He takes a double dose of laudanum, dreams of the fiend’s grasp on his neck, and is woken by his father; for the moment he feels a truce between the present hour and the disastrous future.
Before reading, ask what a court can prove and what lies beyond it. Then read the chapter in two movements. The outward case runs from the fishermen’s account to the coffin, the prison and the grand jury. The inward case is the one Victor brings against himself: at the coffin, in his fever, in prison and on the voyage home. In the first movement, mark each witness and what each one adds. In the second, mark every place the word murderer appears, and whom it names. Read the paragraph at the coffin twice, slowly. Bring nothing in from later in the book: the chapter ends at sea.
Retell The student retells the chapter in four movements: the hearing before Mr. Kirwin; the coffin and the fever; the prison, with the nurse, Kirwin and the father; the grand jury and the voyage home. In the first movement, look for the witnesses in order and for what each one adds to the case against Victor.
Imitate the author After copying, the student writes two sentences of their own. The first grants something bright with “although” and then shuts it out, narrowing to one detail with two uses of “but”, as “nothing but a dense and frightful darkness, penetrated by no light but the glimmer of two eyes” does. The second holds a verb back behind two “if” clauses, then closes by turning one word, as “the monstrous image” and “a soul still more monstrous” do.
Debate Take sides on the last written question. One side argues for the jury and gathers the sworn witnesses, Kirwin’s care in arranging the defence, the proof that Victor was on the Orkney Islands, and the fever behind the cries. The other argues for Victor and gathers the cry at the coffin, the ravings, the thought of declaring himself guilty “less innocent than poor Justine had been”, and Henry fallen “a victim to me and the monster of my creation.” Each side must answer the other’s best line, and neither may say why Clerval was killed.
Purpose Close on two moments: the grand jury’s finding, proved by where Victor was, and the night crossing, where he still names himself among Henry’s killers. Ask why Shelley lets the law clear Victor completely and still gives him no relief, and what that order asks a reader to weigh.
Easier Read aloud the hearing, the coffin, the fever and the nurse’s speech, the visit of Kirwin and the father, and the paragraph on the grand jury. Make two lists: what the witnesses and the jury say about Victor, and what Victor says about himself. Talk through the first three discussion questions, then answer the last written question aloud before writing it.
On level Talk through all five 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 separates what a person did from what a person set going. It should weigh the witnesses, the nurse’s “safe conscience” and the line about Justine, and meet the objection that Victor’s cries are only fever.
1. Daniel Nugent “swore positively” that the boat he saw near the shore was the one Victor landed in, “as far as he could judge by the light of a few stars.” What is that oath worth?Inference
What it asks It asks the student to weigh one witness’s sworn word. Daniel Nugent was with the fisherman who fell over the body. He “swore positively” that just before the fall he saw a boat with a single man in it, a short way from the shore, and that it was the same boat Victor had landed in, “as far as he could judge by the light of a few stars.” A woman saw a boat with one man in it push off from the spot. Other men reason that the north wind could have driven Victor back to the shore he left, and that a stranger who “did not appear to know the shore” might have landed far from where he left the body. The student decides what Nugent’s oath is worth. The card must not say who was in the boat or who killed the man; the chapter never says.
Little. He swears “positively” to what he saw by starlight, at a distance, on a night with no moon. An honest man’s guess, put under oath, becomes evidence, and it points at a man the jury later proves was elsewhere. The hearing is careful, and still it stretches true observations into a case that does not hold.
It was a very dark night, as the moon had not yet risen;
and as far as he could judge by the light of a few stars, it was the same boat in which I had just landed.
What it claims, and no more. A boat with one man in it was near the shore just before the fall, and a woman saw such a boat push off from that very spot. That may well be true, and worth knowing. Nugent even marks how far he could judge. The oath does not fail. It is weighed beside stronger proof, of where Victor was, and gives way to it.
he swore positively that just before the fall of his companion, he saw a boat, with a single man in it, at a short distance from the shore;
she saw a boat with only one man in it push off from that part of the shore where the corpse was afterwards found.
A strong answer A strong response says what the oath is worth and grounds it in the deposition. One reader says little: Nugent swears “positively” to a boat seen “by the light of a few stars” on “a very dark night”, and an honest guess under oath becomes a case against a man the jury later clears. Another says it is worth what it claims and no more: a boat with one man in it was near the shore, a woman saw one push off from the spot, and Nugent himself marks how far he could judge; the court weighs it and lets stronger proof decide. The best answers notice that the witnesses are honest and the hearing careful, and ask how such care can still point at a man who was not there.
2. Mr. Kirwin has Victor taken to the body to see what the sight of it will do to him. What does the test find out?Moral reasoning
What it asks It asks the student to judge the magistrate’s test by what it drew out. Kirwin has Victor brought to the inn “that it might be observed what effect the sight of it would produce upon me”, an idea Victor thinks came from his “extreme agitation” at the account of the fingers. In the coffin lies Henry Clerval. Victor throws himself on the body and cries, “Have my murderous machinations deprived you also, my dearest Henry, of life? Two I have already destroyed; other victims await their destiny”. He is carried out in convulsions. The student decides what the test found. The card must not say what Kirwin concluded in that room, since the chapter gives his later conduct and not his thoughts there, and it must not say why Clerval was killed.
Grief. What the sight draws out is a friend’s love: “my dearest Henry”, “my friend, my benefactor”. Victor throws himself on the body, which is not how a killer meets his victim. Kirwin built a test for a murderer and found a mourner, and the convulsions are a body breaking under loss.
I gasped for breath, and throwing myself on the body,
but you, Clerval, my friend, my benefactor
Guilt, but not the guilt it was looking for. The test was meant to see whether the sight would make a guilty man give himself away, and it does. In front of the magistrate and others, Victor calls his own work “murderous” and counts this death as his third. The test drew out a murderer’s cry. What it could not find was the deed it was built to find.
Have my murderous machinations deprived you also, my dearest Henry, of life?
Two I have already destroyed; other victims await their destiny;
A strong answer A strong response says what the test found and grounds it in the cry at the coffin. One reader says grief: Victor throws himself on the body and calls Henry “my friend, my benefactor”, which is not how a killer meets his victim. Another says guilt of a kind the test was not built for: he calls his own work “murderous” and counts Henry as his third. The best answers notice that the sight does draw a cry of guilt out of him, as the test intended, and ask what exactly that cry admits.
3. In his fever, Victor raved that he was a murderer three times over. He spoke his native language, so Mr. Kirwin alone understood him, and Victor calls that fortunate. Fortunate for whom?Tone
What it asks It asks the student to weigh one word in the fever paragraph. For two months Victor lies near death, and his ravings are “frightful”: “I called myself the murderer of William, of Justine, and of Clerval.” He begs for help against “the fiend” and feels “the fingers of the monster already grasping my neck”. Then: “Fortunately, as I spoke my native language, Mr. Kirwin alone understood me; but my gestures and bitter cries were sufficient to affright the other witnesses.” The one listener is the magistrate who looked on Victor “with some degree of severity”, and who later gives him the best room in the prison, a physician and a nurse, writes to Geneva, and gathers the witnesses for his defence. The student decides whom the luck served. The card must not say that Kirwin comes to believe in the creature; the chapter shows what he does, and only Victor’s guesses at what he thinks.
Victor, the accused man, and that is strange. A man charged with murder has cried out that he murdered three. Had the witnesses understood, his cries would have counted against him. Victor tells this later, still calls it fortunate, and is glad to have been “spared the disgrace” of a public trial. The man who passes his own verdict is relieved that the court never heard it.
Fortunately, as I spoke my native language, Mr. Kirwin alone understood me;
I was spared the disgrace of appearing publicly as a criminal,
The truth. Had the witnesses understood, they would have heard the accused man confess to the very death the court was weighing, and to two more. Yet it was later proved that he was on the Orkney Islands at that hour. A court that took his cries at their word could have condemned him for a deed he was not there to do. The cries reached only the magistrate, whose work was to weigh them, and he built the defence on where Victor was.
but my gestures and bitter cries were sufficient to affright the other witnesses.
Mr. Kirwin charged himself with every care of collecting witnesses and arranging my defence.
A strong answer A strong response says whom the luck served and grounds it in the fever paragraph. One reader says Victor: a man on a murder charge cried out that he murdered three, and he is glad, even in the telling, that the witnesses heard only noise and that he was “spared the disgrace” of a public trial. Another says the truth: understood, the cries would have sounded like a confession to the very death the court was weighing, from a man later proved to be on the Orkney Islands at the hour; they reached only the magistrate, who “charged himself with every care of collecting witnesses and arranging my defence”. The best answers notice the strain in the word: the man who names himself a murderer is relieved that no court heard him say it.
4. Victor wakes up sorry to be alive. The nurse tells him he would be better off dead. How is her reason different from his?Character
What it asks It asks the student to read Victor’s first talk on waking in prison. He says, “if it be all true, if indeed I did not dream, I am sorry that I am still alive to feel this misery and horror.” The nurse answers that if he means “the gentleman you murdered”, it were better for him if he were dead, “for I fancy it will go hard with you!” Then she adds, “However, that’s none of my business; I am sent to nurse you and get you well; I do my duty with a safe conscience; it were well if everybody did the same.” Victor turns “with loathing” from “so unfeeling a speech”. The student sets her reason beside his. The card must not treat her as filler, since she is the chapter’s picture of ordinary duty, and it must not settle Victor’s guilt.
Two different hearings. Her reason is the court’s. She takes the charge for proof, calls him a murderer, and expects the law to go hard with him. His reason has nothing to do with the court. He is sorry to be alive because of what he must now feel. She speaks for the case the witnesses built; he speaks from the one he holds against himself.
for I fancy it will go hard with you!
I am sorry that I am still alive to feel this misery and horror.
Closer than they sound. Both land on the same sentence, better dead, and she calls him a murderer, as he has called himself over the coffin and in his fever. What divides them is what each can do next. She says it is none of her business and goes back to her duty with a safe conscience. He has no conscience at rest, and her last line lands on a man who believes his own work has killed.
However, that’s none of my business;
I do my duty with a safe conscience; it were well if everybody did the same.
A strong answer A strong response names each reason and grounds it in the exchange. One reader hears two hearings: her reason is the court’s, “it will go hard with you”, while his is the “misery and horror” he must feel, which no court touches. Another hears them meet: she calls him a murderer, as he has called himself, and both say death would be better; what divides them is that she can call it “none of my business” and keep a “safe conscience”. The best answers ask whether Victor’s loathing is for her coldness or for hearing his own verdict in a stranger’s mouth.
5. Henry was found with “the black mark of fingers on his neck.” In his fever, and again in a dream at sea, Victor feels the monster’s fingers on his own neck. Why does he keep feeling them there?Theme
What it asks It asks the student to follow one detail through the chapter. The fisherman’s account ends on “the black mark of fingers on his neck”, the one sign of violence on the body that proves to be Henry’s. In the fever, Victor sometimes “felt the fingers of the monster already grasping my neck, and screamed aloud with agony and terror.” On the last night of the chapter, after a double dose of laudanum, “I felt the fiend’s grasp in my neck and could not free myself from it”, until his father wakes him. The student decides why Victor keeps feeling on his own neck what was found on Henry’s. The card must not say who killed Henry or why; the chapter gives the marks of fingers and Victor’s certainty, and nothing more.
Fear. He expects to be next. In the fever the fingers are “already” at his neck, as if the grip were only a matter of time. He calls the creature “my destroyer”. A man who believes the killer is still loose, and still aimed at him, will feel the grip before it comes.
at others I felt the fingers of the monster already grasping my neck,
wishing for some mighty revolution that might bury me and my destroyer in its ruins.
Guilt. He counts Henry’s death as his own work, and he keeps asking why he did not die too. A man who believes he caused a death may feel it in his own body. The dream gives him the death he has been wishing for, and he fights it all the same: he cannot free himself, and he wakes in terror.
Why did I not die?
I felt the fiend’s grasp in my neck and could not free myself from it;
A strong answer A strong response says why Victor keeps feeling the fingers on his own neck and grounds it in the fever and the dream. One reader says fear: the grip is “already” there, the creature is “my destroyer”, and Victor expects to be next. Another says guilt: he counts Henry’s death as his work, asks “Why did I not die?”, and dreams himself into the death he blames himself for, though he fights it when it comes. The best answers notice that the chapter lets him be both the murderer he calls himself and a victim in waiting, and that the dream ends only in “a truce”.
1. In prison, Victor’s father says that “a fatality seems to pursue you.” Victor agrees that a horrible destiny hangs over him, and that he “must live to fulfil it.” What does calling it destiny do to the blame?
What it asks It asks the student to weigh the word Victor chooses when he speaks to his father. His father, looking at the barred windows, says, “You travelled to seek happiness, but a fatality seems to pursue you.” Victor answers, “Alas! Yes, my father,” and says that “some destiny of the most horrible kind hangs over me, and I must live to fulfil it, or surely I should have died on the coffin of Henry.” The same word stood in his cry at the coffin, beside his “murderous machinations”. The student builds a thesis on what the word destiny does to the blame Victor laid on himself, meets the strongest objection, and revises. The card must not say what the destiny turns out to be, and must not suggest that Victor tells his father about the creature; in this chapter the father is told nothing.
It lifts the blame. A destiny is something that happens to a man, not something he does. Victor takes up his father’s word “fatality” with “Alas! Yes”, and the same thought runs through his illness: he was “doomed to live”. Speaking of destiny lets him grieve with his father without telling him anything. A man pursued by fate is unlucky, not guilty.
You travelled to seek happiness, but a fatality seems to pursue you.
But I was doomed to live
It keeps the blame and gives it a shape. At the coffin the same word stood beside his own work: his machinations, then “other victims await their destiny”. The destiny is what his work set going. And he does not say he suffers it; he says he “must live to fulfil it”. A destiny he must carry out is a task, and a task belongs to the man who has it.
Two I have already destroyed; other victims await their destiny;
some destiny of the most horrible kind hangs over me, and I must live to fulfil it,
A strong answer A strong thesis says what the word does and argues it. A student might argue that destiny lifts the blame: Victor takes up his father’s “fatality”, calls himself “doomed to live”, and speaks of fate where at the coffin he spoke of his own work. The strongest objection is that the word kept company with his work from the first, “other victims await their destiny”, and that he says he “must live to fulfil it”, so the destiny is his to carry out. A good revision might grant that the word softens what he can say to his father while it hardens what he asks of himself.
2. Victor calls his wish to die “selfish despair.” What makes it selfish, in his own eyes?
What it asks It asks the student to read Victor’s own judgment on his wish to die. Free, he finds that “the walls of a dungeon or a palace were alike hateful.” His father talks of Geneva, of Elizabeth and Ernest, “but these words only drew deep groans from me”, and Victor often tries “to put an end to the existence I loathed”, so that he must be watched. Then “one duty remained to me, the recollection of which finally triumphed over my selfish despair”: to return to Geneva, “there to watch over the lives of those I so fondly loved and to lie in wait for the murderer”, and to “put an end to the existence of the monstrous image which I had endued with the mockery of a soul still more monstrous.” The student builds a thesis on what makes the wish selfish by Victor’s own measure, meets the strongest objection, and revises. The card must not say what Victor does at Geneva; the chapter ends at sea.
It would leave his family unguarded. His first words to his father ask whether they are safe. The duty he remembers is to watch over the people he loves. To die now would end his own pain and leave them to a danger only he believes in. Selfish here means putting his own rest before their lives.
Are you then safe
there to watch over the lives of those I so fondly loved
It would run from a debt. Death is the rest he keeps wishing for. But he believes he made the being he now calls the murderer, and the duty is to end what he made. A man who thinks he set the killing going may not take his rest first. Even his hope of death is tied to that debt: he will rest only when justice is done.
put an end to the existence of the monstrous image which I had endued with the mockery of a soul still more monstrous.
in executing the award of justice, I shall also sink to rest.
A strong answer A strong thesis says what makes the wish selfish by Victor’s own measure and argues it. A student might argue that dying would leave his family unguarded: the duty is to “watch over the lives of those I so fondly loved”, and his first words to his father ask whether they are safe. The strongest objection is that the duty’s other half is about Victor’s own work, to end “the monstrous image which I had endued with the mockery of a soul”, and that he looks for rest only “in executing the award of justice”. A good revision might hold that the wish is selfish because it runs from a debt, and that guarding his family is the form the debt takes.
3. The grand jury frees Victor, yet he calls himself Clerval’s murderer. Who is right about his guilt, the jury or Victor?
What it asks It asks the chapter’s whole question. The law works with care: sworn witnesses, a magistrate who first suspects Victor and then gathers the witnesses for his defence, and a grand jury that rejects the bill “on its being proved that I was on the Orkney Islands at the hour the body of my friend was found.” Against that stand Victor’s own words. In the fever he “called myself the murderer of William, of Justine, and of Clerval.” In prison he thinks of declaring himself guilty, “less innocent than poor Justine had been.” At sea, with the verdict behind him, Clerval has fallen “a victim to me and the monster of my creation.” The student builds a thesis on who is right, meets the strongest objection, and revises. The card must not give the book’s own verdict, which the chapter does not give; it must not say why Clerval was killed; and it must not treat Victor’s cries as plain delirium or plain confession.
The jury. Guilt in a court is guilt for a deed, and it is proved that the deed was not his: Victor was on the Orkney Islands. His cries come in fever and grief, and he says himself the ravings were “frightful”. The law here does its work carefully and well. Blaming himself for what another hand did is sorrow, not guilt.
The grand jury rejected the bill, on its being proved that I was on the Orkney Islands at the hour the body of my friend was found;
my ravings, as I afterwards heard, were frightful;
Victor. The jury answers a narrow question: where was he at that hour? Victor answers a wider one: who set this going? He is certain that the being he made killed Henry, and he counts the deaths as the fruit of his own work. Even at sea, with the verdict behind him and no court to convince, he names two who share the blame, and himself first.
Clerval, my friend and dearest companion, had fallen a victim to me and the monster of my creation.
At one time I considered whether I should not declare myself guilty and suffer the penalty of the law, less innocent than poor Justine had been.
A strong answer A strong thesis takes a side and earns it against the chapter’s own pressure. A student might argue for the jury: it was proved that he was “on the Orkney Islands” at the hour, and the cries came in fever and grief. The strongest objection is that the jury asked only where he was, while Victor asks what he set going, and at sea, with the verdict behind him, he still says Henry fell “a victim to me and the monster of my creation.” A good revision might grant the jury its verdict on the deed, then ask whether there is a guilt no court is built to measure, and what Victor owes for it.
The magistrate observed me with a keen eye and of course drew an unfavourable augury from my manner.A sign read as a warning of what is to come, or the reading of such a sign. The augurs of ancient Rome foretold events from the flight of birds, and inaugurate comes from the same root. Mr. Kirwin draws “an unfavourable augury” from Victor’s trembling: he reads the man’s manner as a sign of guilt. The word makes the magistrate a reader of signs.
My father was enraptured on finding me freed from the vexations of a criminal charge, that I was again allowed to breathe the fresh atmosphere and permitted to return to my native country.Troubles that annoy and wear a person down; worries rather than disasters (from vex, to trouble or irritate). Victor’s father rejoices to see him freed “from the vexations of a criminal charge”. Set inside the father’s joy, the word makes a charge of murder sound like a nuisance now past.
My father was enraptured on finding me freed from the vexations of a criminal charge, that I was again allowed to breathe the fresh atmosphere and permitted to return to my native country.Filled with delight; carried away by joy (rapture comes from the Latin for being seized and carried off). His father is “enraptured” at the release, and the next sentence begins, “I did not participate in these feelings”. The word sets the height of one man’s joy beside the other’s flat refusal of it.
It was necessary that I should return without delay to Geneva, there to watch over the lives of those I so fondly loved and to lie in wait for the murderer, that if any chance led me to the place of his concealment, or if he dared again to blast me by his presence, I might, with unfailing aim, put an end to the existence of the monstrous image which I had endued with the mockery of a soul still more monstrous.Gave someone a quality, as if putting it on him like a garment; close in meaning to endowed. Victor means to destroy “the monstrous image which I had endued with the mockery of a soul”. The verb keeps the maker inside the sentence: whatever soul the creature has, Victor says he gave it.
Sometimes, indeed, I felt a wish for happiness and thought with melancholy delight of my beloved cousin or longed, with a devouring _maladie du pays_, to see once more the blue lake and rapid Rhone, that had been so dear to me in early childhood; but my general state of feeling was a torpor in which a prison was as welcome a residence as the divinest scene in nature; and these fits were seldom interrupted but by paroxysms of anguish and despair.A heavy dullness of body and mind, in which nothing moves you (from the Latin for being numb; torpid is the same family). After his release Victor’s usual state is “a torpor in which a prison was as welcome a residence as the divinest scene in nature”. Torpor is not sorrow so much as the absence of feeling, which is why a prison and the loveliest place on earth are the same to him.
Sometimes, indeed, I felt a wish for happiness and thought with melancholy delight of my beloved cousin or longed, with a devouring _maladie du pays_, to see once more the blue lake and rapid Rhone, that had been so dear to me in early childhood; but my general state of feeling was a torpor in which a prison was as welcome a residence as the divinest scene in nature; and these fits were seldom interrupted but by paroxysms of anguish and despair.Sudden, violent fits of a feeling or a pain, coming and going like attacks of fever. Victor’s torpor is “seldom interrupted but by paroxysms of anguish and despair”, and in those moments he tries to end his life. The word pairs with torpor: long dullness, broken only by bursts of pain.