Print at 100% scale on letter paper, with no added margins.
Frankenstein
Mountaineers · 10th–12th
I feel exquisite pleasure in dwelling on the recollections of childhood, before misfortune had tainted my mind and changed its bright visions of extensive usefulness into gloomy and narrow reflections upon self. Besides, in drawing the picture of my early days, I also record those events which led, by insensible steps, to my after tale of misery, for when I would account to myself for the birth of that passion which afterwards ruled my destiny I find it arise, like a mountain river, from ignoble and almost forgotten sources; but, swelling as it proceeded, it became the torrent which, in its course, has swept away all my hopes and joys. Natural philosophy is the genius that has regulated my fate; I desire, therefore, in this narration, to state those facts which led to my predilection for that science.
Read your copy aloud, slowly. Which single phrase tells you the most about how Victor sees his passion?
Narration Tell the chapter back in a few sentences, from the three companions to Victor’s turn to mathematics. Then choose the one sentence you think matters most, and say what it shows about how Victor explains his own life.
1. Elizabeth takes in the world with “a serious and satisfied spirit”. Even the best science of his day left Victor “discontented and unsatisfied”. What keeps him from being satisfied, as she is?Theme
2. The boy searched for the elixir of life. Wealth meant little to him; he wanted the glory of making man safe from all but “a violent death”. Was that a noble wish or a proud one?Moral reasoning
3. The boy took his masters at their word. When his spells failed, he blamed his own “inexperience and mistake”, not them. Why was he so slow to doubt them?Inference
4. The visitor’s theory was “at once new and astonishing” to Victor. Yet it left him feeling that “nothing would or could ever be known”. How can a new discovery leave him sure that nothing can be known?Character
5. Victor first calls his sudden turn from his old studies one of “those caprices of the mind” that come with early youth. A few lines later, he calls it the work of “the guardian angel of my life”. Why does he give one change two such different causes?Author's choice
Make a Connection Think of a story, or a time in your own life, when someone traced a great change back to one small event. Why might a person tell the story of a life that way?
Besides, in drawing the picture of my early days, I also record those events which led, by insensible steps, to my after tale of misery, for when I would account to myself for the birth of that passion which afterwards ruled my destiny I find it arise, like a mountain river, from ignoble and almost forgotten sources; but, swelling as it proceeded, it became the torrent which, in its course, has swept away all my hopes and joys.
Natural philosophy is the genius that has regulated my fate; I desire, therefore, in this narration, to state those facts which led to my predilection for that science.
When I was thirteen years of age we all went on a party of pleasure to the baths near Thonon; the inclemency of the weather obliged us to remain a day confined to the inn.
I have described myself as always having been imbued with a fervent longing to penetrate the secrets of nature.
By one of those caprices of the mind which we are perhaps most subject to in early youth, I at once gave up my former occupations, set down natural history and all its progeny as a deformed and abortive creation, and entertained the greatest disdain for a would-be science which could never even step within the threshold of real knowledge.
Destiny was too potent, and her immutable laws had decreed my utter and terrible destruction.
1. Victor says that if his father had explained why Agrippa was out of date, he “should certainly have thrown Agrippa aside”. About two years later, a visitor explains a new theory to him. Does what Victor does next support his claim or weaken it?
2. Victor longs to learn “the hidden laws of nature”. He finds “some law” at work in his own nature. In the end he blames Destiny’s “immutable laws”. Why might he tell his own life as if laws ruled it?
3. Victor traces the road to his ruin back to a day of bad weather at an inn and a careless word from his father. Was it chance that set him on that road, or something that was in him all along?