Chapter 3 · Frankenstein

Copywork

After having made a few preparatory experiments, he concluded with a panegyric upon modern chemistry, the terms of which I shall never forget: “The ancient teachers of this science,” said he, “promised impossibilities and performed nothing. The modern masters promise very little; they know that metals cannot be transmuted and that the elixir of life is a chimera but these philosophers, whose hands seem only made to dabble in dirt, and their eyes to pore over the microscope or crucible, have indeed performed miracles.

They penetrate into the recesses of nature and show how she works in her hiding-places. They ascend into the heavens; they have discovered how the blood circulates, and the nature of the air we breathe. They have acquired new and almost unlimited powers; they can command the thunders of heaven, mimic the earthquake, and even mock the invisible world with its own shadows.”

Read Waldman’s speech aloud the way he might have said it. Where would your voice rise, and where would it drop?

Discussion

Narration Tell back what happens from Elizabeth’s fever to Victor’s visit to Waldman’s laboratory. Then choose the moment you think matters most, and say what it changes.

Before he goes, Victor calls it “sacrilege” to leave “the house of mourning” so soon. On the road, he says, “my spirits and hopes rose.” Why might both be true of him? Character
Victor already thinks the old authors are “useless”, so he is not disappointed when Krempe scorns them. Still, he comes away “not at all the more inclined” to study what Krempe teaches. Why does Krempe fail to win him over? Inference
In Waldman’s list of what the new masters can do, “how the blood circulates” comes early. The list ends with the power to “mock the invisible world”. Why might he put the list in that order? Author's choice
Elizabeth “veiled her grief” so the family could be comforted. Victor tells Waldman that the lecture cleared away his “prejudices”, but he hides his “enthusiasm”. What is different about those two kinds of hiding? Theme
Victor says “the Angel of Destruction” led him to Krempe, and that Waldman’s words were spoken “to destroy me”. Yet he went to the lecture partly from “curiosity” and partly from “idleness”. Why might he tell the story of that day as fate, and not as his own choice? Moral reasoning

Make a Connection Think of a story, or a time in your own life, when one speech or talk changed what someone wanted to do with their life. Why might words move a person that far?

Vocabulary

panegyric: After having made a few preparatory experiments, he concluded with a panegyric upon modern chemistry, the terms of which I shall never forget: A formal speech in praise of a person or a thing. Victor uses the word for the end of Waldman’s lecture.
chimera: I was required to exchange chimeras of boundless grandeur for realities of little worth. A wonderful thing that exists only in the imagination, never in fact.
For the educator The word appears twice in the chapter: in Waldman’s speech, which is in the copywork, and here, in Victor’s own account of why he scorned modern science.
prepossess: M. Krempe was a little squat man with a gruff voice and a repulsive countenance; the teacher, therefore, did not prepossess me in favour of his pursuits. To make someone favor a thing before they have thought it over. Victor says Krempe’s face did not do this for his science.
benevolence: He appeared about fifty years of age, but with an aspect expressive of the greatest benevolence; A habit of wishing people well. Here it is something Victor reads in a stranger’s face.
indefatigable: “These were men to whose indefatigable zeal modern philosophers were indebted for most of the foundations of their knowledge. Never tiring; keeping at a task without giving up. Waldman uses it of the old teachers’ zeal.
palpable: As he went on I felt as if my soul were grappling with a palpable enemy; Able to be touched; solid and real. Victor uses it in a comparison: while Waldman speaks, his soul seems to wrestle an enemy real enough to touch.

Critical thinking

In the lecture, Waldman says the old teachers “performed nothing”. The next day he calls them “men of genius” whose work helps mankind in the end. Was the lecture unfair to them?
Waldman says the new masters can show how nature “works in her hiding-places” and can “command the thunders of heaven”. When Victor leaves that lecture with “one purpose”, is it to understand nature or to command it?