Summary edit

Somewhere in the Arctic ice, an English explorer named Robert Walton takes aboard a half-frozen stranger. The stranger is Victor Frankenstein, a young Genevan who once threw himself into the study of natural philosophy, and the story he tells Walton — of a secret experiment, and of what walked away from it — makes up most of the book.

Shelley nests one voice inside another: Walton’s letters to his sister contain Victor’s confession, and at its centre Victor hands the story to the being he made. It is a short novel that reads quickly, but it rewards a class that slows down, especially over the question of who deserves our sympathy, and when.

Five discussion questions edit

  1. The story reaches us through three narrators — Walton, Victor, and the creature. Whose account do you trust most, and does the frame change how you judge Victor?[2]Session 1 · Letters and chapters 1–5

  2. Victor never gives his creation a name. What does that absence do to the way the other characters — and we, as readers — treat him?Either session

  3. The creature learns language, history, and feeling by watching the De Lacey family through a gap in a wall. What does he learn from them, and what does their response to him finally teach him?Session 2 · Chapters 11–16

  4. Walton and Victor are both ambitious men chasing discovery at great risk. Is the novel a warning against ambition itself, or against something narrower — secrecy, isolation, or refusing responsibility?Session 2 · best near the end

  5. Shelley subtitled the book The Modern Prometheus. Which parts of the Prometheus story fit Victor, and which fit the creature better?[3]Closing question · also works as an essay prompt

Key vocabulary edit

Word Wizard Words that trip readers up in this novel, in the order they tend to appear. Add two of your own from each session.

ardour
Intense enthusiasm or passion. Walton and Victor both describe their ambitions this way.
natural philosophy
The older name for what we now call the physical sciences — Victor’s field of study.
galvanism
Early experiments using electric current to make muscles twitch. Shelley mentions it in her 1831 introduction.
countenance
A person’s face, or the expression on it. Notice how often characters judge each other by it.
daemon
Spelled this way in the novel; an evil spirit. One of several names Victor uses instead of a real name.
sublime
A feeling of awe mixed with fear, often caused by vast landscapes like the Alps or the Arctic.

Themes edit

Creation and responsibility
What does a maker owe the thing it makes? Victor’s failure is less the experiment itself than what he does the morning after.
Isolation
Nearly every major character is alone at a crucial moment — Walton at sea, Victor in his workshop, the creature in the woods. Watch how solitude shapes each choice.
Nature and the sublime
Mountains, glaciers, and storms arrive at the story’s turning points. Shelley uses landscape to restore her characters, to dwarf them, and sometimes to mirror them.
Justice and blame
Justine’s trial asks who gets believed, and why. Keep it in mind as the book asks the same question of the creature.

Character map edit

Frame narrator Robert Walton Arctic explorer, writing to his sister Margaret
takes in and listens to

Victor’s circle

  • Elizabeth Lavenzaraised with Victor; later his betrothed
  • Henry Clervalhis closest friend
  • Alphonse Frankensteinhis father
  • Williamhis youngest brother
  • Justine Moritza servant in the household
Second narratorVictor Frankenstein
creates, then abandons
Third narratorThe creaturenever given a name

The creature’s world

  • The De Lacey familyexiles in a forest cottage: a blind father, Felix, and Agatha
  • SafieFelix’s beloved; her lessons teach the creature too

Notes

  1. The 1831 revision is the text most paperbacks reprint. It adds Shelley’s introduction about the book’s origin during a wet summer near Geneva in 1816, and numbers the chapters straight through; the 1818 text restarts numbering in each of its three volumes. ↩
  2. Walton’s letters open and close the novel. Reading the first letter aloud is a good way to start session one. ↩
  3. In one telling, Prometheus steals fire from the gods for humanity and is punished for it; in another, he shapes the first people from clay. Both versions were familiar to Shelley’s circle. ↩