Frankenstein, Vol. 1 Discussion Questions

Go to Vol. 2 Q's Go to Vol.  3 Q's

• Nature
• Science & Ambition
• Religion
• Language:  Speech, Reading, & Writing
• Roles of Men and Women
• Relationship b/w Parents & Children
• Sexuality
• Birth & Death
• Doppelgangers for Victor: Walton and the Creature
  

• Why is Walton going to the North Pole? How do his motivations compare with Victor's (see pp. 25 and 35)
  

• What lack does Walton feel most strongly? (cf. 18).
  

• Explain Walton's reference to an albatross.

• Why has Victor agreed to tell his story to Walton?
  

• Why isn't his father successful at first in persuading Victor to stop reading Agrippa? How does his father get him to stop?

• Why does Victor refer to his laboratory as a "workshop of filthy creation" (36)?

• Explain the significance of the dream Victor has on the night of his "success."

• When Victor says, "The mere presence of the idea was an irresistible proof of the fact"(53), to what is he referring? What does he mean?
• Why does Victor call the creature "my own vampire, my own spirit released from the grave"(53)?   What does that mean?

60:

• Has Justine killed William? Why does she confess?

• Describe Walton's education.
  

• What is Natural Philosophy?
• Why does Victor get into Agrippa?

• Explain Victor's statement: "I was required to exchange chimeras of boundless grandeur for realities of little worth" (30).

• Explain Victor's statement: "To examine the causes of life, we must first have recourse to death"(33).

• What is the nature of Victor's illness? Why does it fatigue him, even after several months recovery time, to write a letter?

• What is an orientalist?

• Why is Victor so anxious about returning home?

• Describe the mood Shelley develops in her description of the setting of Geneva.

• Why do so many people confess to the murder of William?
• 49, 54:  Elizabeth
• 56, 61:  Victor
• 60:  Justine