Frankenstein Questions

English 202

Dr. Fike

1. Why is Frankenstein called “the modern Prometheus”?
2. What is Coleridge’s “Rime of the Ancient Mariner” doing in Frankenstein?  Do you see any parallels?  Think about the settings, the wedding guest, the mariner’s “glittering eye,” the killing of the albatross, the mariner’s redemption, death-in-life, and the poem’s moral. 
3. What is the role of Roger Walton at the beginning of the novel?
4. What is the significance of the lightning-blasted tree in chapter 2?
5. How does the novel illustrate the characteristics of the Romantic period?
6. Think about the possible interpretations of the novel:
   1. The novel dramatizes the traumas of motherhood and childbirth.
   2. The novel enacts the struggle between knowledge/power and human sympathy/love.
   3. The novel is an emblem of self-torture and latent masochism.
   4. The novel depicts Frankenstein and his creation—as well as Frankenstein and his friends and family—as different parts of the self.
   5. The novel provides an account of the origin of good and evil.
   6. The novel critiques the role of the human imagination.
   7. The novel is about class struggle and the alienation of the worker.
   8. The novel creates its own reader.
7. How does Shelley use Milton’s Paradise Lost?
8. How is Frankenstein deficient as a creator?
9. Is the monster’s murder of William in any way a just action?  Is Justine’s guilty verdict a just decision?  What about divine justice?  What about justice elsewhere in the novel?
10. What similarities (or differences) are there between Frankenstein’s family and the cottagers’ family?
11. How are Frankenstein and the monster alike?