Isn't it Romantic?
"When I was about fifteen years old…we witnessed a most violent and terrible thunder-storm…I remained, while the storm lasted, watching its progress with curiosity and delight."
Beauty of Nature
The Modern Prometheus
Victor Frankenstein
“I ought to be thy Adam; but I am rather the fallen angel.”
The fallen angel in Paradise Lost
Lucifer
"But I am a blasted tree; the bolt has entered my soul; and I felt then that I should survive to exhibit what I shall soon cease to be a miserable spectacle of wrecked humanity, pitiable to others, and intolerable to myself.''
Metaphor
"At first I perceived that he tried to suppress his emotion; he placed his hands before his eyes, and my voice quivered and failed me as I beheld tears trickle fast from between his fingers; a groan burst from his heaving breast."
Emotion and Passion
First victim of the creature
William
“Unhappy man! Do you share my madness? Have you drunk also of the intoxicating draught? Hear me – let me reveal my tale, and you will dash the cup from your lips!”
Victor Frankenstein
Victor accumulates his materials for his creation from________.
Graveyards and morgues
Thus far I have gone, tracing a secure way over the pathless seas, the very stars themselves being witnesses and testimonies of my triumph.
Personification
"A woman was sleeping on some straw; she was young, not indeed so beautiful as her whose portrait I held, but of an agreeable aspect and blooming in the loveliness of youth and health."
Idealization of Women
“I did confess; but I confessed a lie. I confessed, that I might obtain absolution but now that falsehood lies heavier at my heart than all my other sins.”
Justine
"Did I request thee, Maker, from my clay/ To mould me man? Did I solicit thee/ From darkness to promote me?"
Paradise Lost-- John Milton or Adam
Why/when Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein
Short horror story competition
“A fiendish rage animated him as he said this; his face was wrinkled into contortions too horrible for human eyes to behold..."
Hyperbole
"Yet even that enemy of God and man had friends and associates in his desolation; I am alone."
Isolation and Melancholy
Daughter of the cottagers
Agatha
Do not despair. To be friendless is indeed to be unfortunate, but the hearts of men, when unprejudiced by any obvious self-interest, are full of brotherly love and charity.
DeLacey
a device: a character who contrasts with another character, for example Victor and the creature
a character foil
"I shall kill no albatross."
Allusion: Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner
"More, far more, will I achieve; treading in the steps already marked, I will pioneer a new way, explore unknown powers, and unfold to the world the deepest mysteries of creation."
Individuality and Spirituality
The narrator of the outermost frame.
Robert Walton
I bitterly feel the want of a friend.
Robert Walton
The books the creature reads to learn about humanity.
Milton's Paradise Lost, portions of Plutarch's Lives, and Goethe's Sorrows of Young Werther.
"I see the same figure-- her bloodless arms and relaxed form flung by the murderer on its bridal bier."
oxymoron