Who's That Frankenstein Character?
This character repeatedly describes himself as a victim of fate, even though many of the novel’s tragedies result from his own choices.
Victor Frankenstein
This young boy’s murder is the first major tragedy connected to the creature after he leaves Victor.
William Frankenstein
I ought to be thy Adam, but I am rather the fallen angel.
The creature
Victor’s decision to abandon the creature after bringing him to life develops this major theme about creators, parents, and scientists being accountable for what they make.
responisbility
This two-word subtitle of Frankenstein connects Victor to a mythological figure punished for giving forbidden power to humanity.
The Modern Prometheus
While Victor becomes increasingly isolated by ambition and secrecy, this character acts as Victor’s foil because he values friendship, beauty, language, and human connection.
Henry Clerval
The creature secretly watches this family and learns language, emotion, and social behavior from them.
The De Lacey Family
Seek happiness in tranquillity, and avoid ambition
Victor Frankenstein
The repeated use of ice, mountains, storms, and vast landscapes develops this Romantic idea that nature can be beautiful, powerful, terrifying, and beyond human control.
The sublime
Frankenstein was first published anonymously in this year.
1818
This character exposes how society can punish the innocent when appearances matter more than truth.
Justine Moritz
Victor delays marrying Elizabeth because he believes he must first fulfill this promise to the creature.
creating a female creature
You seek for knowledge and wisdom, as I once did; and I ardently hope that the gratification of your wishes may not be a serpent to sting you, as mine has been.
Robert Walton
Victor and Walton both pursue glory through discovery, showing that this human desire becomes dangerous when it is separated from humility and moral responsibility.
ambition
This real-life summer gathering near Lake Geneva helped inspire Mary Shelley’s idea for Frankenstein.
the ghost-story contest / the summer at Lord Byron’s villa
This character is never fully allowed to develop as an independent person, which helps show how women in the novel are often idealized but denied agency.
Elizabeth Lavenza
After Victor destroys the unfinished female creature, the creature makes this threat, which Victor tragically misunderstands as a threat against his own life.
I shall be with you on your wedding-night
I will endeavour to resign myself cheerfully to death, and will indulge a hope of meeting you in another world.
Justine Moritz
When the creature discovers this, he learns that the same force can both comfort and harm him, reflecting the novel’s larger warning about knowledge and power.
Fire
This character from the novel does not exist in Mary Shelley’s original text, despite becoming famous in later Frankenstein adaptations.
Igor
Unlike M. Krempe, this professor inspires Victor by presenting modern science as a field with almost limitless power and possibility.
M. Waldman
Hidden in a leather portmanteau, these three texts shape the creature’s understanding of human emotion, history, morality, and his own isolation.
Paradise Lost, Plutarch’s Lives, and The Sorrows of Young Werther
Do not waste your time upon this; it is sad trash.
The creature first realizes the full horror of his appearance when he sees himself reflected in this.
Pool of water
In the novel, this is the name of the magistrate Victor appeals to after Elizabeth’s murder, only to find that legal justice cannot answer his suffering.
Mr. Kirwin