Chapters 1 to 4

1. Chapters 1 to 4

2. 1. What plot exposition does Shelley offer the reader in these chapters? • Shelley provides the reader with the account of Frankenstein’s birth and early life, the backgrounds of his parents, how Elizabeth came into the family, etc. 2. What are Frankenstein’s parents like? How do they feel about each other and about their child? • They are from a distinguished family and they are devoted to each other and their child.

3. 3. How are Victor and Elizabeth different? What kind of person is Victor? • Victor is curious to learn the hidden laws of nature. Elizabeth delights in the appearance of things; he investigates their causes. 4. What quality in young Frankenstein proves to be his tragic flaw later in life? • He loved learning, and pursued that end with ferocity.

4. 5. Who is Henry Clerval? What is he like? How is he different from Victor? • He is a boyhood friend of Victor’s. He is adventurous and interested in the romance and moral relations of things. 6. What does Victor want to accomplish in life? What prevents him from continuing his study? • He wants to find the elixir of life and banish disease from mankind. He wants to study real knowledge, and he believes that destiny has decided something else for him.

5. 7. How is Elizabeth a “typical” Romantic female character? • She is blonde and fair—the only one in her “family,”, as she is Italian. She is also sweet, virtuous, and kind. 8. How did Cornelius Agrippa and other early scientists affect young Victor? • He began to desire the elixir of life. They set him on his path trying to understand God scientifically.

6. 9. How is the story of Victor’s mother’s death ironic? • Victor’s mother contracts the disease that kills her by caring for, and eventually saving, Elizabeth. 10. What does Victor contemplate in the first hours of his departure? How do these thoughts indicate his future? • He is sad to be alone and he does not feel he has the capacity to meet strangers. Later he becomes more and more reclusive as he makes his creature.

7. 11. Why does Victor not want to study the contemporary scientists suggested by M. Krempe? • Victor has contempt for the uses of modern natural philosophy; he believes the older, natural philosophies seek immortality and power while modern ones are just busy proving the old ones wrong. 12. What ultimately changes Victor’s mind about new chemists? • A lecture by M. Waldman about how much modern chemists have found changes his mind. He realizes that the old scientists have paved the way for modern ones.

8. 13. Why does Victor hesitate to make a creature like man? Why does he go through with it? • He originally thought that the body frame would be too laborious to make. However, his pride and ego convince him to try it. He wants a creation that owes him everything and will revere him. 14. What traditional tragic flaw is Victor demonstrating? • Hubris

9. 15. What is the central flaw in Victor’s decision of what to create? • He believes he is creating a new life form when he is in reality merely imitating what has already been created. 16. What internal conflict does Victor deal with as he finishes his creation? • He is both repelled and obsessed by it.

10. 17. List some gothic details from the end of Chapter IV. • Victor’s ill health—pale skin, emaciated frame, bulging eyes • The visits to charnel houses • The isolation of the top-floor laboratory

11. 18. What is Romantic in the moral Victor shares with Walton? • Nothing, no study or pursuit, is more important than relationships with other people. The fact that his study of science and his creation drew him away from appreciating the beauty of Nature around him was a crime against Nature.