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Pe ng ui n Re ad er s Fa ct sh ee ts l e v e l

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Frankenstein

S U M M A R Y

oung Victor Frankenstein has his whole life before him when he sets off to study at university. He comes from a loving family, he has a good friend, Henry, and he is loved by his beautiful cousin, Elizabeth. He is highly intelligent with a deep interest in science, especially electricity, and the origins of human life. It is this interest which leads to the destruction of everything he loves and in the end, his own death. Frankenstein learns how to make life from body parts but, at the very moment of his triumph, he realises that he has created a monster, and he wants no more to do with it. As the monster makes clear later in the book, it is this unwillingness to face up to his responsibilities, rather than the act of creating the monster itself, which results in disaster.The monster wants love and

Frankenstein shuns him.

The monster escapes from Frankenstein's laboratory and the young man is delighted when he returns to find him gone. For a while the young man's life returns to its happy groove, Then, the first horrific act occurs. Frankenstein's young brother, William, is murdered and his nanny, Justine, is implicated in his murder. Although Frankenstein is convinced she is innocent, she is tried, found guilty and executed. As if this is not terrible enough, Frankenstein soon discovers that his creation is, in fact, the murderer. Whilst Frankenstein was trying to rebuild his life, the monster had learnt to survive and had even learnt to speak and to understand language. But he has also become aware of his own ugliness and despairs of ever finding anyone who will love him. He killed William to take his revenge on Frankenstein but now he wants the young man to help him, by making a female monster to be his mate. He promises in return to leave the country and to do no more evil. Frankenstein goes along with the idea, travels to England to do research. He travels with his friend, Henry, but leaves him to go to a Scottish island to collect the body parts and proceed with his grisly task. But after he has made the monster, he realises that he could make things far worse - what if the female doesn't like the male, what if she refuses to go away, what, God forbid, if they have offspring? He destroys the female, but his monster is watching and issues a chilling warning - 'I will be with you on your wedding night'. Frankenstein packs up his things and goes out in a boat to drop the evidence in the sea. But he falls asleep and drifts to the coast of Ireland where he is arrested for the murder of a stranger - who turns out, of course, to be his great friend, Henry. He is released in due course but he is sinking deeper into despair and self-loathing as he realises that his monster has struck again.

He returns home in due course, believing that the monsterintends to kill him on his wedding night. He determines to kill the

monster that night or die in the attempt. But once again the monster outwits him and kills Elizabeth. The tragedy is complete when Frankenstein's father dies of a broken heart on hearing the news of Elizabeth's death. Frankenstein then embarks on a fruitless pursuit of the monster across the snows and ice of the North Pole, eventually succumbing to ill-health. The monster appears and, after all his bloodshed, he is saddened by Frankenstein's death. He vows to kill no more, indeed, to go out into the ice and die himself. Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley was born on August 30,1797 and died on February 1, 1851. She was the the only daughter of William Godwin and Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin. In 1814 she met the young poet Percy Bysshe Shelley and went with him to France in July of that year.They married in 1816 after Shelley's first wife killed herself. They had a happy but short marriage, and, on her husband's death in 1822, she returned to England with her son, Percy Florence Shelley. She published many of her husband's poetry and prose works after his death, and added to these her own notes on his work. Mary Shelley was herself a writer and Frankenstein, her most famous work, was published in 1819. She wrote several other novels, including Valparga (1823),The Fortunes of Perkin Warbeck (1830) and her best work The Last Man (1826). She also wrote a travel book History of a Six Weeks'Tour (1817) which is about her trip around Europe in 1814 with her future husband. Her letters and diary were edited and published in 1944 and

1947 by F.L. Jones.

Frankenstein is sometimes cited as the classic example of the Gothic novel. The genre was given this name because the stories usually had medieval buildings or ruins in them, often with secret tunnels or rooms. The word Gothicdescribes the architecture of the medieval period but the novels were most popular in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. In fact, Gothic architecture does not feature prominently in Frankenstein but in another important respect the novel is a supreme example of its kind. Gothic novels often contain horrific events with tragedy piled upon tragedy. In this novel, everybody that Frankenstein loves is murdered, executed or dies of a broken heart. Perhaps the feeling is that this unremitting horror will have a cathartic effect on the reader, leaving him cleansed and thus a better person. Frankensteinis certainly 65

4321EABOUT MARY SHELLEY

BACKGROUND AND THEMES

Y

T e a c h er's no te sby Mary Shelley

© Pearson Education 2001

Pe ng ui n Re ad er s Fa ct sh ee ts l e v e l3

very didactic with its central message impressed on the reader many times. The monster does bad things because people do bad things to the monster.Thus people are not born evil but learn to be evil. Both the monster and Frankenstein make the point that the other has taken away all hope of future happiness. One minor theme in Frankensteinhas, perhaps, become more telling with the passing of time. Frankenstein creates life, a remote possibility at the time that the novel was written. Now, when scientists are close to creating human life, have actually done so to a limited extent, the message that the scientific community is responsible for its creations is a timely reminder. The following teacher-led activities cover the same sections of text as the exercises at the back of the

Reader and supplement those exercises. For

supplementary exercises covering shorter sections of the book, see the photocopiable Student'sActivities pages of this Factsheet. These are primarily for use with class readers but, with the exception of the discussion and pair/groupwork activities, can also be used by students working alone in a self-access centre.

ACTIVITIES BEFORE READING THE BOOK

Ask students to work in groups to consider these

questions.

1Do you like horror stories? Why (not)?

2Why are horror stories so popular?

3What was the last horror story you read or saw? What

can you remember about it?

ACTIVITIES AFTER READING A SECTION

Chapters 1-3

1Ask students to work in pairs to consider this

question. Frankenstein says 'The monster will return.'What is the monster going to do next?

Elicit answers from students and keep them to

compare with the actual events in the book as the students continue to read.

2Ask students to work in groups to act out the trial of

Justine. Someone should play Justine, someone the

prosecutor and someone the defence council. There must also be a judge to finally decide on Justine's guilt and to sentence her.

Chapters 4-6

Ask students to work in pairs to tell the story of William and Justine as the monster tells it. Then ask them to compare the monster's version with Frankenstein's idea.

Are there any differences?

Chapter 7-9

1Ask students to work in groups to discuss these

questions.(a)What does the monster want Frankenstein to do? (b)Does he agree? Why/Why not? (c)What do you think about the idea? (d)What are the dangers of the idea?

2Ask students to work in groups to act out the trial of

Frankenstein for Henry's murder. Someone should

play Frankenstein, someone the prosecutor and someone the defence council. There must also be a judge to finally decide on Frankenstein's innocence.

Chapters 10-12

Ask students to imagine that Frankenstein actually got the opportunity to tell Elizabeth and the monster. Put them in pairs to role play the scene in which he tells her.

ACTIVITIES AFTER READING THE BOOK

Ask students to work in groups to answer these

questions.

1Who died in this story?

2How did they each die?It will be useful for your students to know the following new words.

They are practised in the 'Before You Read'sections of exercises at the back of the book. (Definitions are based on those in the

Longman Active Study Dictionary.)

Chapters 1-3

arrest(v) if a police officer arrests someone, he or she takes them away because they are believed to be guilty of a crime breathe(v) to take air into your lungs and let it out again chemistry(n) the science of studying chemicals and what happens when they change or combine with each other create(v) to make something new exist or happen experiment(v) to try using various ideas, methods, materials, etc in order to find out what effect they have guilty(adj) ashamed because you have done something that you know is wrong human(adj) belonging to or relating to people laboratory(n) a room or building in which scientists do tests and research lightning(n) a bright flash of electric light in the sky during a storm misery(n) when someone is very unhappy monster(n) a large ugly, frightening creature in stories power(n) control over people or events responsible(adj) if you are responsible for something that has happened, you caused it or you are the person to blame trial(n) legal process in which a court of law decides whether or not someone is guilty of a crime

Chapter 4-6

cruel(adj) deliberately making people or animals feel pain or sadness evil(adj) very cruel or harmful glacier(n) a large mass of ice that moves slowly down a mountain valley mark(n) a sign or shape that is written or printed revenge(n) something you do in order to punish someone who has harmed you

Communicative activities

G l o s s a r y

T e a c h er's note sPublished and distributed by Pearson Education

Factsheet written by T erry Philips

Factsheet series developed by Louise James

© Pearson Education 2001

Pe ng ui n Re ad er s Fa ct sh ee ts

1Read the first part of the Introduction - the paragraphs about

the story. Who, in this story, is Frankenstein?

2Read the second part of the Introduction - the information

about the author. Write 5 questions about the information, then work in pairs and test your partner with the questions.

Chapters 1-3

1Match each adjective or adjective phrase with a noun to make

a phrase from The First Letter. (a)long(i)brother (b)difficult and dangerous(ii)clothes (c)foreign(iii)conversations (d)thin(iv)country (e)dry, warm(v)eyes (f)sad(vi)journey (g)strange(vii)man (h)interesting(viii)mind (i)quick and intelligent(ix)story (j)strange, sad and frightening(x)visitor (k)loving(xi)way

2Work in pairs. Tell the story of The First Letterusing the

phrases from Exercise 1.

3These characters all appear in Chapter 1. Match each person

(a-f) to one of the descriptions (i-vi). (a)Victor Frankenstein (b)Afarmer and his wife (c)Elizabeth Lavenza (d)Ernest and William (e)Henry Clerval (f)Mr Waldman (i)a close friend of Victor's (ii)the daughter of a rich man from Milan (iii)the narrator of the story (iv)they looked after Elizabeth Lavenza when her father died. (v)Victor's brothers (vi)Victor's science teacher at university

4What do you think is the most important event in Chapter 1?

Discuss in small groups.

5Are these sentences from Chapter 2 true or false?

(a)Frankenstein wanted to discover why people died. (b)After two years, he discovered how to create life. (c)It took Frankenstein many months to create a human form. (d)He used parts of human bodies from graves. (e)He wrote to his family about his experiments. (f)He created a large man with thick black hair, white teeth and green eyes. (h)He was very proud of his work. (i)The monster could walk. (j)He was happy when the monster ran away.

(k)He was ill for a short time and then got better.(l)He stopped studying chemistry and started studying

foreign languages.

6Work in groups. Tell the story of Chapter 3 from the point of

view of the monster.

Chapters 4-6

1These sentences are about the information in Chapter 4. The

word in italics in each sentence is wrong. Correct it. (a)Sometimes I took a coat onto the water. (b)I sat in it with my family. (c)They were still tryingfor William. (d)Justine was dead and the true murderer was three. (e)I was in a state of complete mystery. (f)One day I decided to leave the house and travel to the lake.quotesdbs_dbs42.pdfusesText_42

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