Frankenstein Essay Prompts
Instructions: Choose one of the prompts from the list below. Each prompt is designed to take your thoughts beyond the reading of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein to think about the novel’s connections to the real world. Thoroughly respond to the quote or the prompt’s question in a well-thought essay.
Your essay should be:
· A minimum of 550 words (approximately two typed pages)
· 12-point font (Arial or Times New Roman)
· Double-spaced
· Proofread and Spell Check
Choose one of the following prompts:
A. In Milton’s Paradise Lost, Satan often refers to God as “the Victor”. Mary Shelley chose to name her protagonist “Victor”. Discuss how this name could be symbolic and whether or not Victor Frankenstein is victorious.
B. Ellen Moers, writer of an essay about Mary Shelley’s life, states that Frankenstein deals with “the motif of revulsion against new born life, and the drama of guilt, dread, and flight surrounding birth and its consequences…Frankenstein seems to be distinctly a woman’s mythmaking on the subject of birth.” How might Victor’s feelings of revulsion at the sight of his creation and his flight from the creature be compared to a mother who rejects her baby (postpartum depression)?
C. It has been said, “Death sits on her side of the bed when a woman and man make love…lovers risk babies, and babies kill [as in death in childbirth, complications for the mother]. It is commonplace, an age-old fact that men and women both know, but which only women have to confront; and it is this fact, deeply expressed in Mary Shelley’s life, that gives to Frankenstein its special eeriness.” If the act of birth is a risk for the woman, how does the fact that the creator, Victor, is male and not a female influence understanding of the novel.
D. Frankenstein does not touch us because Victor Frankenstein is a scientist but because his creature was born ugly, because Victor abandoned him, because the creature’s life is spent in a long, long pilgrimage toward his father/mother’s love. Discuss the “pilgrimage” from birth to finding love and acceptance in a parent’s eyes.
E. Frankenstein makes a dark statement about science, because Mary Shelley implied that the direction in which civilization moves is determined by what it understands of the nature of power. What scientific elements in our society today could determine the direction our society takes in the next few years?
F. Cold and ice are powerful elements in the novel. The story begins and ends in an icebound setting, and the major confrontation between Victor and the Creature takes place in an ice cave in the Swiss Alps mountain range. Discuss the symbolism of cold/ice and its influence on the novel.
G. Decide and defend your decision: On which side of the following argument do you fall? “When it comes to scientific advancements, more harm is done to society than good.” OR “Be kind when you create. Godlike power demands godlike wisdom.”
H. Discuss the psychological relationship between the creator and the creature.
I. Frankenstein is a remarkable record of disrupted parent-child relationships. Discuss the roles of parent and child as reflected in Victor and the Creature.
J. The Creature is more of a super-man than a beast. The fact that Victor hunts the super-man to destruction is a dreadful comment on the human condition and our animalistic urge to destroy that which we cannot comprehend. Think of other individuals or groups who have been destroyed (whether destroyed in the actual physical sense of death or in the metaphorical sense of character assassination or emotionally/mentally destroyed) and their tormentors; then compare these to Victor and the Creature.
K. It has been said, “Victor Frankenstein was heartless, a representative of the patriarchy who loved science and technology and saw himself as supreme over nature. He didn’t have a womb, but he tried to do what women had been doing naturally forever: creating life. He thought if he sewed bits and pieces of men together, he could produce the ideal man. Instead, he created two monsters: himself and the poor creature without a voice in his own destiny.”