Frankenstein Quotes/Analysis

“Speak to the…

…mysterious fears of our nature, and awaken thrilling horror.” 

Frankenstein is a \[blank\] tale. Why?

‘Cautionary.’ It warns humans about sci-fi and how you will face suffering and misfortune by overreaching and obtaining secret knowledge.

* what happens when humans overstep → artificial intelligence

What Greek Myth is Frankenstein alluded to be and why?

A modern-day Prometheus - the dude who gave the world fire and was punished by Zeus, by being hung to a mountain and had his liver pecked out every day until Hercules saved him.

* the Romantics saw Prometheus as a hero; someone who never gives up even when faced with incredible suffering.

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What is the Romantic Era

The purity of Art, heightened emotion being an aesthetic (terror, awe, horror etc.) and Nature being divine 🤘🤌

* intuition > rationalism
* nature and wildness > Classical harmony
* emotion > intellect

What genre is Frankenstein?

Gothic, Sci-fi, Romantic.

What is galvanism?

The science of using electricity to reanimate dead biological matter by awakening their muscles; temporarily.

What are the key ideas of Frankenstein?

1. Creation - about new and terrifying ways to bring light and life into the world


1. linked to 2 other creation stories: Prometheus and Paradise Lost (biblical)


1. Victor is playing God, and the creature represents the sinning Adam
2. A take on birth → being creative and destructive
2. A celebration of ambition and superhuman effort → pursuit of knowledge and glory.


1. this is shown through Walton; however, it can also show that ambition can lead to corruptness and evil
2. Walton is ready to risk his own life and his crew’s for knowledge
3. corruption of nature
3. The desire for redemption and acceptance
4. Subversion of the Natural Order


1. science → man being a creator; blurring the line with God; (BUT VICTOR IS NOT GOD!)

“Oh! Be men, or be more than men…

…return as heroes who have fought and conquered and who know not what it is to turn their backs on the foe.”

“Thus are my hopes…

…blasted by cowardice and indecision; i come back ignorant and disappointed.”

Ambivalence examples in the novel

* “we shouldn’t overreach but maybe sometimes we should overreach.”

What’s the novel’s epigraph? hint: it’s from PL

“Did I request thee, maker, from my clay to mould me man, did I solicit these from darkness to promote me.”

“I am thy creature;

…I ought to be thy Adam, but I am rather the fallen angel, whom thou drivest from joy for no misdeed. Everywhere I see bliss, from which I alone am irrevocably excluded.”

What is intentional fallacy and how is it used in Frankenstein?

Definition: in which we believe we can know exactly what the author was thinking when they wrote a book.

* some people can interpret the book as MS working out her own problems about life and death. (biographical reading)

“Unrelaxed and breathless…

…eagerness, I pursued Nature to her hiding-places.”

* how Victor does not treat women well (Justine, Elizabeth), this can be seen in the anthropomorphism of Nature also being a woman and how Victor has violated it too. → due to his selfish greed for knowledge and glory

“… she might become ten thousand times

…more malignant than her mate and delight, for its own sake, in murder and wretchedness.”

“… a race of devils would be…

…propagated upon the earth who might make the very existence of the species of man a condition precarious and full of terror.”

“I will be with you…

…on your wedding night.”

“I might in the process of time …

… renew life where death had apparently devoted the body to corruption”

“… would bless me as its creator and source;

…many happy and excellent natures would we their being to me. No father could claim the gratitude of his child so completely as I should deserve theirs.  ”

Why is Victor a bad God?

Because his desire to create life is actually selfish. That he is pursuing knowledge - not for universal good, or so the dead may live again - but for his own gratification.

* when he does succeed in his creation; he responds with utter horror and his creation and runs away. (ABANDONED HIM!)

“Satan had his companions…

… fellow devils, to admire and encourage him, but I am solitary and abhorred.”

How is Frankenstein relevant today?

* how artificial intelligence and technology and where it fits in today; the ethical and moral issues.

“Life and death appeared to me…

…ideal bounds, which I should first break through, and pour a torrent of light into our dark world.”