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Frankenstein Focus Questions
Directions: Please answer each question in complete sentences. Use specific details from the
book the support your response. Include page citation when necessary. You do not need to copy
the questions.
Letters 1-4
DUE:
1. Who is Mrs. Seville?
2. From reading the first letter, what can you infer about R. Walton’s character and explain what his purpose is.
3. In the second letter, what does Walton desperately want and miss?
4. Walton makes an allusion in his second letter. Identify the allusion and briefly explain it.
5. In the August 5th portion of the fourth letter, Walton encounters two things on the ice. What are they?
6. What did the man want to know before he was willing to come on board Walton’s ship?
7. What did the stranger answer when he was asked why “he had come so far upon the ice in so strange a
vehicle?”
8. In the August 13th portion of the fourth letter, what can you infer about how Walton feels about the stranger?
Provide quotations as support.
9. What reason does the stranger give Walton for wanting to tell his own story?
10. Whose point of view are the letters told from?
11. What is the purpose of Mary Shelley opening the novel with these letters?
Frankenstein Focus Questions Chap 1-5
DUE:
1. Who are Beaufort and Caroline Beaufort?
2. Who is Elizabeth Lavenza and briefly describe her situation?
3. Who is Henry Clerval?
4. From the description on page 23-26, what can you infer about the narrator?
5. After reading Chapter 2, what do you think the narrator’s primary motivation was for seeking knowledge?
6. How did the narrator’s mother die and what did she say would calm her as she neared death?
7. How did the narrator feel about M. Krempe compared to how he felt about M. Waldman?
8. “...from the midst of this darkness a sudden light broke in upon me—a light so brilliant and wondrous, yet so
simple...that I alone should be reserved to discover so astonishing a secret” (pg 38). What does this quote
say about the narrator and what is the “astonishing secret” he is referring to?
9. In the narrator’s quest for glory and fame, what is he neglecting?
10. “How can I describe my emotions at this catastrophe” (pg 43). What is the catastrophe the narrator is
referring to and what is significant about his diction?
11. Explain the narrator’s reaction to successfully completing his project.
12. Whose point of view are Chapters 1-5 told from?
Frankenstein Focus Questions Chap 6-10
DUE:
1. Who are Ernest and William?
2. Who is Justine Moritz?
3. What happened to William?
4. After hearing the news of William, Frankenstein leaves school and goes home. He visits a specific place (pg
62). What does he see?
5. How much time has passed since Frankenstein completed the monster?
6. What was Justine accused of?
7. Elizabeth addresses the court on Justine’s behalf (pg 70-71). What was the result of her speech?
8. What was the verdict on Justine? 9. How does Frankenstein react to the verdict? What does this say about his
character?
9. What are the reasons Justine gives for confessing?
10. What happens to Justine?
11. When Frankenstein encounters the monster in Chapter 10, he threatens to kill it and the response from the
daemon is “how dare you sport thus with life” (pg 86). What is significant about this interaction?
12. Why does Frankenstein agree to the monster’s request?
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Frankenstein Focus Questions Chap 11-16
DUE:
1. How does the family’s reaction to the creature affect his view of himself and the human race?
2. What are the specific reasons that the creature gives for hating his creator?
3. How does the creature cause the deaths of William and Justine?
4. What does the murder of William tell the creature about himself?
5. According to the creature, what can save him from doing evil?
6. Thus far, do you find the creature more or less sympathetic than the character of Victor Frankenstein?
Explain your answer.
7. In what ways is the creature like any human being? In what ways is he different?
8. What does the creature want most in life and why does this goal seem attainable?
9. Does the creature have the potential for good as well as evil? Explain
10. Mary Shelley chose to use two different characters to relate the same story. Why did she write her story this
way?
11. Is this technique successful? Explain why or why not.
Frankenstein Focus Questions Chap 17-21
DUE:
1. What does the monster demand Frankenstein do for him?
2. Frankenstein refuses to do what the monster demands. Briefly summarize the monsters response to
Frankenstein when he is refused (last paragraph on pg 133).
3. Why does Frankenstein agree to the monster‟s demand finally?
4. What reason does Frankenstein give for not wanting to marry Elizabeth immediately like his father wants?
5. “He was a being formed in the „very poetry of nature‟” (pg 144). What is the antecedent of the pronoun and
what does this statement foreshadow?
6. 16. Frankenstein finally begins the task demanded by the monster. How does Frankenstein describe the
island where he will create the monster‟s companion on page 151?
7. Frankenstein says that he “lived ungazed at and unmolested, hardly thanked for the pittance of food and
clothes which I gave; so much does suffering blunt even the coarsest sensations of men” (pg 151). Why is
this statement ironic?
8. How does Frankenstein rationalize the creation of the monster at the end of Chapter 19?
9. “I looked towards its completion with a tremulous and eager hope, which I dared not trust myself to
question, but which was intermixed with obscure forebodings of evil, that made my heart sicken in my
bosom” (pg 152). What does this statement reveal about Frankenstein?
10. What are the reasons Frankenstein gives for not wanting to complete the task the monster demands of him?
11. What does the monster threaten Frankenstein he will do now that Frankenstein has destroyed the monster‟s
companion?
12. What happened to Henry Clerval? Who was deemed responsible for what happened to Clerval?
13. Identify Frankenstein‟s turning point? Identify the climax?
Frankenstein Focus Questions Chap 22-24
DUE:
1. In Elizabeth’s letter to Frankenstein, what is the main question she asks him?
2. Frankenstein writes to Elizabeth and tells her “I will confide this tale of misery and terror...” (pg 176).
When does he plan to tell her the tale of misery and terror?
3. “...the monster had blinded me to his real intentions...” (pg 178). What is this statement foreshadowing?
4. “A fiend had snatched from me every hope of future happiness: no creature had ever been so miserable as I
was” (pg 185). What is ironic about this statement?
5. “Cursed, cursed be the fiend that brought misery on his grey hairs, and doomed him to waste in
wretchedness!” (pg 185). What is the antecedent of the pronoun, his? Who do you think the “fiend” is?
6. After Frankenstein‟s father died, what happened to Frankenstein? (Hint-first 2 paragraphs of page 186).
7. “Since you have preserved my narration...I would not that a mutilated one should go down to posterity” (pg
197). What does this statement reveal about the speaker?
8. “Must I then lose this admirable being...but he repulses the idea” (pg 199). This paragraph reveals how
Walton views Frankenstein. Put in your own words how Walton views Frankenstein.
9. “I feel myself justified in desiring the death of my adversary...the task of his destruction was mine, but I
have failed” (pg 204). In this paragraph, Frankenstein justifies his actions but in this justification what does
he fail to consider?
10. After Frankenstein has died, Walton discovers the monster in the room with Frankenstein‟s body. What
was the monster uttering while standing over the body and what does this say about the monster?
11. How does Walton respond to the monster?