Key themes
- The ethics of creation and abandonment
- What makes a being worthy of moral consideration
- Ambition, isolation and their consequences
About this book
A scientist creates life and abandons it, with consequences for both — the founding myth of science fiction, written when the author was barely twenty.
Published anonymously in 1818, Frankenstein was written during a rainy summer in Geneva as part of a ghost-story competition between Shelley, Percy Shelley, Lord Byron and John Polidori. Shelley was eighteen.
Discussion questions
- The creature is eloquent, sensitive and initially gentle — he becomes monstrous through rejection and isolation. Who bears moral responsibility: Victor, the creature, or both?
- Victor refuses to create a companion for the creature, fearing they will breed. Is this decision defensible — or does it reveal something troubling about his relationship to the creature?
- The novel has two nested narrators — Walton, Victor, the creature — each telling their own story. What does this structure of interlocking stories add to the novel's meaning?
- Mary Shelley wrote the novel at nineteen, shortly after the death of her own baby. How does knowing this affect your reading — and what does it add to the novel's meditation on creation and responsibility?
- Frankenstein is often read as a myth of scientific hubris. Do you think this is the novel's primary concern, or does it ultimately ask something more personal — about what we owe to those we bring into the world?
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