The Journal
Book club discussion questions for Frankenstein
These discussion questions for Mary Shelley's Frankenstein are designed to open up productive disagreement rather than test comprehension. The best book club questions are the ones where reasonable readers who read the same text carefully reach genuinely different conclusions.
Frankenstein; or, the Modern Prometheus is free to read on Foxing. For the chapter-by-chapter format that works well with this novel, how to run a book club chapter-by-chapter covers the method.
Questions about the creature#
1. Is the creature morally responsible for the murders he commits? He is articulate, intelligent, and fully aware that his victims are innocent. Does his abandonment by Victor constitute sufficient mitigation? Where does the causal chain of responsibility begin?
2. The creature teaches himself to read by observing the De Lacey family. What does he read, and how does what he reads shape his understanding of his own situation? He reads Paradise Lost, Plutarch's Lives, and The Sorrows of Young Werther. Does each of these texts push him in a different direction?
3. When the creature asks Victor to create a companion for him, is his request reasonable? What would you do if you were Victor?
Questions about Victor#
4. Is Victor a reliable narrator? He is telling his story to Walton, who is recording it. What are his incentives to frame the story the way he does? What might he be leaving out or distorting?
5. Victor has multiple opportunities to prevent the catastrophe -- before and after the experiment. At which point do you think his moral failure is most significant? Is it the moment of abandonment, the refusal to build a companion, the silence during Justine's trial, or somewhere else?
6. Victor describes himself throughout as a victim of fate. Does the novel support this self-description?
Questions about the novel's structure#
7. The novel uses a frame narrative -- Walton's letters contain Victor's story which contains the creature's story. How does this structure affect your trust in what you are being told? Who is the most reliable narrator in the novel, and why?
8. The creature quotes Milton's Adam: "Did I request thee, Maker, from my clay / To mould me Man?" What is Shelley arguing by putting this quotation at the front of the novel?
9. Walton is pursuing the North Pole with the same obsessive disregard for consequences that Victor pursued his experiment. Does Victor succeed in warning him? Does Walton make a different choice?
Questions about the novel's ideas#
10. Shelley was eighteen when she wrote this novel, and she had lost a child and her half-sister while writing it. For the full biographical context, that piece covers the personal history. How does knowing this change -- or not change -- your reading of the novel's central grief?
11. The novel is often described as the first science fiction novel. What is the "science" that Shelley is extrapolating from? Is the novel's concern with the ethics of creation still relevant?
12. If the novel has a moral, what is it? Is it about the limits of science? The obligations of parenthood? The injustice of judging people by their appearance? Something else?
Further reading#
For the thematic analyses that complement these questions, what the monster represents and who the real monster is are the critical companions.
For other classic novel discussion questions, Pride and Prejudice questions and Great Gatsby questions follow the same format.