Structure: Consider the epistolary, story-within-a-story framework and ask what effect does this have on the story.

Construct a map of the way the story is told. The outer frame is formed by letters and (toward the end) notes of Captain Walton, writing to his sister. The major inner frame (pp. 27-258) consists of Frankensteins narrative to Captain Walton. Pages 117-177 frame the most inward space of the inner frame, the tale told by the Monster to Victor Frankenstein, and reported to Walton. Style: Pages 42 and 213 offer us some of the few samples of conversation in Shelleys narrative style. How well does she handle conversation? (Ask the students to read out a few such passages, with attempts at appropriate inflection.) Would you say that the whole story is basically narrative? Look at the way Shelley tells a story (pp. 1l7-ll9). What characterizes her story-telling technique, as she invites us into the coming-to consciousness of the Monster? Does she make us hear, see, smell? Or is her narration basically a way of making our minds move through imaginative space? Intertextuality:Prometheus was a Titan, a race of giant gods who ruled the Earth until overthrown by Zeus, in ancient Greek mythology. One night, when Zeus, ruler of the gods, was away, Prometheus sneaked to Olympus, the home of the gods, along a secret path. He stole the gods sacred fire and hid it in his cloak. Then he gave the gift of fire to man, and taught mankind how to use it. But when Zeus returned to Olympus, so great was his rage that he ordered Prometheus to be chained forever to a lonely rock in the Caucasian Mountains. There he bravely endured for thousands of years until Zeus, finally set him free. What might the fire represent?
Why was Zeus angry? What might have prompted Prometheus to do what he did? Why did Shelley subtitle her book

Modern Prometheus? Which character resembles Prometheus? Is Frankenstein a stubborn defender of mankind, fighting even against God for the good of mankind? Look at chapters 2 and 3 and look closely at Victors motivations. If Victor is not a true Promethean, why do you think Shelley chose the subtitle she did? PURPOSE? Recognize the motivation of Victor Frankenstein? We are still in the era of vigorous enthusiasm for science, but thatas in Mrs. Shelleys worldthere are forces that question unfettered scientific inquiry, just as there are outcomes, such as was the monster in Frankenstein, fit to raise questions about unfettered inquiry?
Context:Frankenstein was published in 1818 in England at the height of the Romantic movement. This movement in art and literature was based in part on the feeling of optimism about human possibilities that pervaded Western culture after the American and French revolutions. In England the post-revolutionary period was also a time of economic suffering and social disorder as the new industrialism transformed English society. Shelleys readers lived in hopeful, but also disturbingly turbulent, times. The Romantic movement, which lasted from about 1798 to 1832, pulled away from the period known as the Enlightenment, which emphasized reason and logic. English writers of the Romantic period believed in the importance of the individual. They valued subjectivity, imagination, and the expression of emotions over rational thought. The typical Romantic hero, found especially in the poetry of Lord Byron and Percy Shelley, is passionate, uninhibited, and unconventional. Often the hero is an artist who is a social rebel or a melancholy outcast from society. The Romantic poets, including William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, John