Things to Consider:

• Realism  vs. Romanticism 
• Adam, Prometheus, Faust, & other Overreachers
• Family
• Doppelganger

• According to Levine, how is Victor Frankenstein like Faust and Adam?  How is he different?

• Explain:  "It embodies characteristically a simultaneous awe and reverence toward greatness of ambition, and fear and distrust of those who act on such ambition" (209).
• According to Levine, where does Victor's decision to create the monster come from?
• How are the monster and Victor "doubles"?

• Explain:  "Characters and actions move around central emotional preoccupations" (210).
• What does Walton learn from Frankenstein?

• Explain:  "Every story seems a variation on every other" (211).

• Explain:  "It suggests, too, how close to the surface of this world are motives derived not from external experience, but from emotional and psychic energies beneath the surface of things" (212).

• Explain:  "Every death in the novel is a death in the family, literal or figurative" (213).  Do you agree?  Why or Why Not?

• What is Levine's final conclusion?

211:

• How are Clerval and Victor similar?

• Why is there "no simple way to define the relation between parents and offspring in this novel" (212)?

• Explain:  "The family is an aspect of self and the self cannot survive bereft of its family" (213).
• How is Frankenstein a "claustrophobic novel" (213)?
• Explain:  "Imagination is structural power" (213).