Frankenstein Reading Log Analysis

Frankenstein Journal

Task: While reading Frankenstein, periodically stop and reflect on your reading. You can use the prompts to stimulate your thinking. You will need to complete 8 responses over the course of the reading. A complete response includes a topic sentence (a subject and opinion) and sentences that include specific details from the story and why they important to the ideas in your topic sentence.

Prompt Choices:

I was surprised by…

I am clearer about…

I wish I knew more about…

I wonder…

I discovered…

I still want to know…

I learned…

I enjoyed…

Something still going around in my head…

One think I learned today…

If I were (it/them/him/her) I would…

A question I still have is…

An insight I had…

Responses

1. One thing that really

bugs me still is when you get into the book only a chapter or two in, there is too much foreshadowing. I feel like the author should not have added so much in. It takes away from the suspense. You know way ahead of time that Victor has no hope, that all is doomed. For example, you can find a lot of uses of the words “fate, fatal, and omen”. It just reinforces’ the inevitability of Victors tragedy.
2.

I was surprised that Victor still went off to the university after his mom died. Like, yeah I get that you have to carry on with your life and do what needs to be done, but it says it was only a few weeks later. Like, if I was in that situation, it would take me months if not years to be able to be clear headed enough to be able to focus on my University career. So I feel like Victor doesn’t have that much compassion for others.

3. One thing I learned today, is that Shelley often adds other literary devices from time to time in her writing, including apostrophe, in which the speaker addresses an inanimate object, or a person who is not actually there. Victor sometimes talks to people from his past as if they were with him on board Walton’s ship. “Excellent friend!” he exclaims, referring to Henry. “How sincerely did you love me, and endeavor to elevate my mind, until it was on a level with your own.” Did you know that Apostrophe was Shelley’s husband’s favorite literary device? That might explain the influence he had on her writing.

4. A question I still have, is if all of these problems are going on back home, why doesn’t he GO back home. I know if I was at college and I got a letter from my family saying that there were this many problems going on, I would be back there as soon as I

could!
5. I could empathize with Victor being very depressed and suicidal after the execution of Justine. I have never known anyone who got executed before, but I have lost people and I understand the depression and guilt and sadness and self hate that come with it. I have been there, and I am so lucky I came out. So is Victor! I was happy that he didn’t end his life. It’s just a story, but you get this connection with Victor right at the beginning and I felt his pain. It was sad.
6. It was so sad when the monster figured out he was a monster! After realizing that he is horribly different from humans, he cries, “Of what a strange nature is knowledge! It clings to the mind, when it has once seized on it, like lichen on the rock.” Knowledge is permanent and irreversible. Once it is gained, it cannot be undone. Just as the monster a product of knowledge, spins out of Victor’s control.
7.

A question I still have is how was the monster able to learn how to read so fast? He was just all of the sudden able to read. When he went back to his hovel and can suddenly read the books in the leather satchel. And on top of that, All that time, the notes from Victor were in the monsters pocket without falling out or anything! It just doesn’t seem possible.

8. I enjoyed it when the monster tells Victor he needs a female companion. It was funny because Victor didn’t want to do it, and was not expecting the monster to come back with a legitimate response. So he kind of had to do it. The monster blamed all of his problems and things he had done on out right loneliness.

Responses will be graded using the following rubric:

20 points - All paragraphs contain a topic sentence with a subject and an opinion

20 points - All aragraphs contain specific details from the story

20 points - All paragraphs have explanations that show insight into and understanding of issues in the novel

20 points - 8 responses are present

20 points – Presentation is formal/Transitions are used/Very few grammar-convention

errors