Mary Shelly also named this novel The Modern Prometheus. Find out more about Prometheus, and explain why this is fitting title. Discuss this among yourselves.

Of course, you cannot read Frankenstein without looking at it from a Christian lens. What Christian allusions do you see,and how do they play out in the novel?

Frankenstein is a pure example of the sublime. Sublimity is a fascinating concept - The sublime inspires awe, usually because of beauty, nobility, grandeur or transcendent excellence. Mary Shelly said that"If I cannot inspire love, I will cause fear!" How is this story sublime? What specifically inspires awe for you? Why?

To me, Frankenstein is really a story about abandonment and rejection. Victor abandons his child, and the monster must essentially raise himself. He learns to speak through imitation, and then is rejected when he tries to fit in. It is such a sad story. What do you think?

Mining Literature for Deeper Meaning

Before you start discussing your summer reading selections, please view this video, and reflect on what you have learned about deeper meaning in literature. Discuss your experiences with thinking and talking about literature - in school, and out of school. I will start the conversation:


Ok. so, I don't remember when it started, this thinking deeper, probably not until college. I took a short story course, a 400 level - grad school level, when I was a sophomore at URI, and it was HARD! But, I loved it! And I remember being asked to analyze the text for deeper meaning. I was clueless. My English teachers in high school were out to lunch - taught like Edgar Allen Poe for four years - and what deeper meaning is there besides his twisted mind?  Well, maybe there is, but, anyway - there I was, a reader and I had no clue as to how to delve deeper into a text and then write about it. So what did I do? I looked at how other people did it. I went into the stacks of literary criticism (yes people, stacks of books in the library), and one by one, I took down books that analyzed all different texts, sat on the floor and read. It didn't even matter if I had read the primary texts, I was looking for HOW it was done. I discovered that there were things like patterns, and intertextuality, symbols and motifs, allusions to other texts, and with these things, if I could notice them in a text, I could interpret them myself. I fell in love with the puzzles of a story. It was like problem solving in math, but I got to do it with words, my own preferred genre. I was in love.

Poetry was harder. I didn't get there until I was a grad student, but more about that in September. 

-Ms. Feole