Frankenstein themes

What each theme means, in a few lines. Tap one for its quotes.

Creation →

A man makes a living thing and runs away from it. The book asks what you owe the thing you make.

Walton has no friend. Victor works alone for two years. The creature is the loneliest being on earth. Everyone in this book is alone.

The creature kills Victor's family because Victor abandoned him. Victor hunts the creature to the ice. Each ruins the other.

Victor wants to know how life works. Walton wants to find the Pole. Both are warned. Neither listens until it is too late.

Mountains, storms, the Arctic ice. Nature is huge and beautiful and does not care. Victor feels better in it. The creature hides in it.

Everyone who sees the creature screams, shoots or runs. Only a blind man talks to him. He is judged by his face before he says a word.

Victor makes a child and abandons it on its first night. Everything that follows comes from that.

Victor's happy family is what the creature never has, and what he takes away, one by one.

To be first. To be a god. Victor and Walton both want glory. Victor dies telling Walton to give it up.