Introduction to Frankenstein

Introduction

Almost all students have had some kind of experience with the idea of "Frankenstein." Whether their ideas come from old movie versions, cartoons, the television series "The Munsters," the cereal Frankenberry, or the newer "Mary Shelley's Frankenstein" movie, most students will have some knowledge of what the novel is about.

This activity is designed to determine the students' knowledge base before they begin reading the actual novel and to conduct a general discussion about what modern culture has done to these literary figures. It will be interesting to find out many the myths the students have heard about Frankenstein and determine what the popular culture has made of the scientist named Victor Frankenstein and his unnamed Creation. It also will lead in nicely to a biographical lecture about Mary Shelley.

This activity is written to prepare students for reading the novel Frankenstein.

Objectives

• The students will discuss various myths concerning "Frankenstein."
• The students will listen to and take notes on biographical information about the novel's author, Mary Shelley.
• The students will speculate why the popular culture has been fascinated for nearly 80 years with this story and what this fascination might have to do with society's current and differing views of biotechnology.

Class Time Needed

One class period will be needed for this activity.

Procedure

• Ask students to write down on scratch paper what they know about the story of Frankenstein. They may use lists, a narrative, or whatever they feel will work best.
• After about five minutes, call on students to volunteer information they know about the story. Ask them how they "know" this information - from cartoons, movies, books, or general knowledge (frequently they don't know how they know). Use an overhead, white board, or chalkboard to record the students' responses. You may choose to categorize how they know the information.
• All this information may cause some confusion, so it may be useful to tell students that sometimes the myth behind a character becomes even greater than the character itself; list examples of how this is true for the Creation of Frankenstein. Reading a list of titles of various movies using the Frankenstein name may be useful here.
• Give the lecture on Mary Shelley's Biographical Chronology (see the overhead). Have students take notes. Students are generally very interested in Shelley's biographical information.
• Discuss the origin of the story - the contest to come up with a ghost story. Most editions of the novel give this information in the introduction.
• Discuss possible reasons why this figure of Frankenstein has gained and over the years held so much popular culture attention; lead to a discussion of people's fear's exaggerations, and hopes for genetic engineering.
• In discussion of genetic engineering, refer to the experiments with DNA students have experienced in their science classes. Also ask students to refer to the videos they may have seen in their social studies classes - "Murder, Rape, and DNA" and the segment "DNA" from the television series 60 Minutes.