Year 12 have just debated this motion:
The idea comes from my teaching outline, published on an earlier blog;
Feel free to listen and to use this as a basis for discussion.
A site to share my resources for secondary English teaching.
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you are such a life saver….These resources are helping me out so much, new to IGCSE teaching. Thank you so much
I found your discussion very helpful, as I saw the text from a very different perspective, which will help me with my essay writing.
One point I found very interesting was the female monster being presented as the ‘hope of redemption’ for the monster, reforming his character. But as Dr Frankenstein destroys the creation, the monster, driven by rage, kills the remainder of his creator’s family, as his only family was in effect killed. This point, the female monster being the ‘hope of redemption’, lead me to question whether family and companionship can only be found with those of your species, as the monsters are of the same species and therefore the same nature, and Dr Frankenstein, of the human race.
It would be interesting to hear your views on this.
Thank you very much for your discussion.
As a class of three, it’s often hard for us to come up with different interpretations to truly debate so you’re discussion was immensely helpful.
You came up with points that we hadn’t even considered, like the questioning of whether killing something due to hypothetical possibilities is morally right or not?
The most influential point for me was made by the opposition who stated that it is because the monster isn’t “part of nature” that we can’t link attributes of the other characters to him, such as the way the male characters degrade the females in their lives. It is from this that we can argue many other points such as whether the female creature would turn out hating humanity as well or whether she will or “will not be happy”. We used this to further our debates on whether the monster is truly evil or whether it is Victor who is the evil one, or if the creature is a symbol for the innate darkness within Victor.
To further your discussion, I think you could have discussed other critical interpretations – what feminists would think of Victor deciding to destroy the female creature? Is this as a result of a potential fear Victor has of females/ his sexuality?
Overall it was an impressive discussion and if you don’t mind, we’re stealing all your points!
From your amazing discussion, I learnt so many different points with textual evidence that supports the side of Victor being right to destroy the female creature, as well as points that oppose this view.
We used your discussion as a starting point for our debate on the same question and your points were incredibly useful for the essay we had to write.
Our course is surrounding the gothic nature therefore we built upon your points with gothic elements. For example, Victor destroying the female creature could be an example of horror – he was using past experiences to justify the destruction of the monster Eve. Also, there is an element of terror as Victor may have been afraid of what could happen if the monster Eve was evil and destroyed her as a result of hypothetical nightmares.
Also you could critique the point being made concerning the monster’s age, as the monster is not part of nature therefore stereotypical behaviour of a certain age group would not effect him or the decisions he makes. Furthermore you could bring in Marxism into the point about Victor abusing his power and how he believes his actions are helping society when in fact his decisions only cause destruction.
Thank you so much for your amazing discussion as it really did help us with our discussion and our essay!