Answer Key

Frankenstein Official Examination Mark

Scheme
SECTION A — MCQ ANSWERS
Q1

✓ Answer: B — Robert Walton [Letters 1–4; p.9–23]

The four letters that open the novel are written by Robert Walton to his sister, Mrs
Saville. He is the primary frame narrator who rescues Victor and records his story.

Q2

✓ Answer: B — He is filled with horror and disgust, and flees the

room. [Chapter 5; p.57–60]

Shelley writes that 'the beauty of the dream vanished' the instant the Creature
opened its eyes. Victor describes being overwhelmed by 'horror and disgust' and
immediately rushes out. He spends the night pacing his room unable to sleep.

Q3

✓ Answer: C — Justine Moritz [Chapters 7–8; p.76–102]

Justine is the Frankenstein family's servant who is wrongly accused after William's
miniature portrait of Caroline Frankenstein is found in her pocket — planted there by
the Creature. Despite Elizabeth's defence, Justine is convicted and executed.

Q4

✓ Answer: C — To create a female companion of the same species. [Chapters

10–17; p.112–195]

On the glacier at Montanvert, the Creature demands: 'You must create a female for
me with whom I can exchange those sympathies necessary for my being.' He argues
that with a companion he will be peaceful and leave humankind alone.

Q5

✓ Answer: B — He fears they will produce a race of monsters and threaten

humanity. [Chapter 20; p.211–213]
Sitting alone in his Scottish laboratory by moonlight, Victor reflects that a female
creature 'might delight in murder for its own sake,' might refuse the agreement made
before her existence, or that together they 'would produce a race of devils.' He tears
apart the unfinished creature.

Q6

✓ Answer: A — The dangers of forbidden knowledge and overreaching

ambition. [Title page; Introduction p.1–8; throughout]

In Greek myth, Prometheus stole fire from the gods to give to humanity and was
eternally punished. Victor similarly steals the divine power of creation and suffers
relentless consequences. The subtitle signals Shelley's central warning about hubris.

Q7

✓ Answer: D — Both A and B — he sees himself in both characters. [Chapter

15; p.167–169]

Reading Paradise Lost, the Creature notes he is 'like Adam' in being a new being,
yet unlike Adam who had a loving God. He then concludes he is 'more like the fallen
angel' (Satan) — cast out, envious, abandoned. He explicitly identifies with both.

Q8

✓ Answer: C — To go to the farthest north and burn himself on a funeral

pyre. [Chapter 24 (Walton's continuation); p.298–299]

In his final speech to Walton, the Creature declares: 'I shall seek the most northern
extremity of the globe. There I shall build a funeral pile and burn this miserable body
to ashes.' He then leaps from the ship onto an ice raft and disappears.

SECTION B — SHORT ANSWER MODEL ANSWERS

Question 1(a) — Victor's emotional state in Chapter 5

[4 marks] Award 1 mark per valid point; 2 marks for a point developed with
evidence.

Model Answer:

Victor's emotional state immediately after the creation is one of profound horror,
revulsion, and psychological collapse — the precise opposite of the triumph he
expected. Shelley constructs this as a catastrophic reversal.

• Victor describes how 'the beauty of the dream vanished' the instant the
Creature opens its 'dull yellow eye' — beauty and ugliness are violently
 juxtaposed, and his two years of obsessive work are instantly worthless.
[Ch.5, p.57–58]
• He is so overwhelmed that he 'rushed out of the room' — a physical flight that
mirrors his psychological inability to confront what he has done, establishing
his pattern of abandonment throughout the novel. [Ch.5, p.58]
• That night he experiences a nightmare in which Elizabeth transforms into the
corpse of his dead mother — subconsciously linking creation, death, and
female destruction. This foreshadows Elizabeth's actual murder. [Ch.5, p.58–
59]
• He describes his 'pulse beat[ing] so quickly that I felt it beating in every artery'
— physical symptoms of a panic attack, conveying extreme psychological
distress in clinical detail. [Ch.5, p.61]
• When Henry Clerval arrives the next morning, Victor 'clapped [his] hands and
laughed aloud' hysterically before collapsing into a 'nervous fever' lasting
several months — a total mental breakdown. [Ch.5, p.63–66]

Examiner Note: Strong answers will note the irony that Victor, who sought to be the
father/creator of a new species, immediately abandons his 'child.' This foreshadows
the Creature's accusation in Ch.10: "You are my creator, but I am your master —
obey!"

Question 2(a) — How the Creature learns language; intelligence and

feeling

[4 marks]

Model Answer:

• Hidden in his hovel beside the De Lacey cottage for many months, the
Creature observes Felix teaching Safie French. He painstakingly deciphers
words by connecting sounds to objects ('fire,' 'milk,' 'bread,' 'wood') then
advances to abstract concepts. [Ch.12, p.140–141]
• He learns to read by watching Felix read aloud to Safie from Volney's Ruins of
Empires — Felix's explanations of history and society simultaneously educate
the Creature in human political and moral life. [Ch.13, p.152–153]
• These scenes demonstrate remarkable cognitive ability — he learns a
language with no formal instruction, purely through observation, in roughly two
months. This challenges any reading of him as simply monstrous. [Ch.13,
p.151]
• His emotional sophistication is equally evident: he weeps at the De Laceys'
music, feels 'sensations of a peculiar and overpowering nature — a mixture of
pain and pleasure' when witnessing their family love, and secretly assists
them — revealing deep empathy. [Ch.11, p.134; Ch.12, p.139]
• When he reads Paradise Lost and Plutarch he applies the texts
philosophically to his own existence, asking 'What was I? That question rose
up again and again.' This is not the thinking of a beast but of a sentient,
suffering philosopher. [Ch.15, p.167–169]
Question 2(b) — How rejection by the De Laceys changes the
Creature

[4 marks]

Model Answer:

The rejection by the De Laceys is the pivotal turning point in the Creature's moral
development — the moment he transitions from benevolent to vengeful.

• When the Creature enters the cottage to speak with the blind De Lacey, he is
making the most vulnerable attempt of his life to connect with humanity. The
moment Felix returns and violently tears him away is a complete shattering of
hope. [Ch.15, p.172–176]
• That night he howls in the woods 'like a wild beast' — the language
deliberately echoes how others perceive him, suggesting rejection is forcing
him towards the very animalism humans feared. 'Like the fallen angel in
Milton's poem, I bore a hell within me.' [Ch.16, p.177]
• He then 'declared everlasting war against mankind' — but crucially, most
against Victor. Shelley shows rejection, not nature, creates his violence. His
first evil act (burning the cottage) is driven by rage at abandonment, not innate
cruelty. [Ch.16, p.177–180]
• His subsequent murder of William is described almost as a rational act of
revenge: he chokes the boy when he discovers the name Frankenstein,
shouting 'You shall be my first victim.' Cold calculation has replaced
anguished feeling. [Ch.16, p.185–186]

SECTION C — LANGUAGE / FIGURES OF SPEECH

ANSWERS
Extract 1(a) — Mood and language: the creation night

Extract source: Chapter 5, p.57–58. Opening lines describing the creation scene.

[6 marks] 1–2 marks per word/phrase (identification + effect). Full marks requires
three clearly explained examples.

"On a gloomy night in November I completed my work." — [Ch.5, p.57]

Mood: Dread, foreboding, and claustrophobic darkness — the atmosphere of Gothic

horror.

Three key words/phrases:

① "gloomy" (adjective, first word of the scene)

Immediately establishes a dark, oppressive mood. The opening word is not

'triumphant' or 'exhilarating' — it is 'gloomy,' signalling to the reader that what follows
will be tragic, not celebratory. It also functions as pathetic fallacy, reflecting Victor's
subconscious dread.

② "the rain pattered dismally against the panes" (pathetic fallacy +

onomatopoeia)

The rain is a classic Gothic weather motif, creating a sense of natural gloom that
mirrors Victor's psychological state. 'Dismally' personifies the rain, making it seem to
share in Victor's horror. 'Pattered' is onomatopoeic — the soft, relentless sound adds
to the claustrophobic atmosphere.

③ "my candle was nearly burnt out" (symbolism / foreshadowing)

The near-exhausted candle functions as a symbol of diminishing life and failing

reason. It also foreshadows the moral 'darkness' that is about to enter Victor's life.
The 'glimmer of the half-extinguished light' suggests revelation occurring in darkness
— a distorted, incomplete kind of knowledge.

④ "the dull yellow eye of the creature open" (colour imagery / sensory detail)

'Dull yellow' (used again in Ch.5's fuller description: 'yellow skin,' 'watery eyes')
connotes sickness, decay, and the jaundiced — the colour of diseased flesh rather
than healthy life. The singular focus on the eye is deeply unsettling: a part animates
before the whole, fragmenting the creature and making him monstrous even in this
first glimpse.

Extract 1(b) — 'infuse a spark of being': figure of speech and effect

[3 marks]

Figure of speech: Metaphor (with possible secondary reading as allusion to

Promethean fire).

Analysis:

• 'Infuse a spark of being' is a metaphor — life is compared to a spark (fire) that

can be poured ('infused') into lifeless matter. Victor does not 'activate' or
'animate' the body; he 'infuses' it, as if pouring divine essence into clay. This
language elevates his act to something almost sacred or alchemical. [Ch.5,
p.57]
• The word 'spark' also alludes to the Promethean myth (the subtitle is 'The
Modern Prometheus') — Prometheus brought fire from the gods to humans;
Victor brings the 'spark' of life to dead flesh. This positions Victor as a thief of
divine power.
• The metaphor also foreshadows catastrophe: a spark, once introduced, is
uncontrollable. Victor assumes he can create life and then contain it — but as
the novel demonstrates, once the 'spark' is given it cannot be recalled.
Extract 2(a) — Allusion in the Creature's speech: 'your Adam' / 'the
fallen angel'

Extract source: Chapter 10, p.117–118. The Creature confronts Victor on the Mer
de Glace glacier.

[4 marks] 1 mark: identify the allusion. 1 mark: name the source. 2 marks: explain
why Shelley chose it.

Allusion: The Creature alludes to Milton's Paradise Lost (1667), specifically the
figures of Adam and Satan (the fallen angel).

"I ought to be your Adam! But I am rather the fallen angel, whom you drive from joy
for no reason."— [Ch.10, p.117]

Source: John Milton, Paradise Lost (1667). The Creature has read Paradise Lost as
one of three texts in the suitcase found in the woods. [Ch.15, p.166–168]

Why Shelley chose this allusion — three reasons:

• Shelley uses it to frame the creator-creation relationship: just as God created

Adam from dust and owed him care, Victor created the Creature and owes
him the same duty. The Adam reference makes a moral claim — the Creature
should have been Victor's 'first man,' loved and guided. [Ch.15, p.168]
• The Satan comparison is equally powerful: like Satan, the Creature was
created good but became evil through rejection and suffering. Satan says in
Paradise Lost, 'Evil, be thou my good' — the Creature echoes this in Ch.24
when he says 'Evil thenceforth became my good.' Shelley uses the allusion to
suggest evil is made, not born. [Ch.24, p.295; Paradise Lost]
• The double allusion also implicates Victor as both God and as Satan's God —
tyrannical, absent, irresponsible. Shelley's choice of Milton gives the
Creature's argument intellectual and moral authority that a purely personal
grievance would lack. [Ch.10; Ch.15]

Extract 2(b) — Other figure of speech in the Creature's speech

[3 marks]

Best answer — Repetition / Anaphora:

"Everywhere I see joy. Everywhere I see happiness — but happiness which I cannot
have." — [Ch.10, p.117]

The repetition of 'Everywhere I see' is anaphora — it creates a rhythmic, almost

incantatory emphasis on the Creature's exclusion. The reader feels the
relentlessness of his suffering: happiness is omnipresent in the world but utterly
forbidden to him. The contrast between 'everywhere' (universal) and 'cannot have'
(absolute exclusion) is devastating in its simplicity.

Alternative answer — Oxymoron / Paradox:

'Make me happy, and I shall again be virtuous!' — the word 'again' is quietly
paradoxical; the Creature claims an original virtue that was destroyed by
circumstance, not nature. This challenges the assumption that monsters are
inherently evil, creating a moral paradox at the heart of the novel.

Extract 3 — The wounded deer simile

Extract source: Chapter 9, p.109. Victor at Lake Geneva after Justine's execution.

[3 marks] 1 mark: identify the figure of speech. 2 marks: explain effect + emotional
state.

"I was like a wounded deer, dragging its fainting limbs to some untrodden brake,
there to gaze upon the arrow which had pierced it, and to die." — [Ch.9, p.109]

Figure of speech: Extended simile (also contains imagery of wounds, death, and
isolation).

Analysis:

• Victor compares himself to a wounded deer seeking a lonely spot to die. This
reveals his profound self-pity, passivity, and sense of fatal wounding — he
feels mortally injured by his own actions, as if he is already dying a slow death
of guilt.
• The 'untrodden brake' (an area of dense shrubs no one walks through)
emphasises his isolation — he feels there is no human space that can receive
him in his guilt. He is beyond the reach of comfort.
• 'Gaze upon the arrow which had pierced it' is particularly rich: the deer looks
at its own wound. This captures Victor's tendency to obsessive self-reflection
— he cannot stop contemplating the harm he has caused, which intensifies
rather than cures his suffering.
• The simile makes Victor appear simultaneously sympathetic (a wounded
creature) and passive (a creature that merely waits to die). It foreshadows his
eventual physical and moral collapse, and critiques his inability to take
remedial action.

Question 5 — Figure of speech matching

[6 marks] 1 mark: correct identification. 1 mark: effect explained.

(i) "The saintly soul of Elizabeth shone like a shrine-dedicated lamp in our
peaceful home."

• Figure of Speech: Simile / Religious Imagery

• Effect: By comparing Elizabeth to a "shrine-dedicated lamp," Shelley utilizes
religious imagery to elevate her to a figure of spiritual purity and secular
worship within the Frankenstein household. A shrine lamp burns continuously,
symbolizing her permanent, unwavering moral guidance and warmth. This
directly contrasts her gentle, stabilizing light with the "dark spirits" of Victor's
dangerous, erratic ambition, foreshadowing his tragic fall when he leaves her
domestic sanctuary.