Essay Assignment: Who Is More Human – The Monster or Victor Frankenstein?

English Literature | Survey of British Romanticism |

Assignment Overview

Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus (1818) raises one of the most enduring questions in the Western literary tradition: what does it actually mean to be human? The novel places two figures at the center of that question — Victor Frankenstein, a scientist whose ambition leads him to create and immediately abandon a new form of life, and the creature himself, a being made from corpses who nonetheless develops language, empathy, a longing for companionship, and a coherent moral self-awareness. Neither figure is straightforwardly sympathetic, and Shelley seems to design the contrast deliberately — not to resolve the question of humanity, but to complicate it.

In this essay, you will take a clear position on that central question and defend it with close textual evidence and scholarly support. Your essay is not a plot summary, a character description, or a list of similarities and differences. It is a sustained literary argument built around a specific, defensible thesis.

Learning Objectives

By completing this essay, you will demonstrate the ability to:

• Develop and sustain a defensible literary thesis across a full essay.
• Conduct close reading of a primary literary text with precision and analytical depth.
• Distinguish between evidence (what the text says) and analysis (what it means and why it matters).
• Integrate secondary scholarship to support and extend — not replace — your own argument.
• Apply MLA 9th Edition citation and formatting conventions correctly throughout.

Essay Prompt

Write a 1,050–1,400-word literary analysis essay (approximately 4–5 pages, double-spaced, 12pt Times New Roman, 1-inch margins) in which you argue a clear and defensible answer to the following question:

In Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, who demonstrates greater humanity — the creature or Victor Frankenstein — and what does Shelley’s portrayal of that figure reveal about her understanding of what it means to be human?

You may argue for either position. You may also argue that the question itself is a trap — that Shelley deliberately denies either figure full humanity in order to make a larger point about the concept itself. Whatever position you take, your thesis must be specific, arguable, and consistently supported through close reading.

Essay Requirements

• A clear, arguable thesis statement in your introduction — not a question, not a statement of fact, and not a plot summary.
• Analysis of at least three specific passages from the novel, with direct quotation and line-level commentary. At minimum, one passage must involve the creature’s voice or perspective, and one must involve Victor’s.
• Engagement with at least two peer-reviewed secondary sources — integrated into your argument, not simply quoted for decoration.
• Consistent use of MLA 9th Edition in-text citation and a correctly formatted Works Cited page.
• Avoidance of plot summary. Every paragraph should advance your argument, not narrate events.
• A conclusion that synthesizes your argument and addresses the broader significance of Shelley’s choice — what does the novel’s treatment of humanity suggest about the Romantic period, science, ethics, or social responsibility?

Suggested Analytical Angles

You do not need to address all of these. They are entry points, not a checklist:

• Empathy and emotional capacity: Which figure demonstrates a more developed ability to feel and respond to the feelings of others? Where does the text support or complicate that reading?
• Responsibility and accountability: Shelley connects humanity to moral responsibility throughout the novel. Which figure owns the consequences of their actions — and which refuses to?
• Language, learning, and self-awareness: The creature acquires language, reads literature, and reflects on his own condition at length. What does Shelley suggest about the relationship between literacy and humanity?
• The nature vs. nurture question: Is the creature’s violence innate, or the product of abandonment and social rejection? What does your answer imply about Victor’s role in creating that violence?
• Hubris and its costs: Victor’s “hubris” — his refusal to take responsibility for what he has created — recurs as a central theme. How does Shelley frame the ethical failure of unchecked ambition?
• The Prometheus parallel: The novel’s subtitle is “The Modern Prometheus.” How does that allusion apply — to Victor, the creature, or both — and what does it reveal about Shelley’s view of humanity?

Submission Requirements

• Length: 1,050–1,400 words (body text, not including Works Cited)
• Format: Double-spaced, 12pt Times New Roman, 1-inch margins, MLA header
• Citation style: MLA 9th Edition
• Submission: Upload as .docx or .pdf to the course LMS portal by the posted due date
• File naming: LastName_FirstName_FrankensteinEssay

Grading Rubric

The question of who is more human in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein is not simply a character comparison exercise — it is an interrogation of the very criteria society uses to assign moral worth. Victor Frankenstein possesses every social marker of humanity: family, education, language, and a respected place in the European bourgeoisie, yet his repeated refusals of responsibility — for his creature, for Justine’s wrongful conviction, and for the harm his ambition causes to those he claims to love — reveal a man who has hollowed out the ethical core of what it means to be human. The creature, by contrast, begins the novel as a blank and is shaped entirely by what the world gives and withholds from him, and what the world withholds is nearly everything. When he stumbles upon the cottagers, the creature acquires language by observing them and studying their speech — and it is this acquisition of language, along with the eloquence it brings, that turns him from a mysterious nightmare into a sympathetic and tragic figure. Shelley’s decision to give the creature not only speech but literary self-reflection — he reads Milton, Plutarch, and Goethe — positions him as more fully engaged with the humanistic tradition than his creator, whose education ultimately serves only his ego. The creature’s longing for companionship, his grief over William’s death, and his anguished acknowledgment of his own crimes demonstrate the kind of moral self-awareness that Victor, for most of the novel, refuses to exercise. At its core, Frankenstein argues that humanity is not a biological condition but an ethical practice — one that Victor abandons and the creature, despite everything, struggles to maintain (Britton, 2009, Studies in Romanticism, 48(1), 3–22).

Scholarly criticism has consistently recognized that Shelley’s novel is less interested in the horror of creation than in the horror of abandonment and the social construction of monstrosity. The dark brilliance of Frankenstein is both to expose monstrosity in the normal and, conversely, to humanize what might seem monstrously “other.” Denise Gigante’s foundational essay “Facing the Ugly: The Case of Frankenstein” (English Literary History, 2000) demonstrates that the creature’s ugliness functions not as a moral indicator but as a social sentence — ugliness in the novel is what humans project onto what they fear and refuse to claim. More recent criticism, including work by Anne Mellor and the essays collected in Bloom’s edited volumes on Shelley, situates the novel within Romantic-era debates about creation, parenthood, and the ethics of scientific knowledge — debates that remain urgently relevant in an era of genetic engineering, artificial intelligence, and contested reproductive rights. Students who engage seriously with Frankenstein as a philosophical text rather than a horror narrative find that its central question — who bears responsibility for a created consciousness that suffers — resists easy resolution and rewards precisely the kind of sustained, evidence-based argument this assignment requires.

In a 4–5 page essay, develop and defend a clear thesis about who is more human in Frankenstein — the creature or Victor — analyzing Shelley’s portrayal of empathy, responsibility, and moral self-awareness through close reading and scholarly support. Write a 1,050–1,400-word literary analysis essay arguing whether the creature or Victor Frankenstein demonstrates greater humanity in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, using at least three textual passages, two scholarly sources, and MLA 9th Edition citation throughout.

Works Cited

1. Britton, J. M. (2009). Novelistic sympathy in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. Studies in Romanticism, 48(1), 3–22. https://doi.org/10.1353/sr.2009.0005
2. Gigante, D. (2000). Facing the ugly: The case of “Frankenstein.” English Literary History, 67(2), 565–587. https://doi.org/10.1353/elh.2000.0019
3. Mellor, A. K. (1988). Mary Shelley: Her life, her fiction, her monsters. Routledge. https://www.routledge.com/Mary-Shelley-Her-Life-Her-Fiction-Her-Monsters/Mellor/p/book/9780415901482
4. McLane, M. N. (1996). Literate species: Populations, “humanities,” and Frankenstein. English Literary History, 63(4), 959–988. https://doi.org/10.1353/elh.1996.0040
5. Shelley, M. W. (2012). Frankenstein: The 1818 text (M. Butler, Ed.). Oxford University Press. https://global.oup.com/academic/product/frankenstein-9780199537150