Skip to content

    Teaching Frankenstein in high school ELA requires a practical structure. The unit plan below breaks the novel into four readings, with three lesson plans per reading. Pre-reading and post-reading lessons frame the unit on both ends. Whether you are teaching AP students or developing readers, the structure applies.

    Unit overview:

    • Pre-reading: Nobody Says, “It’s Alive!”
    • Reading 1: Letters and Chapters 1–5
    • Reading 2: Chapters 6–12
    • Reading 3: Chapters 13–19
    • Reading 4: Chapters 20–24
    • Post-reading: Assessment and Culminating Tasks

    Pre-reading: Nobody Says, “It’s Alive!”

    FRANKENSTEIN,1931, Boris Karloff, Colin Clive and Dwight Frye.

    The preliminary lessons get students thinking about key theme subjects, Romanticism, and science fiction as a genre before opening the novel. This is also the time to introduce unit goals and the culminating task. Students do better when they know what to expect from the start (and knowing the final task early gives them a reason to take notes as they read).

    Lesson 1: Anticipation Guide

    Frankenstein Anticipation Guide (PDF)

    Standard: SL1 Comprehension and Collaboration (discussion)

    Students begin by surfacing everything they think they know about Dr. Frankenstein and his monster — from Halloween costumes to film clips to the word “Frankenstein” used casually in conversation. The goal is to set those assumptions aside before the reading begins, because Shelley’s original will surprise most students.

    The anticipation guide itself asks students to take positions on statements connected to the novel’s key theme subjects: ambition, appearances, nature vs. nurture, revenge, parenthood, science and industry, the value of emotion, and the restorative power of nature. Students respond individually, then share and debate in small groups. Each group chooses one discussion to present to the class.

    Lesson 2: Getting Romantic with Art

    Standard: SL4 Presentation of Knowledge and Ideas

    Students think about the themes and ideals of Romanticism through fine art before they encounter Romanticism in the text. Students receive a brief introduction to the movement. They learn about its rejection of Enlightenment rationalism and its celebration of emotion, the sublime, and the individual. Then student groups each select one famous Romantic painting to analyze and present.

    Works in the lesson include paintings by Caspar David Friedrich, Eugène Delacroix, Henry Fuseli, Francisco de Goya, J.M.W. Turner, Théodore Géricault, Thomas Cole, and Henry Wallis. Students analyze subject, emphasis, tone, mood, and style, then connect their painting to the ideas of Romanticism. The goal is for students to understand that Frankenstein is not a horror novel in the popular sense; it is a product of a specific literary and philosophical moment, and the art of the period makes that moment vivid and clear.

    Lesson 3: Giving Sci-fi a Try

    Giving Sci-Fi a Try Handout (PDF)

    Standard: RL3 Key Ideas and Details (interacting elements)

    Students examine science fiction as a genre: what makes something science fiction, whether it can be important literature, and how genre and theme development are linked. The class reads and analyzes a science fiction short story together (Brian Aldiss’s “Super-Toys Last All Summer Long” works particularly well, as it poses questions about humanity and parental responsibility that connect directly to Frankenstein). Students then plan an original sci-fi story premise of their own.

    The key takeaway: modern science fiction moralizes or speculates about current scientific developments. It doesn’t just entertain, it asks what could go wrong, and it warns. Students who understand this before they begin reading will approach Frankenstein as the genre-defining work it is.

    Reading 1: The Frame of the Tale, Letters – Chapter 5

    After the first reading, students take a close look at Shelley’s structure and her use of structural effects. How do frame tales work? Why does Shelley choose Captain Walton to tell the doctor’s story? How does she use structure to manipulate time and create foreshadowing?

    Lesson 4: The Frame of the Tale

    Standard: RL5 Craft and Structure

    The fact that Shelley uses the captain as an intermediary for the stories of the doctor and the creature is central to the novel’s meaning. Before students can analyze this structural element in Frankenstein, they need to understand frame tales in general.

    Students begin by identifying frame tales from their own experience — films, novels, or episodes that open with one story setting up another. The class explores why authors use the framing device: to manipulate point of view, create distance, add layers of reliability questions, or establish mood. Students then apply what they have learned to Frankenstein, which has frames within frames. Captain Walton’s story frames the doctor’s story; the doctor’s story frames the creature’s story; the creature frames the story of the De Lacey family. Shelley’s nested structure is one of the most sophisticated elements of the novel, and this lesson makes it accessible.

    Lesson 5: Foreshadowing Doom

    Standard: RL5 Craft and Structure (effects of structure)

    From the first pages of the novel, Shelley’s foreshadowing is fast and furious. Students identify and analyze examples, then go further by categorizing the different types:

    • Chekhov’s gun / concrete foreshadowing: The author introduces an object whose significance is not yet clear. The reader notes it and waits; its importance will be revealed later in the story.
    • Word choice: The author clues the reader in to what type of story this is through words with specific imagery, mood, or connotations.
    • Prophecy / direct foreshadowing: A knowledgeable source tells the reader exactly what will happen.
    • Flashback / flash-forward: The author makes the reader aware of events from another time. You can make predictions based on past events or future outcomes.
    • Symbolism / allegory: An representative element or story that hints at what may happen.
    • Red herring: Misleading foreshadowing — the author wants the reader to guess wrongly.

    Students find three examples of foreshadowing from the first reading, identify the type, analyze the author’s purpose, and assess how subtle or direct each example is. The lesson also asks students to make predictions about how the novel will develop — predictions they can revisit as the unit progresses.

    Lesson 6: “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner”

    Standard: RL9 Integration of Knowledge and Ideas (source material)

    Of the many allusions in Frankenstein, the three most important source materials are the myth of Prometheus, the Bible and Paradise Lost, and “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.” The Coleridge poem plays a significant role early in the novel, and it is probably the source material students know least.

    Students read the poem with Gustave Doré’s illustrations as a visual guide. The language is challenging, but the illustrations help enormously. Students then map the connections between the poem and the novel: ships, frame tales, frozen seas, two strangers meeting, a story told as a warning, punishment for a thoughtless act, the weight of guilt. By the end of the lesson, students understand that Walton’s allusion to the poem in the letters is not decorative. Shelley is telling the reader exactly what kind of story this is.

    Reading 2: Isn’t It Romantic? — Chapters 6–12

    After the second reading, students examine Shelley’s word choice, evaluate the doctor as a narrator, and engage with the theories of personality development that Shelley dramatizes through the creature.

    Lesson 7: Isn’t It Romantic? (Word Choice)

    Darkling I listen; and, for many a time

    I have been half in love with easeful Death,

    Call’d him soft names in many a mused rhyme,

    To take into the air my quiet breath;

    Now more than ever seems it rich to die,

    To cease upon the midnight with no pain,

    While thou art pouring forth thy soul abroad

    In such an ecstasy!

    Still wouldst thou sing, and I have ears in vain—

    To thy high requiem become a sod.

    From “Ode to a Nightingale” by John Keats

    Standard: RL4 Craft and Structure (word choice)

    After studying Romanticism (especially the style of the language) students apply their understanding to the text. It is useful to analyze a Romantic poem together as a class before students work in groups, so they have a shared reference point for what Romantic word choice actually looks and sounds like.

    Students find an excerpt from Frankenstein that demonstrates Shelley’s word choice, share it with the class, and analyze the specific elements at work: figurative language, connotations, imagery, sound devices, tone, mood, and sense of time and place. They then write their own example of Romantic literature combining their knowledge of word choice and Romanticism with their own creativity.

    Lesson 8: Doctoring the Evidence (Point of View)

    Standard: RL6 Craft and Structure (point of view)

    Now that the doctor has taken over the narration, it is important to evaluate him as a narrator. How much can we believe? How might his point of view create bias in the telling? The central question of the lesson: is the doctor a martyr or a miscreant?

    Students examine textual evidence of the doctor’s behavior alongside his self-portrait as a virtuous, loving, and tragic figure. The gap between the two is considerable. He ignores his family for years. He shows no care for the creature after its creation. He allows the creature to become other people’s problem. He offers excuses for failing to save Justine from execution. He focuses on his own emotions rather than the harm he has caused. He often blames fate. When his family is in jeopardy, he goes horse-riding in the Alps.

    Captain Walton takes the doctor’s words at face value. Students are asked to be more skeptical. The lesson introduces the concept of the unreliable narrator and asks students to find specific moments where the doctor’s self-reporting breaks down. This is one of the most engaging analytical discussions of the unit.

    Lesson 9: Are Monsters Made or Born?

    Standard: RI2 Key Ideas and Details (central idea development)

    This lesson brings nonfiction into the unit at the moment when the creature’s story begins. Each student group receives one article on psychology and personality development — some addressing current research, others explaining historical theories from Locke, Rousseau, and others. Each group reads, summarizes the central ideas objectively, and presents their article to the class.

    By the end of the lesson, students have a working understanding of the nature vs. nurture debate as it stands today and as Shelley understood it in 1818. They then connect those ideas to the creature’s arc: born sensitive and potentially good but shaped into something monstrous by rejection and cruelty. The lesson makes Shelley’s philosophical engagement with Locke and Rousseau concrete and approachable.

    Reading 3: Becoming Frankenstein’s Monster — Chapters 13–19

    Following the third reading, students analyze the characterization of the creature in depth, make key connections to Milton’s Paradise Lost, and explore how Shelley creates powerful imagery.

    Lesson 10: Becoming Frankenstein’s Monster

    Standard: RL1 Key Ideas and Details (textual evidence)

    This is the point in the unit to put the creature under the figurative microscope. Students use textual evidence to identify five key character traits of the original monster and analyze how Shelley develops the characterization. Students should distinguish between explicit characterization and inference. The exercise consistently surprises students. Shelley’s creature is thoughtful, eloquent, sensitive, and pitiable in ways that bear almost no resemblance to the dim-witted figure of popular culture.

    For teachers who want to extend the lesson, students can adapt the creature’s explanation into a dramatic monologue, write a poem with the monster as speaker, or create an art piece inspired by the original creature. All three extensions produce strong work because students have a genuinely rich character to work with.

    Lesson 11: Finding Paradise Lost

    Standard: RL9 Integration of Knowledge and Ideas (source material)

    The creature finds a copy of Paradise Lost by John Milton in a duffel bag and gives the doctor (and the reader) a detailed response to it. Shelley includes this for a reason. Reading the entirety of Paradise Lost is beyond the scope of most units, but students need familiarity with Milton’s work to fully understand what Shelley is doing.

    Students read a summary of Paradise Lost and study the main characters — Satan, God, Adam, and Eve — then reach their own conclusions about how Shelley uses the poem before any class discussion. The creature’s identification with both Adam and Satan is one of the most intellectually interesting elements of the novel. Like Adam, he is created by a powerful being who abandons him. Like Satan, he is cast out, and turns to rebellion and revenge. Shelley builds this complexity deliberately, and this lesson gives students the tools to see it.

    Lesson 12: Writing with Imagery

    Standard: W3D Writing Narrative (imagery)

    Students analyze how Shelley creates imagery through precise word choice, figurative language, connotation, and sensory detail. Then they demonstrate their mastery of imagery through creative writing. The following excerpt serves as the anchor text for the lesson:

    “‘As the night advanced, a fierce wind arose from the woods and quickly dispersed the clouds that had loitered in the heavens; the blast tore along like a mighty avalanche and produced a kind of insanity in my spirits that burst all bounds of reason and reflection. I lighted the dry branch of a tree and danced with fury around the devoted cottage, my eyes still fixed on the western horizon, the edge of which the moon nearly touched. A part of its orb was at length hid, and I waved my brand; it sank, and with a loud scream I fired the straw, and heath, and bushes, which I had collected. The wind fanned the fire, and the cottage was quickly enveloped by the flames, which clung to it and licked it with their forked and destroying tongues.'” (Shelley 88)

    Students choose a person, place, or event to describe in imaginative detail, picking a mood for their subject and then building toward it through figurative language and precise, connotative word choice. If time allows, sharing these pieces with the class is worthwhile.

    Reading 4: A Tale of Two Wretches — Chapters 20–24

    As students form a complete picture of Frankenstein, they connect all the complex elements of characterization. The similarities between the creature and the doctor are paramount in this section, and the lesson that opens this reading makes those similarities impossible to ignore.

    Lesson 13: A Tale of Two Wretches

    Standard: RL3 Key Ideas and Details (interacting elements)

    It is not surprising that many people mistakenly refer to the monster as Frankenstein. Shelley builds the two characters as distorted mirror images of one another deliberately, and this lesson makes that mirroring physical and spatial.

    Students participate in a room-sized Venn diagram. One side of the room represents the creature, the opposite side represents the doctor, and the center holds shared statements. Students each receive a printed slip with a statement about one of the characters and must decide where they stand, literally. Statements like “I am the most miserable being alive,” “I am obsessed with revenge,” and “I find solace in the beauty of nature” apply to both characters. Statements like “When things get intense, I pass out” and “When things get intense, I destroy and/or kill” reveal the differences.

    Lesson 14: Foiled Again! (Characterization)

    Standard: RL3 Key Ideas and Details (interacting elements)

    Students explore character foils in the novel — characters whose traits, by similarity or contrast, illuminate the doctor’s own character. The six main foil characters are Frankenstein’s parents (Alphonse and Caroline), Henry Clerval, Captain Walton, the creature, Elizabeth, and Mr. De Lacey. Each one shows what the doctor is not: a dutiful parent, a wholesome companion, a person capable of heeding warnings, a being of genuine emotional intelligence.

    Students create a poster or visual for one foil character that maps similarities, key differences, at least one key excerpt, and the effect on the characterization of the doctor. The task asks students to think about Shelley’s purpose (why she puts these characters beside the doctor) rather than just identifying and explaining the traits.

    Lesson 15: The Modern Prometheus

    Standard: RL9 Integration of Knowledge and Ideas

    Shelley’s original title was Frankenstein; Or, The Modern Prometheus. This lesson asks students to review the myth of Prometheus and then draw connections to the novel before sharing out. The list of connections between Prometheus and Frankenstein is remarkably long:

    • Rebelling against a father figure
    • Creating a new race of beings
    • Upsetting the proper order (hubris and ambition)
    • The absence of forethought
    • Failed rebellion
    • Falling from grace
    • Curiosity and forbidden knowledge
    • Keeping secrets
    • Cursed gifts
    • Gifting knowledge to others at great personal cost
    • Intense, unending suffering
    • Temptation
    • Origins of evil
    • Fire as a symbol
    • Hell (in different names and forms)
    • The duality of humankind

    The concluding discussion question is worth sitting with: who is the modern Prometheus — the doctor, the creature, or both? Students who have worked through the myth carefully will have genuinely different and defensible answers.

    Post-reading: Assessment and Culminating Tasks

    The post-reading section of the unit gives students the opportunity to synthesize everything they have studied (characterization, allusion, Romanticism, symbolism, structure, word choice, and theme development) and demonstrate their understanding through formal writing, presentation, or creative work.

    Symbolism in Frankenstein

    Fire
    Lightning
    Light and darkness
    Ice and cold
    The Arctic / frozen sea
    Mountains    		Chaotic weather
    Ships and voyages
    The trapped ship
    The rocky island
    Ruined castles
    Nature retreats    		Beautiful landscapes
    Hands / strangulation
    The albatross
    Beautiful people
    Captain Walton’s journey
    Desolate places

    Standard: RL2 Key Ideas and Details (theme development)

    Some of the symbolism in Frankenstein is subtle, but it plays an important role in developing Shelley’s themes. Students work in groups to select one symbolic element from the novel, analyze three pieces of textual evidence, explore the meaning or meanings of the symbol, and connect it to one or more themes. This works well as a presentation before the final assessment.

    Shelley’s Themes

    Standard: RL2 Key Ideas and Details (theme development)

    The most important culminating lesson centers on analyzing Shelley’s theme development across the whole novel. Students present or write formally on one of Shelley’s themes, incorporating everything they have learned about characterization, allusion, Romanticism, symbolism, and structure. Having different groups address different themes, then recognizing the connections between them, produces some of the richest discussion of the unit.

    Theme subjects worth assigning include ambition and hubris, guilt and responsibility, parenthood and the creator’s obligation, isolation and human bonds, appearances and prejudice, nature vs. nurture, knowledge and its dangers, justice and its failures, revenge, and the natural world.

    Projects and Extension Tasks

    The unit includes a wide range of culminating tasks for teachers who want to go beyond the standard essay. Options include creative writing (science fiction short story, gothic horror narrative, dramatic monologue, Romantic poetry), argument (debate on the doctor’s guilt, argumentative essay on science and ethics), performance and exhibition (adaptation for stage or screen, fine art inspired by the novel), and research and informative writing (contextual research project, personality theory research report).

    Final Assessment for the Frankenstein Unit

    The unit concludes with a formal assessment. The free sample test includes 37 items across four sections: comprehension, literary analysis, short response, and essay. Teachers who want more flexibility can access the full test maker with 118 questions, an answer key, and a customizable DOCX file.

    To get all 21 lesson plans, all handouts, reading quizzes, assignment pages, and exam banks, purchase and download the Frankenstein Unit and Teacher Guide. Teachers who want the lesson plans only, without the assessment materials, can purchase the Frankenstein Lesson Plans separately.

    More Frankenstein teaching posts:

    Exit mobile version