When you hear the word "Frankenstein," what do you picture?
Probably a big green monster with bolts in its neck.
Well. Sorry to break it to you.
That isn't the monster's name.
It's the name of the scientist who made the monster.
Did you know that?
I had it completely wrong for years.
But that's not really today's point.
Mary Shelley dreamed up Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus in 1816 and published it anonymously in 1818.
And this story is so much more than horror.
It's a peak of the Gothic novel, and it's often called one of the earliest works of science fiction.
Its brilliance isn't in the fright of a monster showing up.
It lives in an incredibly precise narrative architecture that pulls you into multiple points of view, and a plot of cause and effect as merciless as Greek tragedy.
Today I'm going to take this story apart using five-act structure. Then I'll track how the protagonist changes. And at the end, I'll abstract the whole thing into a template you can drop straight into your own story.
Let's start with the big picture.
The Story in Brief
Captain Walton, an explorer bound for the North Pole, rescues a dying Swiss scientist, Victor Frankenstein, from the frozen sea.
Victor begins to tell the captain the story of his own ruin.
Raised in a loving, wealthy family, he became obsessed with the secret of life, and at a university in Germany he discovered how to build a new living being out of dead flesh.
Then, one night, the creature finally opens its eyes. But Victor can't bear how hideous it is, and he runs.
This is where hell begins.
The abandoned creature murders Victor's young brother, William.
An innocent servant, Justine, takes the blame and is executed.
When they meet again on a glacier, the creature demands that Victor build him a female companion. He's unbearably alone.
Promised that the creature will vanish from human sight if he complies, Victor reluctantly agrees.
But just before finishing, he panics, "if these two breed, they'll threaten all humankind," and destroys the female right in front of the creature.
Enraged, the creature warns, "I will be with you on your wedding night," and disappears.
Soon after, Victor's best friend Clerval is killed. Then comes the wedding night.
Victor misreads the threat as aimed at himself, and leaves his bride Elizabeth alone in their room.
The creature outwits him and strangles Elizabeth.
Having lost his wife, and then his father to grief, Victor lives only for revenge and chases the creature all the way to the Arctic.
There, aboard Walton's ship, he finishes his tale and dies.
Over his creator's body, the creature speaks his deep remorse and vanishes into the darkness to burn himself away.
No redemption. And yet, that's exactly what makes it beautiful.
The Staircase Down to Ruin, in Five Acts
Now for the real work.
Let me, a little forcibly, break this story into five acts and look at the job each one does.
Act I (Departure): paradise in Geneva, and a hunger for the forbidden fruit of knowledge
・An idyllic home, the bond with adopted Elizabeth and best friend Clerval, an everyday "ordinary life"
・His mother's death, the first loss. A fascination with alchemy and lightning sparks a craving for "the secret of life"
・At the University of Ingolstadt he awakens to modern science, the "trigger" that plunges him into research past nature's limits
Act II (Choice): creation, the step you can't take back
・After two years of isolated research, he discovers how to give life to lifeless matter
・On a November night he animates the creature—but, horrified by its face, abandons his responsibility as creator and flees
・Abandoning the creature. A nightmare of Elizabeth turning into his mother's corpse. He crosses the line that can't be uncrossed
・He falls into a fever, dependent on the care of his best friend Clerval
Act III (Truth): the first sacrifice and the "complicity of silence"
・Word of William's murder. In a flash of lightning he sees the creature and is certain his creation is the killer
・Justine's trial. Accused of killing William, she stands trial; fearing he'll be called mad if he speaks, Victor chooses silence
・Justine's execution. He faces a new crisis: recognizing himself, the one who made the creature, as the true murderer
・Tormented by the guilt that his silence slaughtered two innocent souls, he travels to a glacier seeking peace
・There he meets the creature and hears its tale (its wretched origins, its observation of a family, its self-education)
・Doubting it still, he is astonished by its intelligence and moved by its suffering at society's rejection
・Asked to create a female companion, he reluctantly agrees
Act IV (Crisis): the bargain for a companion, made and broken, and the "scent of death"
・On a Scottish island he begins building the female but destroys her, fearing a "race of devils." He receives the threat, "I will be with you on your wedding night"
・His best friend Clerval is murdered
・He is arrested on suspicion of Clerval's murder, but his father comes for him and he is cleared
・He returns to Geneva with his father and, still misreading the threat as a death sentence on himself, marries Elizabeth
・By leaving her behind in their room on the wedding night, he gets her killed
Act V (Return): the wandering of revenge, and the end in the Arctic
・The shock of losing Elizabeth kills his father
・Having lost everything, he turns to a "wandering" with the single aim of destroying the creature. The pursuit to the Pole
・In the frozen Arctic sea, he is rescued by the explorer Walton
・He tells Walton the record of the ruin his own arrogance invited (a cautionary tale)
・His death aboard Walton's ship
・The creature's remorseful monologue and its departure toward self-immolation
The scene where creator and created close the curtain as one is the one that gets me. A tragic transcendence. It gives me chills.
How the Protagonist, Victor, Changes
Victor's arc is a strange one.
Most protagonists grow and move toward self-realization.
He goes the opposite way.
He keeps recognizing the truth but never takes responsibility, a "downward arc" toward ruin.
Not self-realization, but self-destruction. Let's take a look.
Act I (Departure):
・[Ignorance] In the paradise of Geneva, he never doubts that knowledge is an "innocent pursuit." He naively craves nature's secrets, sure they can be conquered
・[Omen] The lightning and his mother's death. Touching life, death, and nature's destructive power, the desire to decode "the principle of life" begins to stir
・[Awareness] At university he awakens to modern science and realizes "I have the power to step into a domain no one else has reached"
Act II (Choice):
・[Doubt] Cutting off all contact with family for two years and sacrificing his physical and mental health to obsess over creating life, he faintly suspects how abnormal and sickly his state has become
・[Hesitation] Assembling the creature, he feels a human revulsion at the physical and moral grotesqueness of stitching corpse-parts together. His swelling zeal carries the work on anyway
・[Acceptance] He admits the overwhelming "ugliness" of what he made. But rather than face it, he accepts it through abandonment (a warped acceptance, as a dodge of responsibility)
Act III (Truth):
・[Action] Against the real-world harm of William's death and Justine's trial, he stubbornly keeps a "self-protective silence," and as a result Justine is executed
・[Conviction] Facing the creature atop the glacier, he becomes convinced it is a moral being of extremely high intelligence and rich soul, one that commands language, laments its loneliness, and likens itself to a "fallen angel"
・[Retry] Receiving the creature's logical compromise, "make me a companion and I'll leave humankind," he consents once more to the forbidden act of "creating life," to atone for his sin and protect human safety
Act IV (Crisis):
・[Recoil] Building the female on a Scottish island, a fierce distrust arises: "this second creature might become a genetic threat to all humanity"
・[Conflict] Watched through the window by the creature's gaze, he is wracked by whether to destroy the female before him (responsibility to all humankind) or keep his promise and secure his family's safety
・[Regression] He destroys the female and breaks the promise. Then he can only read the creature's warning as his own physical death, and on the wedding night, consumed with defending only himself, he gets Elizabeth killed
Act V (Return):
・[Re-awakening] Before Elizabeth's body and his father's death, he fully accepts that his only reason to exist is "the destruction of the creature," and devotes himself to the wandering of revenge
・[Full acceptance] After Walton rescues him in the Arctic sea, facing death, he fully accepts the objective whole of his guilt: "I did not pioneer a great frontier of science; I am merely an arrogant destroyer, and this gruesome end is what I deserve"
・[Sublimation] He leaves Walton the lesson "abandon your ambition," releases the curse of being a "modern Prometheus" that once drove him mad, and accepts death as if dissolving into the silence of the ice. The creature too, with its creator's death, heads toward self-immolation (creator and created close the curtain as one)
Facing death, he finally admits it: "I didn't pioneer a frontier of science. I was just an arrogant destroyer."
And leaving Walton the lesson "abandon your ambition," he accepts death as if dissolving into the silence of the ice.
At the very end, he finally becomes honest. Heartbreaking, isn't it.
Using This Plot in Your Own Story
Here's the tastiest part.
Strip out the proper nouns and the period setting, and abstract the whole thing into a universal template you can reuse.
Act I (Departure): Paradise and the Craving for the Forbidden
・Start the story "after everything has broken," with the protagonist telling their life to a listener
・The protagonist lives a happy everyday life surrounded by love, naively believing the world bends to their will
・Losing someone dear, or touching a force of nature, gives birth to a strong desire to "reveal the secret of truth"
・The protagonist finds a special talent that lets them go where no one has, and dives in
Act II (Choice): The Line You Must Not Cross
・The protagonist leaves family and friends and obsesses alone over their pursuit
・They finally accomplish "the thing they should never have done," and in that instant realize how terrible the result is
・The protagonist runs from the result and refuses to face it
・Looking away from what they made, they flee into safe ordinary life and gain a fleeting calm
Act III (Truth): The First Sacrifice and Looking the Other Way
・The neglected "thing they made" begins ruining the innocent people close to the protagonist, one after another
・The protagonist admits the real cause of the tragedy is themselves
・Still, fearing ruin or loss of trust, they hide the truth and let an innocent victim die. They become an "accomplice" who knows yet does nothing
・The protagonist flees to a remote place, but there confronts the creation that has fully gained intelligence and power
・The creation argues it became "evil" because the protagonist abandoned it, and demands the making of a "counterpart" to fill its loneliness
・To prevent further disaster, the protagonist reluctantly promises to dirty their hands again with the forbidden creation
Act IV (Crisis): Breaking the Promise, the Weak Spot Struck
・Comply and breed new calamity; refuse and face revenge. The protagonist suffers between the two
・The protagonist betrays the promise
・The betrayed creation leaves a decisive warning, that at "the protagonist's moment of greatest happiness (a marriage, etc.)" it will take everything
・The protagonist assumes "my own life is being targeted" and grows desperate to protect themselves. As a result, the beloved left unprotected is killed, and the protagonist's life and emotional support crumble completely
Act V (Return): Too-Late Awakening and Falling Together
・Having lost everything, the protagonist finds the meaning of life only in the single point of "killing the creation," and begins an endless pursuit
・The two pull each other toward the world's edge (wasteland, Arctic, darkness) and continue an endless chase. The exhausted protagonist leaves their tragedy to a youth with the same ambition as a "cautionary tale," and dies in a foreign land
・Extinction of both together: the creation, having witnessed the creator's death, loses the meaning of life (confrontation with the creator, attachment to love) and itself vanishes completely at the edge of the world (self-immolation, etc.)
Closing
The reason Frankenstein is still read today isn't that it's scary.
It's that it depicts, with unmatched precision, how a person who couldn't take responsibility falls apart.
It looks like a story about science. Really, it's a story about a man who ran.
When you write, it's easy to make your protagonist do something.
But what truly drives a story may be what your protagonist didn't do.
Silence.
Flight.
Misreading.
Build your story around these three.
Mary Shelley started writing this at eighteen. How will you cook it up?