Hello and welcome to today's lesson.

Thank you so much for joining me.

My name is Miss Holiday, and I will be teaching you today.

I've been looking forward to this lesson so much because I absolutely love Frankenstein and I can't wait to start examining Shelly's methods and how she characterises Victor as this really hubristic and arrogant character in more detail.

So let's get started.

So today's lesson is called "The Power of Ambition in Frankenstein." And by the end of today's lesson, you'll be able to explain how Shelly presents Frankenstein as a hubristic character.

Here are some keywords that you'll need for today's lesson.

We've got hubris, playing God, hyperbolic language, to corrupt and to pursue.

Here are the definitions of these keywords.

So hubris means excessive pride or arrogance.

If somebody plays God, they take control of decisions or interventions that should be reserved for God.

Hyperbolic language is language that exaggerates.

If you corrupt somebody or if something is corruptive, it has the power to make people behave immorally or wickedly.

And finally, if you pursue something, you try to obtain it or you chase after it.

If you would like to take a moment to pause the video and jot down these key definitions, then please feel free to do so at your own pace.

Here's our lesson outline for today.

We're going to start by looking at Frankenstein's hubris specifically before moving on to look more generally at the theme of ambition and how it's presented as corruptive in Frankenstein.

But let's start first with Frankenstein's hubris.

In Robert Walton's fourth letter to his sister, Walton writes that Frankenstein had said the following to him, "You seek for knowledge and wisdom as I once did, and I ardently hope that the gratification of your wishes may not be as serpent to sting you as mine has been." Now, I'd like you to use that quotation to discuss the following questions.

First of all, what does Victor Frankenstein warn Walton about? Is there a difference between knowledge and wisdom? And finally, what is it that you think Frankenstein has learned from his experiments? I'm going to invite you now to pause the video while you discuss those three questions, either with the people around you or just some ideas down if you are working independently, off you go.

Fantastic and some really productive and insightful discussions there.

Let's hear from some of our oak pupils about what they felt about the questions.

So first of all, Aisha states, "Well, Frankenstein warns Walton not to pursue knowledge to its limits." So that's kind of what he's warning Walton not to do, okay? He's trying to use what he has learned from his mistakes to try and influence somebody else to make sure that they don't also make the same mistake.

And Izzy states, in terms of the difference between knowledge and wisdom, while she feels that knowledge is empirical facts, so scientific facts that can be proven, whereas wisdom is philosophical truths and Andeep pads, "Well, I think that victor has come to understand that he pushed science to its limits in pursuit of knowledge that he now wishes he didn't have.

He regrets his actions deeply." And I really like this idea that Andeep kind of explains here where he says that Victor actually now has a certain level of knowledge and he is uncovered a certain truth that he can never unknow.

And I think that that's something that Victor really wishes that he could do.

Like he wishes he could go back and not know those things that he now knows and not have the secret of life that he's uncovered.

So thank you to Andeep for that because I think that's a fantastic idea.

And Aisha raises a question in relation to this idea and she says, "well, what do you think it was that motivated Frankenstein to pursue this knowledge though?" And what I'd like you to do is discuss Aisha's question before we hear ideas from Izzy and Andeep.

So pause the video now and discuss this question of, well what? What was it that motivated Frankenstein? So pause the video and have those discussions now.

Fantastic discussions and some really insightful opinions and ideas there.

So in response to that question, Izzy states the following.

"I think that his hubris drove him to want to know more than others do." And I love that Izzy's already using keywords from the lesson here because that word hubris means that extreme arrogance and pride.

So she's saying kind of pride and arrogance is what drove him to have to know more than other people know.

that kind of secret knowledge that other people perhaps don't desire to know desire, but Victor takes it upon himself to uncover the secret of life.

And Andeep replies, "Well, I think that he wanted to know the secrets of life because it made him feel powerful almost God-like, and I agree with Izzy that his hubris drove him to play God." And Aisha states, "Well what does that actually mean though, this idea of hubris and playing God?" And Izzy replies, "Well, somebody hubristic is someone who's excessively proud and arrogant.

They think that they can do things that other people can't." And Andeep adds, "Well playing God means acting like God.

God is supposedly the only person who gets to decide who lives and who dies.

So by Victor giving a dead creature life, he is playing at being God." So it's this idea that there are certain things that should be outside of human control and should be left to higher power.

And life and death is one of those things.

But unfortunately because of his hubris, Victor takes it upon himself to experiment with the very essence of life.

And that is something that Shelly certainly felt should be outside the control of human ability.

So thank you very much to our fantastic oak pupils for their incredible and insightful ideas there.

So let's check for understanding before we move on.

Which of the following would be an example of a person playing God in real life? Would it be a, deciding who wins a competition at school? B, murdering somebody or c, delivering a baby? I'm going to invite you now to pause the video while you make your answer selection off you go.

And a massive well done if you selected b, murdering somebody would be an example of a person playing God because they would be deciding who gets to live and who dies.

And that is an activity that many people feel should only be reserved for God.

So well done if you got that great work.

So we're going to have a look for evidence to support Izzy and Andeep's idea, that Frankenstein's hubris drove him to play God.

And I think I want to draw out of this is that actually, yes, Victor did want the knowledge, but was it more that he wanted the knowledge because it gave him power? So I think that this whole experiment was probably more about power than it was about knowledge for knowledge sake, if that makes sense.

So when you're looking for this evidence, I really want you to look for this evidence that actually Victor was really arrogant and quite power hungry and that this is perhaps what drove him to play God.

So here's the extract that we're going to be looking for evidence in.

I will read it and you follow along.

I paused.

I became dizzy with the immensity of the prospect, which it illustrated.

And I was surprised that among so many men of genius who had directed their inquiries towards the same science that I alone should be reserved to discover, so astonishing a secret.

And Aisha says, "Wow, I can already see Frankenstein's hubristic nature.

His arrogance is oozing out of this passage." And I have to agree with Aisha there because actually Victor is so arrogant in this passage.

And what I would like you to do is try and find, well, where do we see that arrogance? Where do we see that hubris? So I'd like you to identify specific quotations that show you Victor's hubris in this passage.

You can do this either independently or you can work with other people around you.

Pause the video and undertake that activity now.

Fantastic discussions and some really key evidence being selected there to support this idea that Victor is hubristic.

Now, here are some of the quotations and the evidence that you might have identified.

So first of all, Frankenstein says he became dizzy with the immensity of the prospect and that so many men had already tried to do the same thing that he's tried to do, and that he is the person who's going to discover this astonishing secret.

Now, Frankenstein's language here is really hyperbolic, okay? So it's really, he's really exaggerating how impressive this experiment is.

Where's his humility? Where's his respect for life? There is, it doesn't seem to be much.

And he seems to really enjoy dramatising the events and making them seem a lot more significant than they probably were considering that many other people were also experimenting with galvanization at the time.

So really the method that Victor was employing wasn't particularly groundbreaking.

But here he's making out, as if you know, he's kind of a pioneer of this idea of galvanization.

And that's not true.

So he and Victor's really dramatising the events and trying to make them seem much more significant and much more impressive than they actually probably are.

Scientifically they're impressive, but morally are they impressive? No, they're just immoral.

So well done if you got that idea.

Frankenstein here also refers to himself as a genius.

And again, that shows his arrogance.

"He says, I was surprised that among so many men of genius, me being one." So he is really kind of arrogant undertone to this whole paragraph here that shows his hubris.

Shelley also repeatedly uses the pronoun I in Victor's narrative, and that is to show Frankenstein's hubris and arrogance.

Okay? He says, I did this.

I felt that, I felt the other I alone would be the one to discover this secret.

Okay? And the fact that he uses the word I so many times shows that he did this experiment with selfish kind of goals and selfish in a selfish pursuit basically.

And he feels that only he alone is clever enough to make this kind of discovery.

You know, there's so many men out there doing this experiment, but you know, "I was the one alone who could discover this astonishing secret." And this shows his real egotism.

So his arrogance and the fact that he thinks he is better than everybody else, okay? So here we see him as a very conceited and arrogant character.

So well done if you identified any of that evidence.

Fantastic work.

So onto our first task of the lesson now.

I'm gonna give you an extract that you are going to read.

As you're reading I would like you to highlight and annotate evidence that supports the same idea that Izzy and Andeep came up with before that Victor's hubris is what drove him to play God.

Here's the extract that you are going to annotate.

I'm going to read it to you first.

So if you could follow along, that would be great.

Thank you.

After so much time spent in painful labour to arrive at once at the summit of my desires was the most gratifying consummation of my toils.

But this discovery was so great and overwhelming that all the steps by which I had been progressively led to it were obliterated.

And I beheld only the results.

What had been the study and desire of the wisest men since the creation of the world was now within my grasp.

I actually hate him in this moment.

So what you're going to do is, as I said, you're going to read and highlight and annotate evidence that supports this idea that victor's really hubristic and that's what drove him to play God.

And I think there's quite a lot of evidence for you to go out here.

So I'm looking forward to seeing what you come up with.

As a hint or a little kind of life hack.

It might be useful for you to highlight evidence that shows Frankenstein's hubris in one colour and then perhaps use a different colour to highlight evidence of him playing God.

And that might be a useful way for you to distinguish between the two different ideas.

'cause actually is an Andeep's idea, there contains two separate perspectives on Victor.

So one is that he's hubristic, and the other is that he's playing God.

So you're looking for evidence for both of those claims within the extract.

So what I would like you to do now is pause the video while you read, highlight, and annotate that extract, looking at the idea that he's hubristic and that this is what drives him to play God.

Off you go, Excellent reading and excellent annotations.

I can see some very full extracts, which tells me that you've put your absolute all into this task.

So a massive well done.

We're gonna go through some of the annotations now, and as we do, if there's anything that you've missed, please feel free to add it into your annotations so that you've got it for your notes.

So you might have selected this quotation, "The summit of my desires." So here Shelly has Frankenstein use a metaphor.

So obviously Shelly is the writer of this novel, but at this moment, the text is being narrated by Victor.

So it sounds as if Victor has used the metaphor, but we need to be really careful and always make sure that we are explaining that actually it is the writer who creates the narrator, and therefore it is the writer who is responsible for the language device.

So Shelley is the person who is responsible for the metaphor here and not Victor.

So we need to make that really clear in our annotations, which we have done.

And that's why it says Shelley has Frankenstein use the metaphor.

Now, this metaphor is used to describe Victor's pursuit of knowledge, and it almost compares the pursuit of knowledge to a mountain that he climbs.

So here through Shelly's use of metaphor, she presents Victor as a really kind of conceited, an arrogant character who is presenting himself as noble and daring.

It's almost like he's entering territory that nobody else has explored before.

So he as Shelley, characterises Victor as really arrogant through the fact that she, has him use this metaphor of the summit of my desires.

So well done if you got that.

We also see Frankenstein hubris in this very hyperbolic language of this painful labour and the toils that he undertook in order to create this creature.

So he describes his experiment as labour, which has connotations of really hard and physical work.

So we kind of get the suggestion that this was hard for Victor to complete physically.

And he put a lot of effort and kind of physical energy into this experiment.

And again, Victor here is boasting about his own determination and resilience.

Okay, that word toil, it kind of suggests that it was difficult for him to undertake this work.

He worked really hard on it.

So here he is kind of boasting about how much resilience he had to keep going despite the physical challenges that he was facing.

So again, he's presented as very, very arrogant and hubristic.

Now we also see this hyperbolic language further down in the extracts where he says this discovery was so great and overwhelming, okay? And he evicted, again is boasting about his discovery.

The fact that Shelly uses the word so exemplifies Victor's arrogance, okay? It was so great and overwhelming, and that shows that Victor feels that he has accomplished something that nobody else has ever accomplished.

And again, that shows his hubris and his arrogance.

And finally, we see Victor playing God at the end of the extract when he says, "What had been the study and desire of the wisest men since the creation of the world was now within my grasp." Because he states that the secret to life is something that the wisest men had yearned to know, and that this secret to life is now within his grasp.

So here he's positioning himself as a God-like figure who has the secret of life and holds life within the palm of his hands, okay? And he's kind of suggesting that he holds the power to give and take away life.

So he's positioning himself as equal to God and therefore he is playing God.

So, well done, if you've got any of those annotations, some really challenging and complex ideas there, but you've tackled them really, really well.

So great work.

So onto the second part of the lesson now, where we're going to have a look at ambition as corruptive.

So again, here we have another quotation.

And this is something that Victor again says to Robert Walton while he's on his ship.

And he said, "I see by your eagerness and the wonder and hope, which your eyes express my friend, that you expect to be informed of the secret with which I am acquainted.

And that cannot be, I will not lead you on unguarded and ardent as I then was to your destruction and infallible misery." Now, just to clarify some vocab before we move on, this word ardent means really enthusiastic or passionate, and infallible means incapable of being wrong.

So certain misery.

So with that in mind, I would like you to discuss the following questions.

Firstly, what have been the consequences of Frankenstein's relentless pursuit of knowledge? And here I would like you to think about not only the physical consequences, but also the psychological and emotional consequences that Victor faces.

So thinking about how the experiment affects him physically, but also how it affects him mentally.

And lastly, I'd like you to think, well, how do you feel about Frankenstein here? What is your response to him as a character? So I'd like you now to pause the video while you discuss those questions, either with the people around you or brainstorm ideas independently, if you're working alone, off you go.

Fantastic discussions, really sophisticated ideas being raised there.

So a massive well done from me.

And here's what Andeep had to say in response to the same questions.

He said, "Frankenstein states that self-destruction and infallible or certain misery are the consequences of the pursuit of knowledge." And Andeep says, "Well, I feel somewhat sorry for him because his ambition has ruined his life.

Also, though he is to blame." Now here, I think Andeep is adopting a slightly more empathetic stance than I can have myself here.

I understand that Victor was ambitious and he really wanted to achieve this experiment, and that it has actually destroyed his life.

But also, come on, I mean, what does he expect to happen if he's experimenting with life and death? Really nothing good or positive was going to come of it, was it? So I do feel that Victor is completely to blame for his own suffering and misery, but thank you to Andeep for offering a more empathetic response than I possibly would have given so well done to Andeep for being more sensitive than me.

So let's check for understanding now, true or false, Victor refuses to tell Walton the secret he has discovered because he wants to have all the glory.

Is that true or false? I'm gonna invite you now to pause the video while you make your answer selection.

Fantastic if you selected correctly that it is in fact false.

What I'd like you to do now is explain why this answer is false using the justifications below.

So pause the video, read both justifications and select which one you think is the reason as to why that statement is false.

Off you go.

And a matter well done if he selected b, Victor states that he won't tell Walton the secret, because this kind of knowledge only brings misery and suffering.

So here we see that Victor has learned the consequences of his actions and is now trying to protect Walton from the same fate that he had.

So this moment is almost admirable from Victor because he seems to have learned his lesson.

So a massive well done if he selected b, great work.

So we know that Frankenstein has achieved his ambition, but it hasn't made him happy.

Rather, Frankenstein's ambition has actually ruined his, and not only his, but those around him lives.

So I'd like you to discuss now, well, who has actually died as a result of Frankenstein's experiment.

So I'm gonna invite you now to pause the video while you try and remember all of the characters who suffer as a result of Frankenstein's actions.

Off you go.

Thank you very much.

And I'm not sure that was even long enough to count all of the people who have been adversely affected by Frankenstein's experiment, but let's give it a go.

So first of all, Frankenstein's younger brother William is murdered by the creature and therefore dies as a result of his experiment.

His friend Henry Clerval also dies as a result of the experiment, as well as his wife, Elizabeth Lavenzer, his father from grief.

So that's more of an indirect death.

The creature doesn't murder him, but he dies as a result of his heartache from the murders of William and also the death of Justine, who is not mentioned on this list, but is another character who dies as a result of Frankenstein's ambition.

Frankenstein himself also dies as a result of his experiment and the creature we see at the end of the novel taking himself off to end his life.

So as you can see here, a real trail of devastation has been left behind because of this very selfish experiment that Victor undertakes.

So Victor is, it's quite ironic, really, that in creating life, Victor has destroyed one, two, three, four, five, six, seven if we're including Justine as well, seven lives.

That's terrible.

It's just awful.

So yeah, the consequences of Victor's experiment are very grave.

So now we're going to have a look at Victor's ambition as Corruptive, and we're going to have a look at how Shelley Narrates the impact that this experiment had on Victor's health.

So this extract is taken from just before Victor brings the creature to life where he's explaining the process that he undertook in order to reach the climax of his experiment, which was bringing the creature to life.

So I'm going to read you this extract.

If you could follow along, that would be great.

Thank you.

These thoughts supported my spirits while I pursued my undertaking with unremitting order.

My cheek had grown pale with study, and my person had become emaciated with confinement.

Sometimes on the very brink of certainty I failed, yet I still clung to the hope which the next day or the next hour might realise.

One secret which I alone possessed, was the hope to which I had dedicated myself and the moon gazed on my midnight labours.

While with unrelaxed and breathless eagerness, I pursued nature to her hiding-places.

Who shall conceive the horrors of my secret toil as I dabbled among the unhallowed damps of the grave or tortured the living animal to animate the lifeless clay? My limbs now tremble and my eyes swim with the remembrance, but then I resistless and almost frantic impulse urged me forward.

I seem to have lost all soul or sensation, but for this one pursuit.

Just terrifying, terrifying stuff from Victor there.

So what I'd like you to do now is using the extract, discuss, well, what psychological and physical impact did Victor's experiment have on him? So I'm going to invite you now to pause the video while you try to explain to some other people what impact this experiment had on Victor both psychologically and physically.

Off you go.

Fantastic discussions and really lovely to see many of you pulling evidence from the text to support your opinions.

So here's some of the evidence you might have selected that support this idea that Victor's experiment did have a psychological and physical impact upon him.

So we have, "My cheek had grown pale with study and my person had become emaciated with confinement." And what that basically means is that Victor became very, very thin because he spent all of his time in his laboratory and no time looking after himself and feeding himself.

We also have this quotation with unrelaxed and breathless eagerness.

We have the horrors of my secret toil.

My limbs now tremble and my eyes swim with the remembrance.

And finally, I seem to have lost all solo sensation, but for this one pursuit.

Some great evidence there.

And what I would like you to do now is, well, I'd like you to explain how this evidence shows the torment that Victor faced as a result of his experiment.

So I'd like you to take each quotation and really explain to somebody else exactly how you know that Victor was traumatised and tormented by his experiment.

Off you go.

Again, some really fantastic discussions there, and so great to see so many people with different ideas for each of these quotations.

So in order to feedback, I thought it would be easier to present this in the form of a grid.

So on the left hand side, you'll notice that you have the quotations that I gave you to look at.

And on the right hand side, we're going to have a look at the effect of those quotations.

So what we learn about Victor and his trauma from each of those quotations.

So first of all, the first quotation, the fact that Victor had grown pale with study shows that Frankenstein has become a shadow of his former self, and that this experiment has made him physically ill because he is become emaciated.

So really thin, he's kind of worn away because he's spent so much time in his study away from other people, the vitality has left him.

He's not, you know, full of life and fresh anymore.

We also see the physical and mental torment that Frankenstein has put himself through with this quote, unrelaxed and breathless eagerness, okay? He can't relax, he's almost kind of starved of any kind of vitality because of how much he's locked himself away in pursuit of this knowledge.

We also see here with this quotation, "The horrors of my secret toil." That Frankenstein has described his work as this series of horrors and that shows the psychological trauma that he has inflicted upon himself.

And these are horrors that he can't share with anyone else.

Okay? That word horrors shows that he perhaps wasn't even enjoying this experiment, but he couldn't share those feelings with anybody else probably because he knew that what he was doing was horrific.

Now we have Frankenstein in the present tense here telling us that even now his limbs tremble and his eyes swim with the remembrance.

So even after the experiment years later, Frankenstein is still haunted by the memory of his trauma that shows the effects were long lasting.

Okay? So here we see him as somebody who is haunted by his actions.

And finally when he tells us that he seemed to have lost all soul or sensation, but for this one pursuit, we see him becoming emotionally numb to everything.

So nothing mattered to him anymore because he was completely consumed with by ambition and desire to undertake this ridiculous experiment.

And he isolated himself physically, but also emotionally.

So he's kind of seems like he's out of touch with the world, he's lost his connection to other people and that this ambition has well and truly consumed him physically, but also emotionally.

So well done if you've got any of those ideas, great work.

So onto the last task of the lesson now, and we're going to consider the impact of Frankenstein's experiment in a little more detail.

So Frankenstein says this to Walton, "Learn from me, if not by my precepts, at least by my example, how dangerous is the requirement of knowledge and how much happier that man is who believes his native town to be the world than he who aspires to become greater than his nature will allow." Now, I love this quotation and I think it is actually one of the most important quotations in the whole novel, and it really kind of encapsulates Shelley's message and what she's trying to teach us.

And we're going to have a look at that in more detail now.

So using this extract, I would like you to answer the following questions, and I'd like you to do this as a written response using evidence from this extract on screen.

So I'd like you to consider, well, what is Frankenstein saying about knowledge here? And what is Mary Shelley trying to teach us about ambition? So what is her message to us? So when you're completing this activity, you can use the quotation in green to help you.

She'd also try and use today's key words, so hubris, playing God, to corrupt and to pursue.

So see if you can use any of those in your written responses.

So I'm gonna invite you now to pause the video while you undertake our last task of the lesson.

Make sure you put your all into this, and I'm really looking forward to seeing what you come up with and sharing some ideas together.

Off you go.

Brilliant work, and here's what you might have written.

So in terms of what Frankenstein is saying about knowledge here, well, in this extract, Frankenstein is warning Walton about the consequences of pursuing knowledge to its utter limits.

So being way too ambitious in his pursuit of knowledge.

He warns him of the dangerous nature of acquiring too much knowledge or knowledge that is better left unknown.

So again here touching on Andeep's idea from earlier in the lesson, that actually some knowledge we don't need to have, and it's actually more dangerous to have it than not to know it ever.

Okay? So I really like this idea that actually there is such a thing as too much knowledge and knowledge that should be outside of human awareness.

And that actually the knowledge that Victor's pursued here would count as that kind of knowledge where we don't need to know it, and it does more harm than good.

Now, in terms of what Mary Shelley is trying to teach us about ambition, while she might be trying to show us the corruptive nature of ambition, because Victor's relentless pursuit of the secret of life has ruined his and those around him lives.

Shelley shows us how destructive and ruinous ambition can be, especially when it's accompanied or pursued by hubristic people with no respect for boundaries or laws.

If there's anything on this slide that you think would be useful for you to have in your notes, I would encourage you to pause the video and write down some of the ideas that you want to take away from this lesson.

So to summarise today's learning, well, first of all, Victor Frankenstein is portrayed as a highly hubristic and arrogant character who plays God.

He relentlessly pursues knowledge to its limits, to the detriment of his own sanity and the lives of those around him.

Shelley uses hyperbolic language to characterise Frankenstein as hubristic.

Frankenstein later regrets his hubris and ambition, acknowledging that it has destroyed him physically and mentally.

And finally, Shelley warns us of the corruptive nature of ambition, especially when those ambitions are pursued by people who lack respect for boundaries or laws.

Thank you so much for coming to today's lesson.

It's been an absolute pleasure teaching you, and I'm really looking forward to seeing you next time when we look at Frankenstein in even more depth.

So have a fantastic rest of your day and see you later.