I think the problem is the students are giving too much credence to the monster's monologues, but "He is eloquent and persuasive, and once his words had even power over my [Frankenstein's] heart; but trust him not."

All that aside, you can't look past strangling a 4-year-old boy. It's reasonable to call anything that strangles a 4-year-old boy a monster, even if it felt lonely/abandoned.

And even the monster has the self-insight to know that he's fundamentally evil: "I had cast off all feeling, subdued all anguish, to riot in the excess of my despair. Evil thenceforth became my good."

the creature itself was innocent.

It's very much not innocent, it's a serial strangler.

"I murdered her. William, Justine, and Henry—they all died by my hands."

Why does the internet think the monster is innocent? It's there in black and white and we've all read the book.

Nick Groom, external, a professor of English literature at the University of Exeter, who has written a new introduction to mark the novel's 200th anniversary since publication.

“It’s interesting when I teach the book now, students are very sentimental towards the being,” Professor Groom wrote.

“There’s been a gradual shift... for years Victor Frankenstein’s creation was known as the Monster, then critics seemed to identify him as a victim and called him the Creature. That fits more with students’ sensibilities today.”

All mythology is public domain

The murders make him a monster.

A gun in an inanimate object. The monster is a self-described murderer.

"I have murdered the lovely and the helpless; I have strangled the innocent as they slept and grasped to death his throat who never injured me or any other living thing. I have devoted my creator, the select specimen of all that is worthy of love and admiration among men, to misery; I have pursued him even to that irremediable ruin."

No. There's no mention of who the brain (or any other part) came from. Frankenstein gathered them from various charnel houses.

cat pictures

Good luck with it. I read your PDF. Let me know if you want any advice.

I'm not sure having no coaches is a good idea. A martial arts coach is a perfect example of "justified hierarchy". And you do mark skill disparities as one of the major issues you're facing.

Shotgun to be specific

You could....

Frankenstein! you belong then to my enemy—to him towards whom I have sworn eternal revenge; you shall be my first victim.’

The child still struggled and loaded me with epithets which carried despair to my heart; I grasped his throat to silence him, and in a moment he lay dead at my feet.

I gazed on my victim, and my heart swelled with exultation and hellish triumph; clapping my hands, I exclaimed, ‘I too can create desolation; my enemy is not invulnerable; this death will carry despair to him, and a thousand other miseries shall torment and destroy him

...but I didn't read it that as an accident. Imagine using that defense in a courtroom: "I wasn't trying to kill the child, I was trying to kidnap him for revenge. I killed him by accident when choking him to silence him." Especially given the physical mismatch of a huge heavyweight versus a tiny child.

As I said earlier, "I think the problem is the students are giving too much credence to the monster’s monologues"

Can't RSS bots do this?

It's a weird internet-meme that the monster is innocent. Internet-dwellers have been posting that 2018 tweet as confirmation, as though that supercedes the text.

But it is true that I am a wretch. I have murdered the lovely and the helpless; I have strangled the innocent as they slept and grasped to death his throat who never injured me or any other living thing. I have devoted my creator, the select specimen of all that is worthy of love and admiration among men, to misery; I have pursued him even to that irremediable ruin. There he lies, white and cold in death. You hate me, but your abhorrence cannot equal that with which I regard myself.

It's not about hiding secrets from everyone.

It's about not authorising the military-industrial complex to have that unjust power over us.

Who?

What's the worst thing done to the monster, in your opinion?

The worst people in real life have both an abused background and an organic brain/genetic problem.

The monster's abnormal reaction to rejection (becoming a serial killer), I read that as he's probably got a bad brain/nature too. And why wouldn't he, given how he was made?

Hamas haven't "accepted" the plan

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/10/3/is-an-end-to-israels-war-on-gaza-finally-in-sight

Hamas has said that it has agreed to release all Israeli captives held in Gaza, both dead and alive, “in a manner that achieves” an end to Israel’s war and a full Israeli withdrawal from the Gaza Strip.

It also said that it would hand over power in Gaza to a body of Palestinian technocrats.

...

Hamas has made it clear that it is not willing to accept several aspects of Trump’s plan, including an interim administration led by Trump and former British Prime Minister Tony Blair.

“We will never accept anyone who is not Palestinian to control the Palestinians,” Hamas senior official Mousa Abu Marzouk told Al Jazeera

Guy who tweeted this doesn't fight.

I’ve heard the response of “just stop watching the news” or “don’t pay attention”, but that’s basically impossible.

It is not only possible, it's simple.