This essay test is tailored for Honors/Pre-AP 8th grade, or 9th grade regular English/Reading students. In it we look at Mark Shelley’s Frankenstein and provide a rubric for effective testing.
Test
Choose ONE of the following essays.
1. Describe the ways in which literary devices (similes, metaphors, personification, imagery) are used to create mood in Frankenstein.
2. One key theme of the novel involves the ways technology brings positive and negative changes. Compare and contrast the science that Victor Frankenstein seeks to discover with a modern scientific breakthrough. Use evidence from the novel to support your answer.
3. The definition of a “tragic hero” is a person who has amazing gifts and abilities, but encounters destruction because of a “tragic flaw” in his or her character that ensures that he/she will fail. Do you think Victor Frankenstein fits this description?Why or why not?Use text evidence.
- You may use: an annotated copy of Frankenstein.
- You may NOT use: SparkNotes, or any other sort of reading aid. ALL notes must be written IN your novel. You may not bring any paper with any other writing on it.
Rubric
- Use of text evidence 50%
- Organization 25%
- Style/Grammar 25%
Note to Teacher: If you have used a different rubric so far this year in your classroom, you may, of course, go with whatever works for you. As you can see, this test also requires that you have gone over annotation with your classes, and have led a thorough discussion of these ideas in Frankenstein so that the students have well-marked novels.
The restriction against outside papers helps to cut down on the cheating that could happen if your students just happened to come across some great ideas in Cliffs Notes or SparkNotes, or something of that nature. Of course, if they want to put some of those kinds of notes in the margins or blank pages at the front or back, that would be difficult to stop, but it would be unlikely for the student to have written information that would help on essays that they have not seen.
You could also assign this as an out-of-class assignment, and require that the student cite sources from outside criticism. That would put this paper up into high school-age range, though.
Frankenstein Study Guide
Don’t forget to check out the Frankenstein Study Guide .
This post is part of the series: Teaching Frankenstein
These lessons will help you teach Mary Shelley’s classic.
