One of Hale’s main arguments is that the monster created by Frankenstein is a symbol of racial minority and the fears associated with those groups. First, Hale presents significant historical context to her claim, analyzing slave rebellions at the time Shelley writing the book, as well as historical claims of abolitionists to connect Frankenstein to Britain: a parent who failed to nurture their child into adulthood. Hale then addresses common stereotypes in the world to Frankenstein’s fears of the monster, from calling it a “savage” to worrying about the monster and its assumed wife procreating in the new world and having a new race of “devils”. This was a key argument in Hale’s paper.

One example of close reading of the text is when, as mentioned before, Hale talks addresses Frankenstein’s fear of the monster giving birth to an entire race in the new world. Hale first addresses the scientist’s strict fear of creating more monsters, but goes on to examine the racial subtext. Hale concludes the monster to be an allegory for the slave trade bringing Africans to America and leaving them to procreate in the new land, making an entirely new, large population.

One secondary source Hale uses is an essay by Malchow about Frankenstein depicting race in the nineteenth century. Hale uses this analysis to expand her own by signifying that the monster is not just an explicit “Negro monster” by that of an “other” race (18). This enhances Hale’s argument and clarifies to the reader that Shelley did not choose a race for the monster, yet it can be implied that a completely new race can produce the same messages.

In reading a quote from the book, I came upon the word “sophisms” (18). After using context clues and researching on the internet, I found the word means: deceiving arguments.