Frankenstein Summary

Robert Walton, an English adventurer, undertakes an expedition

to the North Pole. While on this expedition (which has been a
lifelong dream of his), Walton corresponds with his sister by
letter. Amid the ice floes, Walton and his crew find an extremely
weary man traveling by dogsled. The man is near death, and
they determine to take him aboard. Once the mysterious traveler
has somewhat recovered from his weakness, Robert Walton
begins to talk to him. They two strike up a friendship?Walton is
very lonely and has long desired a close companion). The man is
desolate, and for a long while will not talk about why he is
traversing the Arctic alone. After becoming more comfortable
with Walton, he decides to tell him his long-concealed story.
The speaker is Victor Frankenstein, for whom the book is named.
He will be the narrator for the bulk of the novel. Born into a
wealthy Swiss family, Victor enjoyed an idyllic, peaceful
childhood. His parents were kind, marvelous people; they are
presented as ideals as shining examples of the goodness of the
human spirit. His father, Alphonse, fell in love with his wife,
Caroline, when her father, a dear friend of his, passed away.
Alphonse took the young orphan under his care, and as time
passed they fell in love. He provides for his wife in grand style.
Out of gratitude for her own good fortune, Caroline is extremely
altruistic. She frequently visits the poor who live in her part of
the Italian countryside. One day she chances upon the home of a
family who has a beautiful foster daughter. Her name is Elizabeth
Lavenza. Though they are kind, the poverty of Elizabeth's foster
parents makes caring for her a financial burden. Caroline falls in
love with the lovely girl on sight, and adopts her into the
Frankenstein family. She is close in age to Victor, and becomes
the central, most beloved part of his childhood. Elizabeth is
Victor's most cherished companion. Their parents encourage the
children to be close in every imaginable way as cousins, as
brother and sister, and, in the future, as husband and wife.
Victor's childhood years pass with astonishing speed. Two more
sons, William and Ernest, are born into the family. At this time,
the elder Frankensteins decide to stop their constant traveling:
the family finally settles in Geneva. Though Victor is something of
a loner, he does have one dear friend: Henry Clerval, from whom

he is inseparable. The two have utterly different ambitions: Victor

has developed a passion for science, while Henry longs to study
the history of human struggle and endeavor. Eventually, Victor's
parents decide it is time for him to begin his university studies at
Ingolstadt. Before his departure, Victor's mother passes away. On
her deathbed, she tells Victor and Elizabeth that it is her greatest
desire to see the two of them married. Victor leaves for
university, still in mourning for his mother and troubled by this
separation from his loved ones.
Meanwhile, in Geneva, life goes on. Because Caroline was so
generous, Elizabeth learns to be gracious as well. When she is old
enough to know her mind, she extends housing and love to a
young girl named Justine, whose mother dislikes her and wishes
to be rid of her. Though Justine is a servant in the Frankenstein
household, she is regarded as a sister by Elizabeth, Ernest and
William.
At Ingolstadt, Victor's passion for science increases exponentially.
He falls into the hands of Waldeman, a chemistry professor, who
excites in him ambition and the desire to achieve fame and
distinction in the field of natural philosophy. Thus begins the
mania that will end in destroying Victor's life. Victor spends day
and night in his laboratory. He develops a consuming interest in
the life principle (that is, the force which imparts life to a human
being). This interest develops into an unnatural obsession, and
Victor undertakes to create a human being out of pieces of the
dead. He haunts cemeteries and charnel-houses. He tells no one
of this work, and years pass without his visiting home. Finally, his
work is completed: one night, the yellow eyes of the creature
finally open to stare at Victor. When Victor beholds the monstrous
form of his creation (who is of a gargantuan size and a grotesque
ugliness), he is horror-stricken. He flees his laboratory and seeks
solace in the night. When he returns to his rooms, the creature
has disappeared.
Henry joins Victor at school, and the two begin to pursue the
study of languages and poetry. Victor has no desire to ever
return to the natural philosophy that once ruled his life. He feels
ill whenever he thinks of the monster he created. Victor and
Clerval spend every available moment together in study and
play; two years pass.
Then, a letter from Elizabeth arrives, bearing tragic news. Victor's
younger brother, William, has been murdered in the countryside

near the Frankenstein estate. On his way back to Geneva, Victor

is seized by an unnamable fear. Upon arriving at his village, he
staggers through the countryside in the middle of a lightning
storm, wracked with grief at the loss of his brother. Suddenly, he
sees a figure, far too colossal to be that of a man, illuminated in
a flash of lightning: he instantly recognizes it as his grotesque
creation. At that moment, he realizes that the monster is his
brother's murderer.
Upon speaking to his family the next morning, Victor learns that
Justine (his family's trusted maidservant and friend) has been
accused of William's murder. William was wearing an antique
locket at the time of his death; this bauble was found in Justine's
dress the morning after the murder. Victor knows she has been
framed, but cannot bring himself to say so: his tale will be
dismissed as the ranting of a madman. The family refuses to
believe that Justine is guilty. Elizabeth, especially, is heartbroken
at the wrongful imprisonment of her cherished friend. Though
Elizabeth speaks eloquently of Justine's goodness at her trial, she
is found guilty and condemned to death. Justine gracefully
accepts her fate. In the aftermath of the double tragedy, the
Frankenstein family remains in a state of stupefied grief.
While on a solitary hike in the mountains, Victor comes face to
face with the creature, who proceeds to narrate what has became
of him since he fled Victor's laboratory. After wandering great
distances and suffering immense cold and hunger, the monster
sought shelter in an abandoned hovel. His refuge adjoined the
cottage of an exiled French family: by observing them, the
monster acquired language, as well as an extensive knowledge of
the ways of humanity. He was greatly aided in this by the reading
of three books recovered from a satchel in the snow: Milton's
Paradise Lost, Goethe's The Sorrows of Young Werther, and a
volume of Plutarch's Lives. The monster speaks with great
eloquence and cultivation as a result of his limited but admirable
education.
He developed a deep love for the noble (if impoverished) French
family, and finally made an overture of friendship. Having already
learned that his hideous appearance inspires fear and disgust, he
spoke first to the family's elderly patriarch: this honorable old
gentleman's blindness rendered him able to recognize the
monster's sincerity and refinement (irrespective of his

appearance). The other members of the family returned

unexpectedly, however, and drove the creature from the cottage
with stones.
The monster was full of sorrow, and cursed his creator and his
own hideousness. He therefore determined to revenge himself
upon Frankenstein, whose whereabouts he had discovered from
the laboratory notebooks. Upon his arrival in Geneva, the
creature encountered William, whose unspoiled boyish beauty
greatly attracted him. The monster, longing for companionship,
asked William to come away with him, in the hopes that the boy's
youthful innocence would cause him to forgive the monster his
ugliness. Instead, William struggled and called the monster a
number of cruel names; upon learning that the boy was related
to Victor, he strangled him in a vengeful fury. Drawn to the
beauty of the locket, he took it, and fled to a nearby barn.
There, he found Justine, who had fallen into an exhausted sleep
after searching all day and all night for William. The monster's
heart was rent (torn) by her angelic loveliness, and he found
himself full of longing for her. Suddenly, he was gripped by the
agonizing realization that he would never know love. He tucked
the locket into the folds of Justine's dress in an attempt to seek
revenge on all withholding womankind.
The monster concludes his tale by denouncing Victor for his
abandonment; he demands that Victor construct a female mate
for him, so that he may no longer be so utterly alone. If Victor
complies with this rather reasonable request, he promises to
leave human society forever. Though he has a brief crisis of
conscience, Victor agrees to the task in order to save his
remaining loved ones.
He journeys to England with Clerval to learn new scientific
techniques that will aid him in his hateful task. Once he has
acquired the necessary data, he retreats to a dark corner of
Scotland, promising to return to Henry when the job is done.
Victor is nearly halfway through the work of creation when he is
suddenly seized by fear. Apprehensive that the creature and his
mistress will spawn yet more monsters, and thus destroy
humanity, he tears the new woman to bits before the monster's
very eyes. The creature emits a tortured scream. He leaves
Victor with a single, most ominous promise: "I shall be with you
on your wedding night."
Victor takes a small rowboat out into the center of a vast Scottish

lake; there, he throws the new woman's tattered remains

overboard. He falls into an exhausted sleep, and drifts for an
entire day upon the open water. When he finally washes ashore,
he is immediately seized and charged with murder. A bewildered
Victor is taken into a dingy little room and shown the body of his
beloved Henry, murdered at the creature's hands. This brings on
a fever of delirium that lasts for months. His father comes to
escort him home, and Victor is eventually cleared of all charges.
At home in Geneva, the family begins planning the marriage of
Elizabeth and Victor. On their wedding night, Elizabeth is
strangled to death in the conjugal bed. Upon hearing the news,
Victor's father takes to his bed, where he promptly dies of grief.
Having lost everyone he has ever loved, Victor determines to
spend the rest of his life pursuing the creature. This is precisely
what the creature himself wants: now, Frankenstein will be as
wretched and bereft as he is. For some time, the creator pursues
his creation; he had chased him as far as the Arctic Circle when
he was rescued by Walton. Though he cautions the sea captain
against excessive ambition and curiosity, he contradictorily
encourages the sailors to continue on their doomed voyage,
though it will mean certain death. His reason: for glory, and for
human knowledge. He finally can no longer struggle against his
illness, and dies peacefully in his sleep. At the moment of his
death, the creature appears: he mourns all that he has done, but
maintains that he could not have done otherwise, given the
magnitude of his suffering: he is "the miserable and the
abandoned, an abortion, to be spurned, and kicked, and trampled
on." He then flees, vowing that he will build for himself a funeral
pyre and throw his despised form upon the flames.

About Frankenstein
The early nineteenth century was not a good time to be a female
writer particularly if one was audacious enough to be a female
novelist. Contemporary "wisdom" held that no one would be
willing to read the work of a woman; the fantastic success of
Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley's Frankenstein served to thoroughly
disprove this rather asinine theory.
Frankenstein established Wollstonecraft Shelley as a woman of
letters when such a thing was believed to be a contradiction in
terms; her reputation in Europe was surpassed only by that of
Madame de Stael. De Stael, however, was more famous for
continuing to publish her works despite the fact that the Emperor
Napoleon had explicitly forbade her to do so rather than for the
quality of the works themselves.
Though Frankenstein is now customarily classified as a horror
story (albeit the first and purest of its kind), it is interesting to
note that Wollstonecraft Shelley's contemporaries regarded it as
a serious novel of ideas. It served as an illustration of many of
the tenets of William Godwin's philosophy, and did more to
promote his ideas than his own work ever did. The novel does
not, however, subscribe to all of Godwin's precepts. It stands in
explicit opposition to the idea that man can achieve perfection in
fact, ity argues that any attempt to attain perfection will
ultimately end in ruin.
Frankenstein is part of the Gothic movement in literature a form
that was only just becoming popular in England at the time of its
publication. The Gothic mode was a reaction against the
humanistic, rationalist literature of The Age of Reason; one might
say it was ushered in by the death of Keats, the English author
with whom Romanticism is perhaps most closely associated.
Frankenstein might be seen as a compromise between the Gothic
approach and the Romantic one: it addresses serious
philosophical subjects in a fantastical manner though it confronts
recognizable human problems, it can hardly be said to take place
in a "rational," comprehensible, recognizable natural world. Some
critics have suggested that this tension between Gothic and
Romantic literary modes echoes the philosophical tension that
existed between herself and her husband, the Romantic poet
Percy Bysshe Shelley.

As the prejudice against women writers was quite strong,

Wollstonecraft Shelley determined to publish the first edition
anonymously. Despite this fact, the novel's unprecedented
success paved the way for some of the most prominent women
writers of the nineteenth century, including George Eliot, George
Sand, and the Bront sisters. All of them owed Mary a
tremendous literary debt. Without the pioneering work of Mary
Wollstonecraft Shelley, a great many female authors might never
have taken up their pens; they might never have felt free to
exhibit dark imagination, nor to engage in philosophical
reflection. Without her, and the women whose work she made
possible, English literature would be unquestionably the poorer.

Character List
Victor Frankenstein
He is the main character, a man driven by ambition and scientific
curiosity. His quest for absolute knowledge and power will
eventually end in his own ruin.
Elizabeth Lavenza
Both Victor's sister and his bride. Elizabeth is presented as being
angelically good and incomparably beauty: she represents ideal
womanhood and its promises of love and comfort.
Caroline
Victor's mother; a paradigm of motherly concern and generosity.
Her death provides the catalyst for Victor's desire to transcend
death. It is her last wish that Victor and Elizabeth be married.
Alphonse
Victor's father; yet another shining example of kindness and
selflessness. His happiness depends on the happiness of his
children. If they fail, he does as well; thus, their deaths
precipitate his own.
William
The youngest son of the Frankenstein family. His death at the
hands of the monster renders him a symbol of lost and violated
innocence.
Henry Clerval
Victor's best friend since childhood. Fascinated with the history of
mankind, he is Victor's intellectual opposite. He, too, will be
murdered by the monster; he is perhaps a symbol of the
destruction of Victor's own goodness and potential.
Justine
Though a servant in the Frankenstein household, she is more like
a sister to Victor and Elizabeth. She is executed for William's
murder, and thus becomes yet another martyr to lost virtue and
innocence.

The Creature
The work of Frankenstein's hands, he is his double, his
persecutor, and his victim. The lives of him and his creator are
inextricably entwined.
Robert Walton
The reader's representative in the novel, he is the person to
whom Victor relates his story. He has much in common with
Victor: ambition, drive, and the desire for glory.
De Lacey
The head of the household observed by the creature, de Lacey
has been robbed of his fortunes as a result of his own kindness.
His blindness makes him capable of recognizing the creature's
sincerity and goodness despite his hideous appearance.
Felix
The son of de Lacey, he is devoted to his family and his mistress,
Safie. Though noble, he drives the creature from the family
cottage with stones. He thereby symbolizes one of the basic flaws
in the human character: the hatred of difference.
Agatha
The daughter of De Lacey, she is yet another example of selfless
womanhood, caring for her brother and her father despite their
poverty and her own sadness.
Safie
The betrothed of Felix. She is presented as exotically beautiful,
and is racially fetishized for her Turkishness. The de Lacey family
wishes to marry her to Felix and convert her to Christianity.

Letters 1-4
Letters 1-4:
We are introduced to Robert Walton, a 28-year-old sea captain
who is embarking on a journey to the North Pole region in order
to find a passage from the Pacific to the Atlantic. He writes the
letters to his sister, Mrs. Saville, in London, England. He has
talked about making this expedition for six yearsit has been a
favorite dream, and he is pleased that he finally has a chance to
make good on his promise to himself. Other dreams, such as
becoming a poet or a playwright, have not worked out.
Therefore, this vision must succeed. The writer of letters is
thrilled that he will satisfy an "ardent curiosity" by setting foot on
a part of the world never visited by man. As he prepares for
voyage by taking practice trips in the North Sea of Russia, he is
worried that he has no friend on the trip who will be able to
sustain his disappointment should the dream not work out. He
admits this is a romantic, emotional need, but it is there.
Unfortunately he does not connect at all with the other men,
even though he is very fond of his lieutenant and the ship's
master. He is nevertheless extremely excited for his journey.
Once actually on the voyage, things are going well. But a strange
thing happens. In the middle of the ocean, on sheets of ice, they
spy a sleigh pulled by dogs with a large figure driving. He
disappears, leaving the entire crew in puzzled wonderment. The
next day, another sleigh is at the side of the ship, on the brink of
destruction amidst the ice. This time, however, there is a regularsized human there, asking to where the ship is bound. He boards
the ship, nearly frozen and completely fatigued. When he is a bit
recovered, Walton asks what he is doing up here. The stranger
says he was tracking someone who fled from him. Apparently, it
was the large figure Walton and his men saw earlier. Walton
begins to spend time with the stranger. He is morosely unhappy,
and when Walton talks about how he might be sacrificing his life
on this expedition for the sake of knowledge, the stranger breaks
down and decides to tell him the tale he has kept secret in order
to reverse that opinion.
Analysis:
The structure of the book is arranged: we know that the
unnamed stranger will be the general narrator, and Walton,

substituting for all readers, will be the audience to whom he

speaks. Shelley is setting up a number of themes in this clever
kind of introduction. Walton's intense desire for discovery and the
unknown, to the point that he would risk his life at sea, molds
him along the lines of the epic hero type. Diction such as
"glorious" and "magnificent" is used to describe his mission.
Walton is consumed by the need to be immortal by doing what
has never been done previously. He suffers from hubris and
believes that he is invincible, destined to complete this
dangerous journey. That this ultra-confident attitude upsets the
stranger so much (he likens Walton's curiosity to drinking from a
poisonous cup) is telling. The stranger believes that the quest for
new knowledge can lead to self-destruction. While the idea
sounds strange, it is a key theme to remember.
Walton's undertaking of this journey is a comment upon the
larger society as well as upon his characterit is the outside world
that is constantly urging its members to leap tall boundaries, that
they might gain recognition and fame. Walton's values are
definitely questionable. It does not seem that he really belongs
on this mission, with so little experience, but he refuses to let
this dream go. He is highly motivated and in his prime, a younger
version of the weathered stranger, who had the same ideals at
one point but has had to relinquish them. That Walton complains
of not having peers to whom he can relate illustrates the most
basic human need of companionship. Anything with an iota of
humanness feels such a compulsion for friendship and emotional
ties; anybody would be justified in going great lengths to find
these things.

Chapters 1-4
Chapter 1:
Frankenstein begins his tale, sensibly enough, with his childhood:
he is from a wealthy and well-respected Swiss family. His parents
met, he tells us, when his father went in search of a dear old
friend. This man, named Beaufort, had fallen into poverty and
obscurity; when the elder Frankenstein finally found him, he was
entirely wretched and very near death. His daughter, Caroline,
attended to him with an almost religious devotion. Upon
Beaufort's death, Caroline turned to Master Frankenstein for
comfort, and the pair returned to Geneva together; a few years
later, they were married.
During the first years of their marriage, the Frankensteins
traveled constantly, for the sake of Caroline's fragile health. They
divided their time among Germany, Italy, and France; their first
child, Victor, was born in Naples, Italy. Victor was adored by his
parents, and he adored them in turn; his childhood, from the
very first, was wholly idyllic. Until he was five, Victor was an only
child, and both he and his parents felt the absence of other
children strongly.
Caroline Frankenstein made a habit of visiting the poor: since she
herself had been saved from poverty, she felt it her duty to
improve the lot of those who did not share her good fortune. One
day, she discovered an angelic girl-child, with fair skin and golden
hair, living with a penniless Italian family. As the girl was an
orphan, and her adoptive family lacked the means to care for her,
the Frankensteins determined to raise the child as their own. The
child, whose name was Elizabeth Lavenza, became Victor's sister
and his constant companion, as well as the object of his
unquestioning worship. For him, she is his most beautiful, most
valuable possession.
Analysis:
This chapter is primarily concerned with the theme of family and
kinship. The absolute necessity of human contact and emotional
ties is stressed here: the elder Frankenstein goes through great
trouble to visit his impoverished friend, and Caroline, too, is
selflessly concerned with the needs of others (her father, her

family, and the poor). It is important to note that Beaufort's ruin

is itself connected to his decision to cut himself off from his
former friends and live in absolute isolation; it is his isolation,
more than his poverty, which leads to his death.
Because Victor speaks in first person, the other characters are
presented as they relate to him ("my father, my mother, my
sister"). At the beginning of his narrative, Victor is deeply
embedded within a traditional family structure, and we develop
our first impressions of his character in relation to it. His
childhood is almost implausibly ideal; the reader therefore
expects Victor to reflect the love and beauty with which he was
surrounded as a boy.
A number of the relationships described in this chapter are
structured as a relation between a caretaker and a cared-for:
that between Caroline's father and Caroline; Victor's father and
Caroline; the Frankensteins and Elizabeth; and between Victor
and Elizabeth, to name a few. In this way, Shelley suggests that
human connection and, to state the case rather more plainly,
love itself is dependent upon one's willingness to care for
another person particularly if that other person is defenseless, or
innocent, and thus unable to care for themselves. The elder
Frankenstein takes Caroline in after she is left penniless and an
orphan; similarly, the family takes in the orphaned Elizabeth
Lavenza to save her from a life of bitter poverty. Shelley subtly
argues that there is nothing more wretched than an orphan: one
must care for one's children, since one is responsible for bringing
them into the world. This idea will become extremely important
with the introduction of the monster, in that Victor's refusal to
care for his own creature will say a great deal about the morality
of his experiment.
Chapter 2:
The family ceases to travel after the birth of their second son
they return home to Switzerland, to their estate at the foot of the
Alps. Young Victor prefers not to surround himself with a great
many casual friends; instead, he is very intimate with a select
few. These include a brilliant boy named Henry Clerval, renowned
for his flights of imagination, and, of course, his beloved
Elizabeth. Though Victor says that there can be no happier
childhood than his, he confesses that he had a violent temper as
a child. His temper was not directed at other people, however: it

manifested itself as a passionate desire to learn the secrets of

heaven and earth. Clerval, by contrast, was fascinated by
questions of morality, heroism, and virtue.
At Geneva, Elizabeth's "saintly soul" serves to soothe and temper
Victor's burning passion for study. Without her, his interest in his
work might have developed an obsessional quality.
Frankenstein is full of pleasure as he recounts these scenes from
his childhood, since they remain untainted by his recent
misfortune. He can, however, see how his early scholarly
endeavors foreshadow his eventual ruin.
At the age of thirteen, he becomes fascinated with the work of
Cornelius Agrippa (a Roman alchemist who attempted to turn tin
into gold and men into lions). His father tells him that the book is
pure trash; Victor does not heed him, however, since his father
does not explain why the book is trash. The system of "science"
that Agrippa propounds has long since been proven false; Victor,
unaware of this, avidly reads all of Agrippa's works, as well as
those of his contemporaries, Paracelsus and Albertus Magnus.
Victor shares their desire to penetrate the secrets of nature, to
search for the philosopher's stone and the elixir of life. The quest
for the latter becomes his obsession. Though he acknowledges
that such a discovery would bring one great wealth, what Victor
really longs for is glory.
Victor is also preoccupied with the question of how one might
communicate with or even raise the dead. He finds no answer in
the works of his Roman idols, and becomes entirely disillusioned
with them when he witnesses a lightning storm. Since the
Romans have no satisfactory explanation for this phenomenon,
Victor renounces them entirely and devotes himself (at least for
the time being) to the study of mathematics. Destiny, however,
will return him to the problems of natural philosophy.
Analysis:
The reader is gradually introduced to those aspects of Victor's
character that will lead to his downfall. He tells us that he
possesses "a thirst for knowledge"
The narrator begins to pick apart and identify the aspects of his
personality that will eventually lead to his downfall. He possesses
what he calls a "thirst for knowledge." Thirst, of course, is a
fundamental human need, necessary to one's very survival.
Victor's desire to learn, therefore, is driven by nothing so

insubstantial as curiosity: it is instead the precondition of his very

being. Shelley thereby indicates that there is a compulsive
quality to Victor's scholarship: it is something very close to
madness.

Elizabeth is positioned here, quite literally, as a "saint." It is her

gentle, feminine influence that saves Victor from his obsession
during his time at Geneva. The influence of women, and of
femininity, is thus presented as offering hope of salvation it
inspires one to temperance and kindness.
Though both Victor and Clerval have passionate and creative
characters, they express them very differently. Henry does it
openly, with songs and plays; Victor, by contrast, does it
privately, amidst books and philosophical meditations. His
reading is directed toward the learning of secrets of forbidden
knowledge. This predisposition to secrecy plays an essential role
in Victor's scientific work and its consequences.
The question of the place of chance and destiny in Victor's fate
also arises in this chapter. Victor "chances" upon the volume of
Cornelius Agrippa; he suggests that he would never have become
so fascinated with the alchemists if only his father had explained
why their work was worthless. He also says that "destiny"
brought him back to the study of natural philosophy: in this way,
Victor attempts to absolve himself of culpability for his later
actions. The word "creation" is deployed for the first time here, in
reference to natural philosophy: Victor refers to it as "abortive
creation." The idea of both creation and abortion will become
highly significant in later chapters.
Chapter 3:
When he is seventeen, Victor's family decides to send him to the
university of Ingolstadt, so that he might become more worldly.
Shortly before his departure, Elizabeth falls ill with scarlet fever.
Caroline, driven almost mad by worry, tends to her constantly,
with complete disregard for the risk of contagion. Though
Elizabeth recovers thanks to her extraordinary care, Caroline
herself contracts the fever. On her deathbed, she joins Elizabeth
and Victor's hands and says that her happiness is dependent
upon their eventual marriage. With that, she dies. Victor cannot

quite believe that his beloved mother is gone; he is stricken with

grief and delays his departure to Ingolstadt. Elizabeth,
determined to at least partially fill the void left by Caroline's
death, devotes herself to caring for the surviving family.
Clerval comes to visit Victor on his last evening at home. Though
Clerval is desperate to accompany Victor to university, his prosaic
merchant father will not allow him to do so. Victor is certain,
however, that Clerval will not remain bound to the crushing
dullness of his father's business.
Upon his departure from Geneva, Victor reflects on the fact that
he knows no one at Ingolstadt; he has always been unable to
enjoy the company of strangers. However, his spirits are lifted by
the thought of acquiring new knowledge.
The first person he encounters at Ingolstadt is Krempe, a
professor of natural philosophy. This meeting is described as the
work of an evil influence the "Angel of Destruction." The
professor is astounded at the absurd and outdated science that
Victor has read in the past, and tells him to begin his studies
completely anew. At first, the narrator is indifferent to the idea of
returning to science: he has developed a deep contempt for
natural philosophy and its uses. This changes, however, when
Victor attends a lecture given by a professor named Waldman.
Victor is completely enraptured by the ideas of Waldman, who
believes that scientists can perform miracles, acquire unlimited
powers, and "mock the invisible world with its own shadows." He
decides to return to the study of natural philosophy at once; he
visits Professor Waldman the following day to tell him that he has
found a disciple in Victor Frankenstein.
Analysis:
Caroline's decision to nurse Elizabeth even though it means
losing her own life serves to indicate both Caroline's own
selflessness and the high value placed on self-sacrifice in the
book as a whole. Caroline on her deathbed is described as being
full of "fortitude and benignity"; the irreproachable manner in
which she has lived her life means that she can die peacefully,
certain of her eternal reward. In telling Victor and Elizabeth that
her happiness was dependent upon their union, Caroline makes
their marriage a consummate symbol of earthly order and joy.
The centrality of this event to the novel's trajectory thus becomes
clear.

Victor's departure from home is both a coming of age and a dark

foreshadowing of things to come. There is nothing affirmative in
his departure from home: it is immediately preceded by his
mother's death, the journey itself is "long and fatiguing," and he
knows no one at all at Ingolstadt. At university, the obsessive
pursuit of knowledge will come to take the place of Victor's
friends and family; it will both substitute for human connection
and make any such connection impossible.
The epic rhetoric of Waldman's lecture is quite striking, in that he
makes of the scientist a god:
"...[They] have performed miracles. They penetrate into the
recesses of nature and show how she works in her hiding-places.
They ascend into the heavens...They have acquired new and
almost unlimited powers; they can command the thunders of
heaven, mimic the earthquake, and even mock the invisible world
with its own shadows."
That this rhetoric inflames Victor is telling: what seduces him
back to the world of natural philosophy is the hope of becoming a
god, free of earthly law and limitations. He has become mad with
the desire for not only discovery, but omnipotence (the state of
being all-powerful) and omniscient (the state of being allknowing) as well. Victor tells us that Waldman's words were the
"words of fate"; it was at this moment that his destiny was
decided. Here, again, Victor absolves himself of guilt and locates
the source of his ruin squarely outside himself, outside the
purview of his own will: the fault lies not with him, but with fate,
or destiny.
It is not accidental that the reader now learns the narrator's last
name Frankenstein for the first time. This serves to
depersonalize him and to distance him from the reader, thus
signifying the abyss of experimentation into which he will soon
fall. Indeed, "Frankenstein" can be seen as a separate persona,
the embodiment of the narrator's god/scientist self (as distinct
from the culpable humanity represented by "Victor").
Chapter 4:
Waldman makes Victor his cherished protg, and does a great
deal to accelerate the course of his education. Natural philosophy
and chemistry become Victor's sole occupations. Laboratory work
particularly fascinates him, and he soon finds himself secluded
there for days at a time. Victor's great skill and unusual ardor

impress his professors and classmates alike. Two years pass in

this manner; the lure of scientific pursuit is so great that Victor
does not once visit his family at Geneva.
Victor develops a consuming interest in the structure of the
human frame: he longs to determine what animates it, what
constitutes the "principle of life." Seized by a "supernatural
enthusiasm," he begins to explore life by studying its inevitable
counterpart: death. He rapidly verses himself in the rudiments of
anatomy, and begins pillaging graveyards for specimens to use in
his dissections. Victor discovers the secret of how to generate life
through a sudden epiphany. He does not, however, share the
content of this revelation with Walton (and, by extension, with
the reader), because his own knowledge resulted in misery and
destruction.
Even immediately following his epiphany, Victor hesitates before
using his newfound skill, as he must first fashion a body. He
determines to make one of gigantic proportions, so as to make
his work somewhat easier. Victor eagerly anticipates the day
when "a new species would bless [him] as its creator and source,
[and] many happy and excellent natures would owe their being
to [him]." He is drunk with the magnitude of his own power, and
reflects, "No father could claim the gratitude of his child so
completely as [Frankenstein] should deserve [that of his
creations]."
His midnight labors occur while Victor is in a trance-like state,
and he pillages graveyards and tortures living creatures in the
name of his unholy labors. His work completely possesses his
soul, and the seasons pass without his taking note of them.
Though Victor briefly worries about his father, who has been
anxiously awaiting a letter from his son for over a year, he
deludes himself into believing that the elder Frankenstein would
understand and approve of his endeavors. In retrospect, he
realizes that the pursuit of knowledge should be serene: when it
is overly passionate, it takes on the character of an obsession.
Simple pleasures are thereby destroyed; study itself becomes a
thing "not befitting the human mind."
Analysis:
The fact that two years pass without Victor's visiting his family
speaks poorly for his character. Though he knows his father and
Elizabeth long to see him, he remains completely absorbed in his

work. This indicates that Victor's capacity for altruism and

benevolence has been utterly destroyed by his obsession; it also
suggests that his character itself is deeply flawed. There is
something fundamentally selfish in Victor, and his scientific
pursuits are themselves the product of a desire for gross selfaggrandizement: he wants to create men who will worship him as
their god.
The themes of chance and fate arise once again in this chapter.
Frankenstein is on the point of returning to Geneva "when an
incident happens" to change his mind. This plot device in which
an expectation is expressed, only to be dashed a moment later
by a seemingly chance occurrence is a common one in the novel.
It serves at least two narrative purposes. On the one hand, it fills
the reader with alternating currents of hope and despair: while
we long for Frankenstein to save himself, we realize that his ruin
is inevitable. This inevitability is both narrative (in that the
beginning of the book makes it clear that Frankenstein's
destruction has already occurred) and character-based that is,
we see how the elements of Victor's personality can lead only to
his own downfall. The plot device of dashed expectation also
serves to suggest that the course of destiny is unalterable. One's
fate is determined, and there is little or nothing that any of us
can due to change it.
Though Victor hesitates before beginning his research and after
discovering the principle of life, he scoffs at his own discretion,
saying that "cowardice or carelessness" have delayed or
prevented many remarkable discoveries. He harbors real
contempt for prudence and caution, believing them to be nothing
but limitations upon what Man's capabilities. Frankenstein
believes that Man should attempt to reverse death, to alter divine
handiwork. Clearly, Victor will have to be punished for his hubris
for his disrespect of both natural and heavenly boundaries.
Frankenstein becomes progressively less human that is to say,
more monstrous as he attempts to create a human being. He
tortures living creatures, neglects his family, and haunts
cemeteries and charnel houses. As his morals suffer, his health
does as well: he becomes pale and emaciated. Frankenstein's
work is literally sickening the man who was once called Victor.

Chapters 5-8
Chapter 5:
On a chill night of November, Victor finally brings his creation to
life. Upon the opening of the creature's "dull yellow eye," Victor
feels violently ill, as though he has witnessed a great
catastrophe. Though he had selected the creature's parts
because he considered them beautiful, the finished man is
hideous: he has thin black lips, inhuman eyes, and a sallow skin
through which one can see the pulsing work of his muscles,
arteries, and veins.
The beauty of Frankenstein's dream disappears, and the reality
with which he is confronted fills him with horror and disgust. He
rushes from the room and returns to his bedchamber. He cannot
sleep, plagued as he is by a dream in which he embraces and
kisses Elizabeth, only to have her turn to his mother's corpse in
his arms.
He awakens late at night to find the creature at his bedside,
gazing at him with a fond smile. Though the monster endeavors
to speak to him, he leaps out of bed and rushes off into the
night. He frantically paces the courtyard for the remainder of the
night, and determines to take a restless walk the moment that
morning comes.
While walking in town, Frankenstein sees his dear friend Henry
Clerval alight from a carriage; overjoyed, he immediately forgets
his own misfortunes. Clerval's father has at last permitted him to
study at Ingolstadt; the two old friends shall therefore be
permanently reunited. Henry tells Victor that his family is
wracked with worry since they hear from him so rarely. He
exclaims over Frankenstein's unhealthy appearance; Victor,
however, refuses to discuss the details of his project.
Victor searches his rooms to make certain that the monster is
indeed gone. The next morning, Henry finds him consumed with
a hysterical fever. Victor remains bedridden for several months,
under the assiduous care of Henry, who determines to conceal
the magnitude of Victor's illness from his family. Once Victor can
talk coherently, Henry requests that he write a letter, in his own
handwriting, to his family at Geneva. There is a letter from
Elizabeth that awaits his attention.

Analysis:
In this chapter, Victor's scientific obsession appears to be a kind
of dream one that ends with the creature's birth. He awakens at
the same moment that the creature awakens the moment the
creature's eyes open, Frankenstein's own eyes are opened to the
horror of his project. He is wracked by a sickness of both mind
and body; this reflects the unnatural character of his endeavor, in
which he attempted to take the place of god.
The narrator's sentences become abbreviated, abrupt, indicating
his nervous, paranoid state. It is significant that Victor dreams of
his mother and Elizabeth: as women, they are both "naturally"
capable of creation (through giving birth). With their deaths, the
natural creation and earthly virtue they represent dies as well.
Victor's kiss is the kiss of death, and his marriage to Elizabeth is
represented as being equivalent to both a marriage to his mother
and a marriage with death itself.
At the moment of his birth, the creature is entirely benevolent:
he affectionately reaches out to Frankenstein, only to have the
latter violently abandon him. Despite his frightful appearance, he
is as innocent as a newly-born child which, in a sense, is
precisely what he is. Victor's cruel treatment of the creature
stands in stark contrast to both his parents' devotion and
Clerval's selfless care: he renounces his child at the moment of
its birth. The reader begins to recognize the profoundly unethical
character of Frankenstein's experiment and of Frankenstein
himself.
Chapter 6:
Elizabeth's letter expresses concern for Victor's well-being and
gratitude to Henry for his care. She relates local gossip and
recent family events. The family's most trusted servant, Justine
Moritz, has returned to the family after being forced to care for
her estranged mother until the latter's death. Victor's younger
brother, Ernest, is now sixteen years old and aspires to join the
foreign service; his other brother, William, has turned five and is
doing marvelously well. Elizabeth implores Victor to write, and to
visit, as both she and his father miss him terribly. Frankenstein is
seized by an attack of conscience and resolves to write to them
immediately.
Within a fortnight (two weeks), Victor is able to leave his

chamber. Henry, after observing his friend's distaste for his

former laboratory, has procured a new apartment for him and
removed all of his scientific instruments. Introducing Clerval to
Ingolstadt's professors is pure torture, in that they unfailingly
exclaim over Victor's scientific prowess. Victor, for his part,
cannot bear the praise, and allows Henry to convince him to
abandon science for the study of Oriental languages. These
along with the glorious melancholy of poetry provide
Frankenstein with a much-needed diversion.
Summer passes, and Victor determines to return to Geneva at
the end of autumn. Much to his dismay, his departure is delayed
until spring; he is, however, passing many marvelous hours in
the company of Clerval. They embark on a two-week ramble
through the countryside, and Victor reflects that Henry has the
ability to call forth "the better feelings of his heart"; the two
friends ardently love one another.
Slowly, Victor is returning to his old, carefree self. He takes great
joy in the natural world, and is able to forget his former misery.
The two are in high spirits upon their return to university.
Analysis:
With Elizabeth's letter, we realize how utterly Victor has been cut
off from the outside world. His narration of his first two years at
Ingolstadt mentions few proper names, and concerns itself not at
all with anyone else. The reader realizes how much time has
passed, and how much has changed in faraway reader. We learn
the names of Victor's brothers, and of the existence of Justine.
Elizabeth's relation to Justine is much like Caroline's relation to
Elizabeth: she cares for the less fortunate girl and heaps praise
upon her, calling her "gentle, clever, and extremely pretty."
Justine's history, however, illustrates two of the novel's darker
themes: the inevitability of atoning for one's sins, on the one
hand, and the kind of suffering that atonement entails, on the
other. Justine's cruel mother could not bear her, and had her sent
away; after Justine's departure, her cherished children died, one
by one, and left her utterly alone. She therefore had to rely upon
Justine to care for her on her deathbed. This amply illustrates the
code of justice propounded by the novel: one must always pay
for one's cruelty, and pay with the thing that one holds most
dear.
Victor's abandonment of science and natural philosophy is

illustrative of his irrational attempt to deny that the events of the

past two years have ever occurred. Victor seems to truly believe
that he is impervious to harm: he does not pursue his lost
creature, but goes about his life at university with supreme
carelessness. He takes up languages and poetry two things in
which he has never before shown the slightest interest and
attempts to forget all that has come before. Victor thus displays
a highly questionable relationship to reality: unless directly
confronted by his mistakes, he refuses to acknowledge that he
has made them at all. He is exceedingly weak, as his prolonged
illness (which was both mental and physical) makes clear.
Ending the chapter at the height of springtime, Shelley
emphasizes Victor's wish to be reborn. The reader, however,
already knows that such a wish is entirely in vain.
Chapter 7:
At Ingolstadt, Victor and Henry receive a letter from Victor's
father: William, Victor's youngest brother, has been murdered.
While on an evening walk with the family, the boy disappeared;
he was found dead the following morning. On the day of the
murder, Elizabeth had allowed the boy to wear an antique locket
bearing Caroline's picture. Upon examining the corpse, Elizabeth
finds the locket gone; she swoons at the thought that William
was murdered for the bauble. She comes to blame herself for his
death. Victor's father implores him to come home immediately
his presence will help to soothe the ravaged household. Clerval
expresses his deepest sympathies, and helps Victor to order the
horses for his journey.
On the way to Geneva, Victor becomes seized by an irrational
fear. Certain that further disaster awaits him at home, he lingers
for a few days at Lausanne. Summoning all his courage, he sets
out again. Victor is moved to tears at the site of his native city,
since his estrangement from it has been so prolonged. Despite
his joy at being reunited with Geneva, his fear returns. He arrives
at night, in the midst of a severe thunderstorm. Suddenly, a flash
of lightning illuminates a figure lurking among the skeletal trees;
its gigantic stature betrays it as Frankenstein's prodigal creature.
At the sight of the "demon," Victor becomes absolutely certain
that he is William's murder only a monster could take the life of
so angelic a boy.

Victor longs to pursue the creature and warn his family of the
danger he represents. He fears that he will be taken for a
madman if he tells his fantastic story, however, and thus resolves
to keep silent.
At the Frankenstein estate, Victor is greeted with a certain
melancholy affection. His brother, Ernest, relates a piece of
shocking news: Justine, the family's trusted maidservant, has
been accused of William's murder. The missing locket was found
on her person on the night of the murder. The family particularly
Elizabeth passionately believes in her innocence, and avers that
their suffering will only be magnified if Justine is punished for the
crime. They all dread Justine's trial, which is scheduled to take
place at eleven o'clock on the same day.
Analysis:
The account of William's death is written in highly disjointed
language: the sentences are long and frequently interrupted by
semicolons, as though each thought is spilling into another. This
indicates the magnitude of the distress felt by the narrator's
father as he writes. Letters, in general, play a central role in the
novel: it begins and ends with a series of letters, and many
important details of plot and character are related through them.
They enable Shelley (who has, for the most part, committed
herself to Victor's first-person narration) to allow the voices of
other characters to interrupt and alter Victor's highly subjective
account of the novel's events.
Victor's reaction to the letter reveals a great deal about his
character. Though he is wracked with grief, his thoughts soon
turn to his own anxiety at returning to his home after so long an
absence. His self-absorption begins to seem impenetrable to the
reader. Victor's uneasiness also foreshadows the moment of
horror that greets him at Geneva; the reader has come to share
his distress, and is thus as horrified as he by what the lightning
illuminates.
The lightning storm that greets Victor is a staple of Gothic
narrative it necessarily reminds one of the classical (not to say
clichd) preamble to any ghost story: "It was a dark and stormy
night..." It also reflects the state of imbalance and chaos in which
Victor finds his family. Though William's murder is described as
taking place on an idyllic day in spring, it is chill and stormy
when Victor arrives shortly thereafter.

Upon seeing the creature through Frankenstein's eyes, the reader

is inclined to jump to the same conclusion that he does. Victor's
hatred of the creature reaches an almost hysterical pitch in this
scene, as is indicated by his diction: he refers to his creation as a
"deformity," a "wretch," a "filthy demon." The reader, too,
immediately wishes to blame the creature even though we have
no real grounds for doing so. The reader is thus made subtly
complicit with the creature's outcast state.
Victor's decision to keep the monster's existence a secret in order
to preserve his reputation reveals him as both selfish and
foolhardy. A child has been killed, and a monster brought to life:
in a world so severely out of balance, Frankenstein's reputation
ought be the furthest thing from his mind.
Chapter 8:
The trial commences the following morning. Victor is extremely
apprehensive as to what the verdict will be: he is tortured by the
thought that his "curiosity and lawless devices" will cause not
only one death, but two. He mournfully reflects that Justine is a
girl of exceptional qualities, destined to lead an admirable life;
because of him, her life will be cruelly foreshortened. Victor
briefly considers confessing to the crime himself, but realizes
that, as he was at Ingolstadt on the night of the murder, his
confession would be dismissed as the ravings of a madman.
In court, Justine stands calmly before her accusers; her solemn
face lends her an exquisite beauty. The prosecutor brings forth a
number of witnesses, who provide compelling evidence against
her: she was out for the whole night on which the murder was
committed; she was seen near to the spot where the body was
found; when questioned, she gave a confused and unintelligible
answer; and she became hysterical at the sight of William's body.
The most damning piece of evidence, however, is the fact that
William's miniature, which he had been wearing at the time of
the murder, was found in the pocket of Justine's dress.
Justine, called to the witness stand, provides another account of
the events: with Elizabeth's permission, she had passed the night
of the murder at her aunt's house in Chne. Upon hearing of
William's disappearance, she spent several hours searching for
him; unable to return home, as it had grown too late, she
determined to spend the night in a nearby barn. Justine says that
if she was near the body, she did not know it; her confusion was

only a manifestation of her tiredness. She remains unable to

explain how the picture came to be on her person; she can only
assume that the murderer himself placed it there.
Though few witnesses are willing to come forth to aver Justine's
innocence, Elizabeth insists on speaking on the girl's behalf. She
praises Justine's character, and says that she was beloved by the
entire Frankenstein family; Elizabeth, for he part, will never
believe that Justine is guilty. Despite this brave display of loyalty,
Justine is condemned to death. Victor considers Justine's plight to
be less than his own she is consoled by the fact of her own
blamelessness, while he must live with his guilt.
Shockingly, Justine confesses to the murder, and expresses a
wish to see Elizabeth, who asks Victor to accompany her. Justine
tells them that she confessed to a lie in order to obtain
absolution and avoid excommunication in her last moments. She
does not fear death, and nobly spends her last moments in
comforting Elizabeth and Victor. This only serves to heighten
Victor's anguish, and he reflects that Justine and William are the
first victims of his "unhallowed arts."
Analysis:
The minute attention paid to Justine's appearance, history, and
speech only serves to heighten the sympathy felt by the reader.
Her impassive countenance recalls that of a fragile doll: like a
doll, she is a mere plaything, a pawn whose fate is entirely
beyond her control. Throughout Chapter 8, the sentences are
confused, and semicolons are frequently used to connect
disjointed thoughts. In this way, Shelley indicates the magnitude
of the chaos that has befallen the Frankenstein household: they
have lost all control over both the present and the future, and
are even unable to organize their own thoughts.
Though the reader might be tempted to hold Victor responsible
for the verdict, this is an overly simplistic view of events.
Frankenstein's decision to conceal the truth is terribly misguided;
Shelley, however, gives us no indication that he does this in order
to absolve himself of guilt. "Fangs of remorse" tear at him, and,
in his own heart at least, he bears the guilt for both William's
murder and Justine's execution. He can share his terrible secret
with no one, and is thus utterly isolated, an outcast from human
society.

Chapters 9-12
Chapter 9:
Victor is tormented by the false calm that descends upon the
Frankenstein household following the death of Justine. He is
wracked with guilt; though he intended to further the cause of
human happiness, he has ended in committing "deeds of mischief
beyond description horrible." Victor's health suffers as a result of
his massive sense of guilt and the bleak depression that
accompanies it. His father, observing his misery, becomes ill as
well.
The Frankenstein family, "blasted" as a result of their recent
misfortunes, retires to their summer home at Belrive. There,
Victor passes most of his hours in solitude; the fact that he must
keep his role in William's death a secret makes the company of
his family agonizing to him. He finds himself in extreme
disharmony with the landscape of Belrive, which impresses him
with its beauty and serenity. He often contemplates suicide, but
is deterred by thoughts of Elizabeth's grief; he also fears the
untold havoc his creature could wreak in his absence. Victor's
hatred of the creature reaches pathological proportions, and
takes on the character of an obsession; he thinks of nothing but
his eventual revenge.
Elizabeth, too, is much changed by the tragedy; she has lost faith
in the essential goodness of both humanity and the world as a
whole. Now, men appear to her "as monsters thirsting after each
other's blood." She does, however, persist in her fervent belief in
Justine's innocence; she feels great pity for the man who must
carry the guilt for William's murder on his conscience. Victor
despairs when he hears her say this, as he feels that he is the
man who must bear that guilt.
He seeks escape from his misery by traveling through the Alpine
valley of Chamounix, in which he had often vacationed as a boy.
Victor is awestruck by the overwhelming grandeur of the
landscape, and views it as proof of the existence of an
omnipotent god. The hard physical exercise exhausts him, and he
is able to take refuge in sleep for the first time since the
execution of Justine.

Analysis:
The reader cannot help but feel a certain ambivalence toward
Victor's thoughts of suicide: while they reveal the magnitude and
authenticity of his feelings of remorse, they also bespeak a
certain selfishness. That he overcomes his desire to kill himself
indicates that he is capable of mastering his self-absorption at
least occasionally: his concern for his family, and for the suffering
that the creature could cause humanity as a whole, keeps him
from the "base desertion" of suicide.
In this chapter, we see the dramatic effect that nature has upon
Victor's well-being and state of mind. He praises nature for what
he calls its sublimity that is, for the way in which it stands
beyond the scope of human control and comprehension. This
awestruck admiration is bitterly ironic, in light of the fact that
Frankenstein's agony was originally caused by his desire to
master nature and unlock its secrets. Nature, for Frankenstein,
reveals the existence of an all-powerful god the very god whose
works he attempted to improve upon and replace.
Elizabeth's apprehension of men as bloodthirsty monsters is quite
significant: it highlights the ambiguous moral status of both
Frankenstein and his creature. Who, Shelley insistently asks, is
the true monster? The creature whom Victor abandoned? Or
Victor himself, who obsessively fantasizes about taking his violent
revenge upon the monster he himself created?
Chapter 10:
Victor continues to wander aimlessly in the valley of Chamounix,
taking great consolation in the magnificence of the natural
landscape. At the same time, he notes that the landscape is
characterized by disorder and destruction: the valley is plagued
by constant avalanches, and it often seems that the mountains
themselves will crash down on Victor's head.
Victor determines to climb to the top of Montanvert, one of the
region's forbiddingly massive glaciers. The sight of the mountain
fills him with a "sublime ecstasy"; he believes that human
contemplation of natural wonders "gives wings to the soul and
allows it to soar from the obscure world to light and joy." He is
filled with melancholy as he ascends the mountain, however, and,
amid rain and rockslides, meditates on the impermanence of all
human dreams and attachments. When he has reached the
summit, Victor invokes all the "wandering spirits" of the dead,

and asks them to either permit him to be happy or carry him to

his grave.
As if summoned by this call, the monster appears. Victor rains
curses upon him and threatens to kill him, but the creature
remains unmoved. He says that he is the most wretched and
despised of all living things, and accuses his creator of a gross
disregard for the sanctity of life: how else could Victor propose to
murder a creature which owes its existence to him? The monster
asks Frankenstein to alleviate his misery, and threatens to "glut
the maw of death... with the blood of [Victor's] remaining
friends" if he does not comply with his wishes.
The monster eloquently argues that he is intrinsically good, full of
love and humanity; only the greatness of his suffering has driven
him to commit acts of evil. Though he is surrounded by examples
of human happiness, he finds himself excluded, through no fault
of his own, irrevocably excluded from such bliss. He implores
Frankenstein to listen to his story; only then should he decide
whether or not to relieve the creature of his agony.
Analysis:
Victor's sojourn in the valley of Chamounix reveals his desire to
escape the guilt he bears for the recent tragedies. There, he
seeks oblivion in sleep, and in the bleakness of the glacial
landscape. The chaos of that landscape, in which avalanches and
rockslides are a constant threat, suggests that Victor's escape
from his responsibility will be short-lived; it also foreshadows
further tragedy.
The encounter between Victor and his creature is charged with
Biblical allusions: like Adam, the creature has been forsaken by
his creator. For him, Frankenstein occupies the position of the
Christian god. The creature is also subtly aligned with the figure
of Satan, or the devil: like him, he is a "fallen angel," grown
brute and vicious in the absence of his god.
Shelley suggests that the creature's misdeeds are caused by the
enormity of his suffering; at heart, he is essentially good and,
more importantly, essentially human. If he is monstrous, no one
but Frankenstein is to blame. When the outraged creature
demands of his creator, "How dare you sport thus with life?," the
question succinctly represents the sentiments of the reader and
perhaps even of the author as well. Frankenstein, in his
hypocrisy, longs to murder a being who owes its life to him. If the

creature is, paradoxically, both inherently good and capable of

evil, then his creator is as well.
Chapter 11:
The creature has only the vaguest memory of his early life: he
recalls being assailed with sensory impressions, and was for a
long time unable to distinguish among light, sound, and smell. He
began to wander, but found the heat and sunlight of the
countryside oppressive; he eventually took refuge in the forest
near Ingolstadt, which offered him shade. The creature found
himself tormented by hunger, thirst, and bodily pain. Only the
light of the moon consoled him, and he grew to love the sound of
birdsong. When he attempted to imitate it, however, he found the
sound of his own voice terrifying, and fell silent again. With the
same ecstatic astonishment that primitive man must have felt,
the creature discovers fire.
All of the people that the creature encounters in his travels
regard him with horror: he is often pelted with stones and beaten
with sticks, though he attempts to make overtures of friendship.
He finally comes upon a miserable hovel; this is attached to a
cottage of poor but respectable appearance. Exhausted, he takes
refuge there "from the inclemency of the weather and from... the
barbarity of man." The creature, in observing the cottage's three
inhabitants, contrives a great affection for the beauty and nobility
of their faces. They an old man, a young man, and a young
woman enthrall him with the sound of their music and the
cadence of their language, which he adores but cannot
understand.
Analysis:
This chapter is told from the creature's point of view. In this way,
Shelley humanizes the creature: his first-person narration reveals
him as a character of surprising depth and sensitivity. The reader
becomes familiar with his trials and sufferings; we realize that, at
the time of Frankenstein's abandonment, the creature was as
innocent and defenseless as a human infant.
Like an infant, he is plagued by blurry vision, confusion of the
senses, and an aversion to direct light: he experiences the world
precisely as a young child would experience it. His syntax, as he
begins describing his early life, is almost painfully simple. He is

as yet incapable of interpreting or analyzing the world and his

perceptions of it.
The creature's narrative voice is surprisingly gentle and utterly
guileless: one of the most poignant moments in the novel is
when the creature, despised by Victor and feared by the rest of
mankind, collapses and weeps out of fear and pain.
In all of his encounters with humanity, the creature is met with
horror and disgust. In the face of such cruelty, the reader cannot
help but share the creature's fury and resentment: though he
means no harm, his unbeautiful appearance is enough to make
him a wretched outcast. He is, through no fault of his own,
deprived of all hope of love and companionship; the reader thus
slowly begins to sympathize with his desire to revenge himself on
both his creator and on brutal humanity as a whole. As the novel
progresses, we become more and more uncertain as to who is
truly human, since the creature's first-person narration reveals
both his own humanity and his creator's concealed
monstrousness.
Chapter 12:
The creature begins by recalling his deep and tormenting desire
to speak to the cottagers, who impress him with their gentleness
and simplicity. He hesitates, however, as he is fearful of incurring
the same kind of disgust and cruelty that he experienced at the
hands of the villagers.
In observing the family, he discovers that they suffer from great
poverty. The two young people are very generous with the old
man, and often go hungry so that he might eat. The creature,
greatly touched by this, ceases to take from their store of food,
even though he is terribly hungry himself. He begins to cut their
firewood for them, so that the young man, whose name is Felix,
will no longer have to.
The creature spends the entire winter watching the cottagers,
and grows to love each of them passionately. He attempts to
learn their language, which he regards as "a godlike science." At
first, he makes little progress. Every act of the cottagers,
however banal, strikes him as miraculous: to watch them read
aloud, or play music, or simply speak to one another, delights
him immeasurably. Though he realizes that they are terribly
unhappy, he cannot understand why: to him, the family seems to
possess everything one could want: a roof, a fire, and the glories

of human companionship.
Upon seeing his own reflection in a pool of water, the creature
becomes even more certain that he will never know such
happiness; he finds his own face to be monstrous, capable of
inspiring only fear or disgust. Nonetheless, he dreams of winning
the love of the cottagers by mastering their language; in this way
can he reveal to them the beauty and gentleness of his soul.
Analysis:
This chapter details the creature's deep longing to join human
society. He is, at first, utterly ignorant of the ways of humanity,
and must learn everything from scratch. In essence, he is still a
child, with all of a child's innocence and capacity for wonder. To
him, the cottagers are god-like, blessed, despite the extreme
humbleness of their existence.
In comparing himself to them, the creature feels himself to be a
monster: he is shocked by his own reflection, and is nearly
unable to accept it as his own. At the same time, he still dreams
of acceptance into human society, and attempts to master
language in order to inspire the family's affection and trust. The
reader cannot help but pity the creature, and fear for him: we
know too well that human society obstinately refuses to accept
those who are different, regardless of the beauty of their souls.
At chapter's end, the reader can only wait uneasily for the
moment when the creature will present himself to his beloved
family.

Chapters 13-16
Chapter 13:
At the outset of spring, a stranger an exquisitely beautiful young
woman of exotic appearance appears at the family's cottage.
Felix is ecstatic to see her, kisses her hands, and refers to her as
his "sweet Arabian"; later, the creature learns that her true name
is Safie.
The creature notes that her language is different from that of the
cottagers, and that the four humans have great difficulty in
understanding one another. They communicate largely through
gesticulation, which the creature is initially unable to interpret;
he soon realizes, however, that the cottagers are attempting to
teach Safie their language. He secretly takes part in her lessons
and, in this way, finally begins to master the art of speech.
The book from which Safie's lessons are taken, called the Ruins
of Empires, provides the creature with a cursory knowledge of
history. He grows to understand the manners, governments, and
religions of modern Man, and weeps over the atrocities that
human beings commit against one another. Upon hearing of
man's obsession with wealth and class, the creature turns away
in disgust; he wonders what place he can have among such
people, since he owns no property, and is absolutely ignorant of
the circumstances of his birth.
The creature curses his newfound knowledge, which has caused
him to regard himself as a monster and an outcast. He despairs
of ever gaining the fellowship of his beloved cottagers, as he is
certain that they will recoil from his hideous appearance. At
chapter's end, he is friendless, loveless, and almost completely
without hope.
Analysis:
The language of Chapter 13 is extremely baroque, and lends the
landscape a romantic, unreal quality: skies are described as
"cloudless"; there are "a thousand scents of delight, and a
thousand sights of beauty"; Safie is not merely brunette, but has
"shining raven hair." This sort of diction elevates seemingly
ordinary events to the level of the spectacular: it reveals the
extent to which the creature idealizes the cottagers and all that is
associated with them. He worships them, and longs for their love

and acceptance. The creature's essential humanity now becomes

clear to the reader: he feels sympathy, affection, and desire; he
is capable of aesthetic appreciation (as we see in his enjoyment
of the family's music); he has mastered language; and he is
capable of self-analysis and reflection.
In referring to the Ruins of Empires, Shelley subtly reminds the
reader of the ways in which humanity itself is monstrous: people
commit unspeakable violence against one another, and exploit
those who do not possess the trivial virtues of money and noble
birth. The creature's horror at these revelations reveals his
essential goodness; it also serves to echo the terrified disgust
with which the villagers met his own deformity. Once again,
Shelley forces us to reconsider the question of monstrousness
here, it seems that it is the neglectful and selfish Frankenstein,
and not his suffering creation, who truly deserves to be called a
monster.
With the creature decrial of his own knowledge, he and
Frankenstein become more closely allied in the reader's mind
indeed, they are nearly indistinguishable. Both creator and
creation are made outcasts by what they know; both long for
nothing so passionately as they do their former innocence.
Chapter 14:
Some time elapses before the creature learns the family's
history. Their surname is De Lacey, and they are the last of a
noble French family. Only a few months previously, they had lived
in Paris; there, they were surrounded by luxury and a glittering
coterie of friends and intimates. They had, however, suffered a
great misfortune, which forced them to go into exile.
The cause of this unhappy upheaval was Safie's father, a wealthy
Turkish merchant who had been unjustly imprisoned by the
Parisian government. All of Paris knew that racism, and a hatred
of the merchant's Islamic faith, were the true cause of his
incarceration. Felix, appalled by this injustice, went to the
merchant's cell and vowed to do everything in his power to
liberate him. To encourage the young man, the merchant
promised Felix the hand of his beautiful daughter in marriage.
The two young people fell in love immediately upon seeing one
another, and eagerly looked forward to their union.
The merchant, however, loathed the idea of his cherished
daughter marrying a Christian, and conceived a plan to betray

Felix and take his daughter with him to Turkey. Safie, for her
part, did not wish to return to her native land: her mother had
been a Christian, and she longed for the greater freedom enjoyed
by women in the countries of Europe.
Felix freed the merchant the night before his scheduled
execution. As Felix was conducting the two fugitives across the
French countryside, the French government threw Agatha and
the elder De Lacey into prison. Felix, hearing of this, immediately
decided to return to France, and asked the merchant to lodge
Safie in Italy until such time as he could meet her there.
In Paris, the De Laceys were stripped of their ancestral fortune
and condemned to live in exile for the rest of their lives. The
treacherous merchant did nothing to help them, and in this way
did the De Laceys come to live in the miserable German cottage
in which the creature had found them.
The merchant, afraid of being apprehended, was forced to
suddenly flee Italy. In her father's absence, Safie promptly
decided to travel to Germany, where she was reunited with her
lover.
Analysis:
The creature introduces this chapter as "the history of my
friends"; it reveals his deep attachment to the family, and the
meticulous attention he paid to every word they said. He tells
Frankenstein that he transcribed the letters that Felix and Safie
exchanged, and wrote down the family's story in order to
remember it more exactly; it is clear that he regards the history
of the world and the history of the De Laceys as being equally
important.
The De Laceys' story illustrates both the goodness and evil of
which mankind is capable more importantly, it shows the way in
which each person may be capable of both good and evil. Felix's
strong sense of justice leads him to aid the merchant; his love
for his family draws him back to Paris, despite the fact that he
knows that he will face a stiff punishment. By contrast, the
merchant who is himself a victim of bigotry and hatred betrays
the man who risked his life to help him. The creature thus
encounters the two contrary aspects of human nature.
Of course, Shelley's representation of the Muslim merchant as
lying and duplicitous is itself an example of nineteenth-century
racism. By the same token, Safie's nobility of spirit is presumed

to come from her Christian mother; the underlying assumption

here is that Muslims, and Turks, are not capable of human
kindness.
Chapter 15:
From the history of the cottagers, the creature learns to admire
virtue and despise vice. His education is greatly furthered by his
discovery of an abandoned leather satchel, in which he finds
three books: Milton's Paradise Lost, Plutarch's Lives, and
Goethe's The Sorrows of Young Werther. He regards these books
as his treasures, and they are of infinite importance to him: they
alternately transport him to the highest ecstasy and cause him
the most crushing despair.
The creature is enthralled with Werther's meditations upon death
and suicide; with Plutarch's elevated regard for the heroes of
past generations; and with the grand themes presented in
Paradise Lost. He reads all of the books as though they were true
histories, and regards Milton's story of the struggle between God
and his creations as completely factual. In his mind, the biblical
story defines his own. He does not see himself as Adam,
however, but as Satan: unlike Adam, he is alone, without a
Creator to protect him or an Eve to sustain him. He is full of
envy, wretched, and utterly an outcast.
Soon after the discovery of the satchel, the creature finds
Frankenstein's laboratory journal; from it, he learns the
circumstances of his creation. He curses his creator and the day
he received life; he grieves over his own hideousness and
despairs of ever finding human companionship. The creature
bitterly reflects that even Satan is more fortunate than he at
least Satan has fellow devils to console him. He, by contrast, has
no one; his increasing knowledge only serves to make him more
aware of his wretchedness. He is, however, still able to retain his
hope that the cottagers will recognize his virtues and overlook his
deformity if only he can bring himself to speak to them.
With the arrival of winter, the creature finally determines to
speak to the cottagers: he reasons that he is not unworthy of
love and kindness, and that the De Laceys are compassionate
enough to offer it to him. He decides to speak to the senior De
Lacey at a time when the other cottagers are away. The old man,
who is blind, will be better able to appreciate the mellifluousness
of his speech and the genuine goodwill in his heart; the young

people, by contrast, would be horrified at the very sight of him.

He hopes to gain their trust by first gaining that of their
respected elder.
Though the creature's dread of rejection nearly paralyzes him, he
at last summons all of his courage and knocks upon the De
Laceys' door. After a fraught silence, the creature bares his soul
to the old man: he tells him that he is a wretched outcast, and
that the De Laceys are his only friends in all the world. De Lacey
is astonished, but Safie, Felix, and Agatha burst into the cottage
before he can reply to the creature's entreaty. The women
scream in terror, and Felix, in a "transport of fury," violently
beats the creature with his walking stick. The creature, his heart
still full of love for the De Laceys, cannot bring himself to
retaliate. Instead, he flees the cottage and takes refuge in his
hovel.
Analysis:
The creature's discovery of the satchel of books is one of the
most significant events in the novel. The Sorrows of Young
Werther and Paradise Lost are arguably two of the greatest books
in the history of world literature: they thus serve as examples of
the highest beauty which mankind is capable of producing.
Similarly, Plutarch's Lives exalts the work of heroes, thereby
providing another illustration of human virtue and
accomplishment.
While the satchel furthers the creature's knowledge of
civilization, and of the triumphs and sufferings of men, it also, in
his own words, teaches him to "admire the virtues and deprecate
the vices of mankind." One might describe this as a moral
education; that is, the creature comes to distinguish between
good and evil, and to look upon the former as preferable to the
latter. Paradise Lost is the most important of the three books with
regard to the creature's burgeoning morality. Milton's poem
concerns itself with the struggle between God and the Devil,
which is, at least in the Western imagination, the most important,
most epic battle between the forces of good and evil.
The fact that the creature regards the books (all of which are
fictional) as true histories illustrates that his childlike credulity
and innocence has survived his early suffering. And yet, the
books themselves shatter that innocence: through them, he feels
the tragedy of his predicament for the first time. He feels himself

to be forsaken, and cannot decide if he is most like Adam or most

like Satan: he decides upon the latter because he is so much an
outcast, completely without guidance or protection.
The struggle between good and evil described in Paradise Lost is
also an allegory for the struggle within each human being, and
within the creature himself. At this point in the novel, warring
impulses vie with one another for the creature's soul: will he
behave as a man, or as a monster?
By the end of the chapter, the reader is not certain which of his
impulses will prevail. As Felix is mercilessly beating him, the
creature is unable to lift his hand against him: in this way,
Shelley indicates the creature's innate humanity. If he later
behaves as a monster, the reader cannot help but understand
why: he has been terribly abused and reviled by those people
whom he loved and trusted best. Despite his essential goodness,
he is hated and so he can only hate mankind in return.
Chapter 16:
The creature curses his creator for giving him life. Only his great
rage, and his consuming desire for revenge, keeps him from
taking his own life: he longs to "spread havoc and destruction
around [him], and then to [sit down] and enjoy the ruin."
He falls upon the ground in utter despair and, at that moment,
declares war upon all mankind for its callousness and cruelty. He
vows to exact revenge upon his creator the man who "sent
[him] forth into this insupportable misery."
With the arrival of morning, the creature allows himself to hope
that all is not lost: perhaps he can still endear himself to the
elder De Lacey, and thereby make peace with his children. When
he returns to the cottage, however, he finds it empty. He waits,
tortured by anxiety, until Felix finally appears in the company of a
strange man. From their conversation, he learns that the De
Laceys have determined to leave the cottage out of fear that he
(the creature) will return.
The creature cannot believe that his protectors, his only
connection to humanity, have abandoned him. He spends the
remains of the day in his hovel, by turns weeping and feverishly
contemplating the revenge he will take upon mankind. By
morning, he is overcome with fury, and burns down the cottage
in order to give vent to his anger.
The creature decides to travel to Geneva in order to revenge

himself upon his creator.

The journey is long and arduous, and the weather has grown
bitterly cold. Though he primarily travels by night, in order to
avoid discovery, he permits himself to travel during daylight on
one of the first days of spring. The new warmth soothes him, and
the sunlight revives some of his former gentleness. For a few
precious moments, the creature "dares to be happy."
At length, a young girl comes running through the forest, and he
hides himself beneath a cypress tree. As he watches, she
suddenly stumbles and falls into the rapidly moving water; the
creature, without thinking, leaps in and rescues her from certain
death. As he is attempting to revive her, a peasant (presumably
the girl's father) snatches the girl away from him, and shoots the
creature when he attempts to follow. The creature bitterly
contemplates this "reward for [his] benevolence," and is seized
with a new, even greater hatred of humanity.
Shortly thereafter, he arrives in Geneva. Once again, a child runs
past his hiding-place in the deep woods. The creature is much
taken with the beautiful child, and speculates that he is still too
young to feel hatred for his deformity. He seizes the boy's arm as
he runs past; the child screams in terror and struggles to get
away. He calls the creature a "hideous monster," and says that
his father, M. Frankenstein, will punish him. Upon hearing the
name of Frankenstein, the creature, enraged, strangles him. He
feels a "hellish triumph" at the boy's death, and reflects that his
despised creator is not, after all, invulnerable.
The creature takes the necklace, as he finds the picture of
Caroline exquisitely beautiful. At the same time, the image fills
him with redoubled fury, for no one will ever look upon him with
the divine kindness he sees in Caroline's eyes.
Seeking a hiding place, he enters a nearby barn and finds Justine
sleeping within. Her beauty, too, both transports him to ecstasy
and fills him with bitter despair, since he will never know the
pleasures of love. Suddenly terrified that she will awake and
denounce him as a murderer, he places the portrait of Caroline in
Justine's dress: she, not he, will suffer punishment for the
murder. In his madness, the creature thinks that it is the
inaccessible beauty of people like Justine that caused him to kill
William; it is thus only fair that she should atone for the crime.
At the end of his tale, the creature commands Frankenstein to
make him a companion "of the same species and of the same

defects," so that he will no longer be so miserably alone.

Analysis:
The idea of fire is pivotal to Chapter 16. When the creature sets
the cottage on fire, it is as though he were giving vent to "the
hell he [bears] within [himself]" a hell that hearkens back to
that described by Milton in Paradise Lost, as we saw in the
previous chapter. The fire consumes the cottage with its "forked
and destroying tongues"; this image alludes to both the fires of
hell and the forked tongue of Satan, who took the form of a
snake when he appeared to Adam and Eve in the Garden of
Eden.
The weather both reflects and determines the creature's mental
state: when the De Laceys abandon him, it is winter, and the
countryside is barren and desolate. The heavens pour rain and
snow, and violent winds ravage the landscape: these natural
phenomena serve as symbols for the fury that the creature
intends to unleash upon the world. With the arrival of spring, he
finds himself filled with joy and benevolence. His encounter with
the girl and her father is thus bitterly ironic: at a moment in
which the creature permits himself to be happy, and to hope for
an end to his sufferings, he is once more confronted with
people's unreasoning horror of him. The fact that he saves the
child from certain death indicates that, at least at this moment,
he still has sympathy for mankind; if he loses it afterwards, the
reader can scarcely blame him.
It is important to note that the creature's murder of William and
mistreatment of Justine are the result of his longing for human
connection. Upon seeing William, he wishes to keep the boy as
his companion; the sight of Justine fills him with love and desire.
He can have neither of them; neither is willing to overlook his
external ugliness. It is therefore only fitting that he should end
his tale by asking Frankenstein to make him a female companion,
since all of his crimes arise out of his crushing loneliness. Shelley
seems to suggest that isolation so total would drive anyone mad;
the creature thus cannot be held responsible for his actions.

Chapters 17-20
Chapter 17:
Frankenstein resumes his narration at the start of this chapter.
Bewildered by the creature's story and enraged by his account of
William's death, Victor initially refuses to create a female
companion for him. He argues that their "joint wickedness" would
be enough to destroy the world. The creature replies by saying
that he is only malicious as a result of his misery: why should he
meet man's contempt with submission? If he is met with hatred,
he can only respond in kind. He appeals to Victor for sympathy,
and asks Frankenstein to provide him with a lover to share in his
suffering. If he complies, the creature promises to quit the
company of mankind forever.
Frankenstein cannot help but see the justness of this argument.
Though he feels a certain compassion for the creature, the
"loathsomeness" of his appearance soon replaces his sympathy
with horror and hatred. The creature continues to plead, saying
that his "vices are the children of a forced solitude"; in the
company of another his virtues would come forth, and he would
thus become "linked to the chain of existence and events" from
which he is now excluded.
Victor is torn. He thinks of the creature's supernatural strength,
and about the great destruction he still might cause. He therefore
determines to comply with the creature's request, in order to
save both his family and the rest of humanity. The creature says
that he will anxiously observe his progress and then leaves him.
Victor descends the mountain with a heavy heart, and returns to
Geneva haggard.
Analysis:
The most important feature of this chapter is the way in which
the creature convinces Frankenstein to comply with his request.
Throughout the better part of their exchange, the creature's tone
is reasonable in the extreme: in fact, his desire for a companion
seems almost noble. In this way, he will divest himself of his
longing for violence and revenge, and lead a blameless life.
By aligning his maliciousness with his misery, he is implicitly
blaming Frankenstein for what he has become: such an

accusation, however, is effective in evoking the sympathy of both

Victor and the reader. The creature often refers to Frankenstein
as "you, my creator": this doubled form of address does not only
serve to remind Victor of the responsibility he bears for giving
the creature life; it is also a complimentary title that implores
him for help.
As he speaks, the creature's syntax becomes almost Biblical in
tone: he frequently uses the verb "shall," which has the ring of
both prophecy and command. He is thus subtly informing Victor
that he has no choice in this matter: his acquiescence is already
a foregone conclusion.
Chapter 18:
Weeks pass, and Victor cannot bring himself to begin his work.
Though he fears the creature's wrath, his abhorrence for the task
proves insurmountable. He realizes that several months of study
are required before he can begin composing the second creature;
he determines to study in England, as the discoveries of an
English philosopher will prove essential to his research. He
endlessly delays asking his father for permission to do so, instead
electing to remain in Geneva. His home is greatly beneficial to his
health and spirits, and he has once again grown strong and
cheerful. When his melancholy overtakes him (as it inevitably
does), he takes refuge in solitude, and his good humor is soon
restored.
The elder Frankenstein, who has observed these changes with
pleasure, takes Victor aside and asks him about his recent desire
for solitude. He wonders if Victor has perhaps decided that he
does not wish to marry Elizabeth, but has not told his father out
of fear of disappointing him. Victor reassures him that nothing
could be further from the truth: he longs to marry Elizabeth, but
must first satisfy a desire to visit England. The idea of marrying
his beloved with his hateful task still uncompleted is unbearable
to him. Victor disguises his true reasons for going abroad to his
father, and the elder Frankenstein immediately consents to his
request. It is decided that he and Elizabeth are to be married
immediately upon his return to Geneva.
Henry Clerval is enlisted to accompany Victor on his journey;
Victor is initially displeased at this, as he had wanted to
undertake his task in perfect solitude. He is thrilled upon seeing
Clerval, however, and reflects that Henry's presence will keep the

creature from observing the progress of his work.

Though Victor is haunted by the fear that the creature will wreak
havoc upon his family in his absence, he recalls that the creature
has vowed to follow him wherever he might go. He abhors the
idea of traveling in the monster's company, but realizes that it
will ensure the safety of his loved ones. At this moment, he feels
himself to be "the slave of [his] creature."
Victor and Clerval meet at Strasbourg, and travel by boat
through Germany and Holland, and thenceforth to England; they
arrive at London in December.
As he recalls their journey, Frankenstein is struck by the great
difference between Clerval and himself. Clerval was entirely alive
to the natural landscape, which he loved with unparalleled ardor;
Victor, by contrast, was wracked with melancholy, and felt himself
to be a "miserable wretch." Victor mourns over the memory of
Clerval, whom he still considers a man of peerless worth and
beauty of soul.
Analysis:
Victor's decision to marry Elizabeth immediately upon returning
from England seems foolhardy: he has no way of knowing what
will become of his pact with the creature. The marriage, for both
Victor's father and Victor himself, represents the fulfillment of all
the family's hopes and expectations: it will serve to restore order
to the Frankenstein household after the terrible events that have
befallen them. The union of Elizabeth and Victor will affirm that
nothing has changed, that life continues as usual: it thus serves
as a blatant affront to the creature's desire to revenge himself
upon his creator. Indeed, marriage can only be grossly offensive
to the creature, who has been deprived of all hope of love and
companionship. It is important to note that Victor's marriage is
dependent upon the creature's: that is, he and Elizabeth will only
be united if the creature is given his mate.
Frankenstein's happiness, at this point in the novel, is
inextricably bound up with his creation's; thus he feels himself to
be the creature's slave. The two are now doubles for each other:
like the creature, Victor suffers from an impenetrable solitude;
like him, his romantic happiness is dependent upon the
compassion of another; like him, he feels himself to be a
"miserable wretch" unfit for human society. The question of who
is the creator, who the creation will only become more confused

as the novel builds to its inevitable conclusion.

Victor's questionable sense of ethics re-emerges in his decision to
conceal his true reasons for journeying to England. He openly
expresses fear that he may be exposing his family to danger and
yet he never thinks to alert them to the threat. No reason is
provided to account for this deliberate omission. The reader can
only take it as yet another illustration of the narrator's
selfishness; the fact that he ends the chapter by speaking of
Clerval in the past tense, as a mere memory, foreshadows the
catastrophic consequences that this deception will have.
Chapter 19:
In London, Clerval occupies himself with visits to learned and
illustrious men; Victor cannot join him, however, as he is too
absorbed in the completion of his odious task. He reflects that
the trip would have given him indescribable pleasure while he
was still a student; now, however, he wants only to be alone, as
"an insurmountable barrier has been placed between [him] and
[his] fellow men."
To Victor, Clerval is the image of his younger self: he is full of
excitement and curiosity, and is at present making plans to travel
to India. The two men receive a letter from a mutual friend
inviting them to visit him in Scotland; though Victor detests all
human society, he agrees to go, so as not to disappoint Clerval.
He also looks forward to seeing the mountains once more.
The pair sets out for Scotland at the end of March. Victor reflects
that he was "formed for peaceful happiness," having spent his
youth in the enjoyment of nature and the contemplation of
human accomplishment. Now, he feels himself to be a "blasted
tree," an example of wrecked and forsaken humanity.
Clerval and Frankenstein spend time at Oxford, where they
wonder over English history; for a brief moment, Victor "dares to
shake off his chains" and is nearly happy. Almost immediately,
however, he recalls his task, and is cast back into his former
despair.
The pair finally arrives in Scotland. Victor is overcome by fear
that he has neglected his work too long, and that the creature
will visit his wrath upon his family or his friend. He awaits his
letters from Geneva with tormenting anxiety, and follows Henry
about as though he were his shadow.
After visiting Edinburgh and a number of other cities, Victor

leaves Henry, having resolved to finish his work in a remote part

of the Scotch countryside. His friend urges him to hurry back, as
he will grow lonely without Victor's company.
Frankenstein devotes most of his mornings to labor, and walks
the bleak and stony beach at night. His horror at his task
increases daily, in stark contrast to the enthusiasm with which he
undertook his first experiment. He grows progressively more
anxious, terrified that he will meet his monster. He looks upon
the new creation with a mixture of hope and "obscure
forebodings of evil."
Analysis:
The symbol of the blasted tree is crucial to understanding what
Frankenstein has become. A tree is a living organism that
branches and spreads itself widely. One that is "blasted" is split
down the middle, severed from its roots, unable to register
sensations. The happiness that Victor once so casually enjoyed is
now tainted by memories of the past and visions of the future.
He can no longer find solace, since his soul cannot take pleasure
in the manner it once did.
Frankenstein says that a "bolt" (as of lightning) has entered his
soul. The reader cannot help but recall that the creature was
brought to life by means of lightning: once again, Victor and his
creature have become inextricably entangled. Both are separated
from humanity by, in Victor's words, "an insurmountable barrier":
for the creature, that barrier is his ugliness; for Frankenstein, it is
his guilt. Victor's journey through Northern Europe seems to be a
condensed version of the creature's own journey: both reflect on
how they were once able to find consolation in nature and stories
of human accomplishment (recall the creature's discovery of the
satchel of books); now, nothing can ease their suffering.
The Scotland in which Frankenstein undertakes his second
experiment is "a desolate and appalling landscape"; it thus
mirrors the desolation and horror in Victor's heart. At chapter's
end, the reader shares in the narrator's "forebodings of evil."
Chapter 20:
It is night. Frankenstein sits in his laboratory, contemplating the
possible effects of this second experiment. He becomes
increasingly horrified by his task and finds himself tormented by
a number of questions: will this second creature be even more

malignant than the first? Will she, unlike her mate, refuse to quit
the company of man? Will they ultimately despise each other's
hideousness as a mirror of their own? Frankenstein is repulsed by
the thought that the two monsters might beget children, thereby
creating a new race that could ultimately destroy all humanity.
Victor decides that unleashing such a scourge upon mankind
would be of the utmost selfishness.
He glances up at the window to see the creature grinning at him
from behind the glass. As the monster looks on, Frankenstein
tears the half-finished creation to pieces. The creature howls in
fury and despair, then disappears.
Several hours later, the creature visits Victor while he is sitting in
his laboratory lost in dreary contemplation. The creature
reproaches him with having broken his promise, and asks if all
his hardship and suffering has been for naught. When
Frankenstein vows never to create another being like him, the
creature calls him his "slave" and reminds him: "You are my
creator, but I am your master." Seeing that Frankenstein will not
be moved by threats, the creature swears that he will have his
revenge upon his creator; he leaves him with a chilling promise:
"I will be with you on your wedding-night."
Frankenstein passes a sleepless night; he weeps at the thought
of how great Elizabeth's grief would be if her lover were to be
murdered. He resolves not to fall before his enemy without a
struggle.
A letter arrives from Henry, begging his friend to join him in
Perth, so that they might proceed southward together. Victor
decides to meet him in two days time. While disposing of the
remnants of his second creation, Victor is overcome with disgust;
he feels as though he has desecrated living human flesh. He
resolves to dispose of the remains at sea.
At about two in the morning, Victor boards a small skiff and pilots
it far away from shore. He disposes of the remains, and sails
onward; he soon grows tired, however, and falls asleep in the
bottom of the boat.
Upon awakening, Victor is terrified to find that his fragile ship has
drifted into treacherous water. He thinks of how his death would
leave his family at the mercy of the creature; the thought is
torture to him, and he is nearly driven mad by it. Despite his
misery, Victor still clings to life: he rejoices when he is out of
danger, and manages to arrive safely on Irish shores.

A crowd of people observes his approach with suspicion; they

rain verbal abuse upon him and cry that he is a villain. A
bewildered Frankenstein is told that he must go see the
magistrate, as he is suspected of being responsible for the death
of a man who was found murdered the previous night.
Analysis:
Victor's decision to abandon his second experiment fills the
reader with ambivalence. While he seems to be motivated by
humanitarian concerns, it is also clear that he will expose his
family and friends to grave danger if he does not comply with the
creature's request. This possibility, however, appears not to have
occurred to Victor: he inexplicably assumes that the creature's
wrath will be visited upon him, and not upon Elizabeth, on his
imminent wedding-night. The reader, however, can only expect
the reverse: in destroying his second creation, he has destroyed
the creature's bride and any chance the creature might have of
happiness; the creature, we imagine, will respond in kind.
The creator and his creation continue to uncannily double one
another, though their relation is now hopelessly confused: Victor
is now the creature's "slave," and his life is entirely of the
creature's design. It is no longer clear who is the creator, who the
creation; who is the father, and who the child.
Of course, Victor's relation to the creature is closer to that of a
mother than that of a father: it is, after all, a mother who
"bodies" a child forth. Victor now stands in a subordinate position
with relation to his creature a position that is fraught with
implications of femininity. Some commentators have read the
creature's promise "to be with [Victor] on his wedding-night" as a
sexual threat, a means of claiming Victor's body as well as his
soul. The film version of Frankenstein, directed by James Whale,
also interprets this threat as a sexual one; Whale, however,
regarded the relation between the creator and his creation as
homoerotic. If the creature places himself between Victor and
Elizabeth (and if Victor places himself between the creature and
his bride), they do so in order to have each other all to
themselves. The monster, like Stevenson's Mr. Hyde, can be
regarded as the wicked part of Victor's own character; it has
been tiresomely common for critics and readers to regard
homosexuality as the most evil act of which man and the
creature could be capable.

Victor's near-death at sea is strangely ironic: Frankenstein might

have perished, thereby robbing the creature of his longed-for
vengeance. In this way, he could have escaped the creature and
saved his defenseless family; instead, he stubbornly clings to life
and, miraculously, is able to pilot the boat to shore. Shelley
suggests that Frankenstein's fate lies in his creation's hands: he
will not be spared the final catastrophe.

Chapters 21-24
Chapter 21:
Victor is brought before the magistrate, and several witnesses
testify against him. The victim, a young man of about twenty-five
years of age, was found by a crew of local fishermen. When
Victor hears that the victim was strangled, he trembles with
anxiety; this, he knows, is his creature's preferred modus
operandi.
Seeing Frankenstein's agitation, Mr. Kirwin, the magistrate,
suggest that Victor be shown the body, so that the tribunal might
judge his reaction. Frankenstein is well composed as they
conduct him toward the room in which the body has been laid; he
has an unassailable alibi for the time that the body was found.
When he walks into the chamber, he is overcome with horror: the
lifeless form of Henry Clerval lies before him. Frankenstein
throws himself upon the body, and becomes almost mad with
grief and guilt; he is carried from the room in convulsions.
For two months, Victor lies in a delirium of fever and confusion.
He cries out that he is a murderer, and begs his attendants to aid
him in apprehending the monster. He often imagines that he feels
the hands of the monster closing about his neck, and starts from
his bed in an agony of terror.
Victor longs for death, and finds his ability to survive such an
epidemic of tragedies bitterly ironic. He concludes that he was,
after all, "doomed to live."
When Victor finally emerges from his delirium, he finds that a
grim-faced old woman has been attending upon his sickbed. She
tells him that he will be sorely punished for the murder that he
has committed, and would be better off dead; she seems to take
pleasure in her own hatefulness and cruelty. The physician who is
sent to examine Victor is equally careless and unfeeling. Victor
bitterly reflects that now only the executioner is concerned with
his well-being.
Frankenstein learns that Mr. Kirwin alone has shown him great
kindness during his sickness; it is he who provided Victor with his
sickroom and doctor. The magistrate visits him and expresses
confidence that he will be cleared of all responsibility for the
murder. He tells Victor that "a friend" has come to see him;

thinking that it is the monster, Victor begs to have him sent

away. Mr. Kirwin, much taken aback by this outburst, sternly
informs him that the visitor is his father; at this, Victor is
overjoyed.
He immediately asks after the safety of Elizabeth and Ernest, and
the elder Frankenstein assures him they are all well. At the
mention of Clerval, Victor weeps and exclaims that a horrid
destiny hangs over his head.
His father's presence is "like that of a good angel" for Victor, and
he slowly begins to regain his health. He often wishes that he
were dead, but imagines that it is some dark force that keeps
him alive, so that his evil destiny might be fulfilled.
Though Victor is cleared of all criminal charges, as "the cup of life
[is] poisoned forever." His father tries in vain to cheer him, but
Victor suffers from an insuperable melancholy. He is under
constant observation, so as to keep him from taking his own life.
At length, Victor determines to triumph over "selfish despair," so
that he might return to Geneva to protect his remaining family.
Though the elder Frankenstein wishes to postpone the journey
until his son has recovered from his melancholy, Victor will not be
dissuaded. He cannot sleep without the aid of laudanum (a
tranquilizer), and is frequently tormented by nightmares in which
he is strangled by his creature.
Analysis:
There is a certain irony in Victor's being cleared of murder. On
the one hand, he does bear some of the responsibility for Henry's
death, insofar as it was he who created the monster; on the
other, he was committing murder (of a kind) on the night in
question. Recall that he was disposing of the female creation's
remains at sea while the monster was strangling his friend. It
might be said that Victor murdered that second creature; Henry's
death can thus be regarded as his punishment for doing so.
The secret of the creature's existence is becoming too much for
Victor to bear; he accuses himself of murder (albeit while in a
semiconscious state) and tells his father that there is a
nightmarish destiny which he has yet to fulfill. Victor longs to
supercede the barrier of secrecy that has been erected between
him and the rest of humanity. Here, we can see that he has
forsaken his former selfishness: though he often longs for death,
he forces himself to overcome this self-serving impulse in the

hopes of keeping his surviving family from harm.

The death of Clerval serves as a symbol for the death of the last
of Frankenstein's romantic idealism. It was Henry who helped to
focus Victor's attentions on the world beyond the purview of
science; it was he who enabled Victor to delight in the simple
pleasures of nature. Victor is now deprived of even that joy, since
he no longer has the privilege of seeing the world through
Clerval's eyes. With each new murder, a piece of Frankenstein
dies as well. He becomes increasingly broken, and is tormented
by hysterical fits and fevers. Each of his attempts to withdraw
into death or madness is thwarted, however: Victor is "doomed"
to stay alive until his destiny has been completed.
Chapter 22:
Victor and his father are forced to stop in Paris, as Victor has
grown too weak to continue the journey. The elder Frankenstein
urges him to take solace in society. Victor, however, cannot bring
himself to comply: the company of people is abhorrent to him.
Though he is full of a great and indiscriminate love for humanity,
feeling them to be "creatures of an angelic nature and celestial
mechanism," he does not feel himself worthy of sharing in their
intercourse. He has created a being who delights in bloodshed,
and thus deserves only abhorrence and hatred.
Victor tells his father that he is the true engineer of all the
catastrophes that have befallen them, but Alphonse attributes his
confession to delirium. When his father begs him not to say such
dreadful things, Victor replies that he would gladly have died in
their place, but that he could not sacrifice all humankind to save
those whom he loved. At length, Frankenstein is able (albeit
through "the utmost self-violence") to control his desire to
declare his guilt to the world.
He receives a letter from Elizabeth, who says that she is longing
to see him. She expresses regret that he has suffered so terribly,
and tells him that if his unhappiness is related in any way to their
impending marriage, she will gracefully leave him to the arms of
another.
Victor is reminded of the creature's threat to be with him on his
wedding night. He decides that if the creature succeeds in
murdering him, he will at last be at peace; if, on the other hand,
he triumphs, he will be able to enjoy both freedom and life with
Elizabeth.

As Frankenstein wants desperately to please both Elizabeth and

his father, he decides that he will not delay the marriage any
longer than is necessary: after all, the creature has
demonstrated, by the murder of Clerval, that he will not be kept
from violence before the fateful wedding.
At Geneva, he finds Elizabeth much changed by all that is
happened. She has lost the vivacity of her youth, but Victor
regards her, in her new compassion and gentleness, as an even
more fitting companion "for one so blasted and miserable" as he.
He often feels that he will succumb to madness; at these times,
only Elizabeth can soothe him. Frankenstein promises her that he
will reveal the reason for his misery on the day after their
wedding.
His father urges him to let go of his unhappiness. Though their
circle has grown small, it will be bound more closely together by
mutual misfortune, and, in time "new objects of affection" will be
born to replace what has been lost.
Victor and Elizabeth look forward to their union with both
pleasure and apprehension. The necessary preparations are
made, and the couple determines to honeymoon on the shores of
Lake Como, in Italy. Victor takes a number of precautions to
protect both himself and his beloved; he becomes accustomed to
carrying pistols and daggers about his person wherever he goes.
As the wedding-day approaches, the threat seems to be almost a
delusion; Victor allows himself to believe that the marriage will
actually take place, and that he will at last know happiness.
Elizabeth seems cheerful, but is seized with melancholy on the
day that the wedding is to take place. Victor now regards her
sadness as a presentiment of evil, and imagines that she was
apprehensive to discover the reason for his misery.
All is perfect on their wedding day. It is to be the last happy day
in Victor's life. As they land on the shores of Como, both
Elizabeth and Victor are overcome by a sense of inexplicable
foreboding.
Analysis:
The hastiness of Victor's wedding is indicative of his frantic desire
to create an illusion of order and tranquility for his family. The
narrator vows not to "delay the moment a single hour." His
urgency fills the reader with an almost unbearable apprehension,

since we realize that Victor is hurtling toward the consummation

of his horrible destiny. For Alphonse and Elizabeth (and even, to
some extent, for Victor himself), the event appears to be a
means of safeguarding the future. Elizabeth and Alphonse cling
to the idea of the marriage as to a raft at sea; they hope to
salvage something of happiness from the senseless and
unremitting tragedy.
Elizabeth, for her part, finds her joy commingled with an
inexplicable foreboding of misfortune; in this way, Shelley
foreshadows her doom. Victor seems to have temporarily lost the
ability to reason; the decision to marry despite the creature's
threat is nearly mad in its recklessness. In telling the story to
Walton, he remarks that the creature "as if possessed of magic
powers... had blinded him [Victor] to his real intentions." By this
point in the novel, the creature has taken on supernatural
proportions: it is as though he were the unleashed wrath of hell
itself. Thus the earthly weapons that Frankenstein carries to
protect himself against the creature seem futile in the extreme.
Significantly, Frankenstein compares himself and Elizabeth to
Adam and Eve. He says that his "paradisiacal dreams of love and
joy" are dashed by the realization that "the apple was already
eaten, and the angel's arm bared to drive [him] from all hope."
This Biblical allusion has a number of ramifications. The apple of
which Eve ate came from the Tree of Knowledge, which God had
forbidden them to touch; it was for their curiosity that the first
people were cast out of Paradise. Similarly, Frankenstein's
misfortune befell him as a result of his overweening scientific
curiosity and his desire to defy the work of God.
Frankenstein is aligned with both Adam and Eve, and, implicitly,
with the creature himself: recall that the creature briefly
compared himself to Adam during his reading of Paradise Lost.
Strangely, this metaphor also serves to put the creature in the
place of both God and the angel he is thus positioned as the
creator of Frankenstein himself. Their roles are now utterly
reversed.
Chapter 23:
Night has fallen by the time Victor and Elizabeth land on the
shores of Como. The wind rises with sudden violence, and
Frankenstein becomes increasingly anxious: he is certain that
either he or his creature will die on this very night. Elizabeth,

seeing his agitation, implores him to tell her what it is he fears.

Though he attempts to console her, he cannot bring himself to
reply to her question; he says only that it is a dreadful night.
Hoping to spare Elizabeth from the sight of the monster, Victor
asks her to retire to her bedchamber. She complies, and Victor
stalks the corridors of their villa, searching for any trace of the
monster. At length, he hears a dreadful scream; too late, Victor
realizes the enormity of his mistake.
Upon entering the bedroom, he finds Elizabeth lying strangled
upon the bed, her clothes and hair in a state of disarray; the
print of the monster's fingers are still fresh upon her neck.
Unable to tolerate the shock, he collapses.
When he revives, he finds himself surrounded by the people of
the inn; he escapes from them to the room in which Elizabeth's
corpse is lying. He falls upon her body and takes it in his arms.
Wracked by indescribable grief, he looks up to see the monster
grinning at him through the windowpane. Victor fires his pistol,
but the creature eludes him.
Frankenstein alerts the other guests of the murderer's presence,
and they try in vain to apprehend him. Though he longs to aid
them in their search, he is feeble as a result of his shock and
misery; he is carried, barely conscious, to his bed. Realizing that
he does not know whether his father and brother are safe, Victor
gathers all of his strength and travels to Geneva. On the journey,
he reflects that he has lost all hope of future happiness; no being
in all creation is so miserable as he.
Though both Alphonse and Ernest are safe when Victor arrives,
the former soon perishes upon hearing of the death of Elizabeth.
Victor has no memory of the time that immediately followed the
death of his father; he later learned that he was kept in a
miserable asylum, having been declared mad.
Upon his release, all Victor is obsessed by thoughts of taking
revenge upon his creature. He visits a magistrate to ask for the
help of the law in apprehending the creature. Though the official
listens attentively, it is clear that he only half-believes
Frankenstein's wild tale. He tells Victor, quite reasonably, that it
would be nearly impossible to pursue a superhuman being of the
kind he has described. Frankenstein is enraged, and vows that he
will devote himself to the creature's destruction. He recognizes
his lust for vengeance as a vice but says that, in his current state
of wretchedness, it is "the devouring and only passion of his

soul."
Analysis:
Once again, the natural landscape foreshadows impending
violence: upon the arrival of the Frankensteins, the wind at Como
grows violent and a storm arises. Predictably, nature has lost its
power to reassure; now, it reflects the chaos and darkness which
Victor carries within himself.
There is great irony in Victor's inability to recognize the monster's
true intentions. The reader knows that it is Elizabeth, and not
Frankenstein, who will bear the brunt of the monster's wrath;
there is thus great pathos in Victor's horror at his mistake. The
guilt he feels at Elizabeth's death is twofold: he both created her
destroyer and left her completely unprotected at the moment of
her death.
Victor is now indistinguishable from his creature: both are utterly
bereft, loveless, and alone. Both are sustained only by their
desire to revenge themselves upon the other. In their hatred for
one another, they are more closely bound together than ever
before.
Chapter 24:
Frankenstein has lost the capacity for voluntary thought; his
entire consciousness is occupied by fantasies of revenge. He
resolves to leave Geneva forever, as the country has become
hateful to him in the absence of his loved ones. Taking a sum of
money and his mother's jewels, he goes off in search of the
monster.
Before leaving Geneva, however, he visits the graves of his
family. He kisses the earth and vows to avenge their deaths; he
calls upon "the wandering ministers of vengeance" and upon the
spirits of the dead to aid him in his quest. Suddenly, Victor hears
a "fiendish laugh," as though hell itself were mocking him. From
out of the darkness, the creature whispers that he is "satisfied"
that Frankenstein has determined to live.
For months, he pursues the creature over the better part of the
earth. At times, he is guided in his search by peasants who have
been frightened by the hideous apparition; at others, the
creature himself leaves Frankenstein some clue of his
whereabouts, so that Victor will not despair and abandon his
quest. Victor feels that some good spirit protects him throughout

this journey; it alone saves him from death. He has grown to

despise his life, and only finds refuge in sleep; in dreams he is
once again among his beloved dead.
The creature cuts taunting messages into trees and stones, in
order to remind his creator of the absolute power he has over
him. He provides Frankenstein with food and advises him to
prepare himself for the intolerable cold of the North: it is into
these icy wastelands that the creature intends to lead him.
Though Frankenstein knows that this final journey will mean
certain death, he pursues the monster without hesitation.
Upon seeing the creature traversing the ice on a dogsled,
Frankenstein weeps tears of hope and joy. When he has almost
overtaken his enemy, however, he inexplicably loses all trace of
him. Shortly thereafter, the ice breaks apart, and Victor is set
adrift on a single jagged floe. He is on the brink of death when
Walton's ship appears in the distance.
Though Victor looks forward to the peace that death will bring
him, he despises the idea of dying with his task is unfulfilled. He
begs Walton to kill the creature if he shows himself to him no
matter how eloquent and persuasive he seems.
Analysis:
Strangely enough, this final chapter of Victor's narration, in which
he is suffering a decline, finds him more dynamic than he has
been since the days of his first experiment. Revenge invigorates
him, intoxicates him: the joy he feels at seeing the creature's
sledge marks the first time he has been happy in innumerbale
months.
Frankenstein liberates himself from his prison of guilt, opting
instead for one of wrath. In a certain sense, the creature has
finally succeeded in gaining the companionship he always
desired. Frankenstein is doomed to share the creature's life, and
to follow him wherever he may go: the two are as close as a
parent and child, or a lover and his beloved. It no longer matters
who occupies which position: each reciprocates the obsession of
the other.
The chase appears almost childish: the creature taunts his
creator, and Frankenstein pursues him with no regard for sense
or reason. If nothing else, it presents Frankenstein with a
challenge; it once again calls forth the lust for conquest that
motivated his scientific endeavors. The creature is clearly his

master, his leader, his animating force. Now it is the monster who
brings his maker to life: without his desire for revenge,
Frankenstein would surely have died long ago.

Walton, continued
Walton, in continuation:
Walton fondly recalls Victor's face, its shifting expressions; he
remembers how his "fine and lovely eyes" were, by turns, filled
with indignation, sorrow, and wretchedness. Walton is extremely
curious as to how Victor was able to generate life; when
questioned, however, Victor becomes extremely agitated. He
entreats Walton to learn from his miseries, rather than
endeavoring to create new ones; he says that, "like the
archangel who aspired to omnipotence" (i.e. Satan), he "is
chained in eternal hell."
Upon learning that Walton has prepared a written account of his
history, Frankenstein corrects and augments it; he primly
remarks that he does not want a "mutilated version to go down
to posterity." With each successive conversation, Walton grows
fonder of Victor, whose eloquence and erudition never fail to
impress him; he feels that he has found the beloved friend whom
he has always been seeking. Victor thanks him for his affection,
but says that no new tie can replace the ones that he has lost.
In subsequent letters to his sister, Walton writes of the dire
danger in which he and his crew find themselves. They are
everywhere surrounded by mountains of ice, and it is not clear
whether they will be able to free themselves; if, by a miracle,
they are saved from death, the crew wants to return to England.
Many of them have already died of cold and frostbite.
Walton hesitates, unwilling to grant their request. Even though
he is in a half conscious state, Victor rouses himself enough to
chastise the men for wishing to abandon their "glorious
expedition." He tells them that they will be hailed as "benefactors
of the species...brave men who encountered death for honor and
for the benefit of mankind" if they continue with their expedition;
to turn back would be pure cowardice, unbefitting a man. The
men are unable to reply, and Victor lapses back into sleep.
The men remain firm in their demands, however, and Walton
consents to return to England. He is bitterly disappointed to have
lost his dreams of glory. When Walton informs Frankenstein that
he is determined to head south, Victor says that he, unlike
Walton, will not abandon his quest. He attempts to leap out of

bed, but is too weak to do so; the doctor who is summoned to

examine him says that he only has a few hours left to live.
On his deathbed, Victor says that he finds his past conduct to be
blameless; he entreats Walton, "in perfect reason and virtue," to
pursue the creature's destruction after his death. In a rare
moment of sanity, he tells the young captain to avoid ambition;
only a moment later, however, he reconsiders, and says that
Walton may succeed where he himself failed. With that, he dies.
At midnight on the evening of Frankenstein's death, the creature
steals into the ship to view the body of his dead creator. He
utters exclamations of grief and horror, but moves to escape
when Walton walks into the chamber. Walton asks him to stay.
The creature, overcome with emotion, says that Victor, too, is his
victim; he asks Frankenstein to pardon him for his crimes.
Despite all that has transpired between them, the creature still
harbors love for his creator.
Walton regards the creature with a mixture of curiosity and
compassion, but cannot bring himself to console him. The
creature says that it caused him agony to commit his crimes,
since his heart "was fashioned to be susceptible to love and
sympathy"; only the greatness of his misery drove him to vice
and hatred. Walton, though he is touched by the creature's
remorse, still feels great indignation at his crimes: he says that
the creature has "thrown a torch into a pile of buildings, and
when they were consumed...sat among the ruins and lamented
the fall."
The creature ruefully remarks that he did not expect to find any
sympathy from Walton, but is content to suffer alone. He cannot
believe that he is the same being who once dreamed of sublime
beauty and transcendent goodness; now he is "the fallen angel
become a malignant devil." He wonders why Walton does not
despise Felix, or the rustic who sought to kill the savior of his
child; the monster feels himself to be "an abortion, to be spurned
at, and kicked, and trampled on." Walton's hatred of the creature
cannot, however, equal the creature's hatred of himself; the
creature says that he will throw himself upon a funeral pyre, and
thus be saved from the enormity of his remorse. With that, he
leaves the ship, and is "lost in darkness and distance."
Analysis:
In death, Frankenstein appears to have learned nothing at all
from his sufferings. He still wants posterity to revere and

remember him, as is indicated by his augmentation of Walton's

written account of his tale. He commands Walton's men to
continue their expedition, thereby endangering their own lives
and the lives of their fellow men; it is clear that the pursuit of
fame and glory is still foremost in his mind. Recall that he, too,
once longed to "benefit the species" through scientific enterprise;
his creature and all the havoc his creature has wrought was the
result.
Even at the moment of his death, Victor displays an unparalleled
selfishness: he asks Walton to continue the quest for vengeance
that has brought Victor himself to such ruin, and tells him that he
need not forsake his outsize ambitions. Frankenstein, though we
pity him for all he has lost, remains irredeemably arrogant, and
seems to regard human life as being ultimately less valuable than
pioneering endeavor. Walton, for his part, has learned little from
Frankenstein's tale: he is consumed with curiosity about how one
might generate life, and bitterly laments the termination of his
voyage.
It is important to note that both Frankenstein and his creature
compare themselves to Satan in this final chapter: both feel they
have fallen from a great height to end in ruin and decay. Once
again, they are indissolubly linked it is as though they have
become the same person. It is therefore only logical that the
creature should die now that Frankenstein is dead: he has lost
his animating principle, the person who made his life worth
living.
We discover that the creature did not relish his crimes; instead,
they were abhorrent to him; he is wracked (as his creator was)
with guilt and self-hatred. His last description of himself is as an
"abortion," a metaphor that is of the utmost significance: the
creature does not feel that he has ever truly lived. Like an
aborted child, he was unwanted by his parent, and was never
permitted to fully develop: he is a monster, not-quite-human, but
with the capacity for humanness. This creature, who has been
said to carry hell within himself, chooses to die by fire; in this
way can he completely destroy the body that was so hated by so
many.