Frankenstein Summary Essay

Frankenstein opens with a preface, signed by Mary Shelley just right away comm entirely supposed to have been written by her husband, Percy Bysshe Shelley. It states that the novel was begun during a summer vacation in the Swiss Alps, when unseasonably rainy weather and nights spent reading German ghost stories inspired the author and her literary companions to interest in a ghost story writing contest, of which this work is the only completed product. thick Letter 1The novel itself begins with a series of letter from the explorer Robert Walton to his sister, Margaret Saville. Walton, a well-to-do Englishman with a passion for seafaring, is the captain of a ship headed on a dangerous voyage to the North Pole. In the premier off letter, he tells his sister of the preparations leading up to his departure and of the desire burning in him to accomplish some great purposediscovering a northern personation to the Pacific, revealing the source of the Earths magnetism, or simply settin g foot on un observed territory. epitome Letters 23In the second letter, Walton bemoans his lack of takeoff boosters. He feels lonely and isolated, too sophisticated to view comfort in his shipmates and too uneducated to find a sensitive consciousness with whom to share his dreams. In the brief third letter, Walton tells his sister that his ship has set sail and that he has full confidence that he testament achieve his aim.Summary Letter 4In the fourth letter, the ship st tout ensembles between huge sheets of ice, and Walton and his work force spot a sledge guided by a gigantic creature well-nigh half a mile away. The next morning, they encounter another sledge stranded on an ice floe. All but one of the dogs drawing the sledge is dead, and the man on the sledgenot the man seen the night beforeis emaciated, weak, and starving. Despite his condition, the man refuses to board the ship until Walton tells him that it is charge north. The stranger spends two days recovering, nursed by the crew, before he squeeze out speak. The crew is burning with curiosity, but Walton, aware of the mans still-fragile state, prevents his men from burdening the stranger with questions. As time passes, Walton and the stranger become friends, and the stranger eventually consents to tell Walton his story. At the end of the fourth letter, Walton states that the visitor will commence his story the next day Waltons framing report ends and the strangers begins.Summary Chapter 1The stranger, who the reader soon learns is Victor Frankenstein, begins his narration. He starts with his family prickleground, birth, and early childhood, relative Walton slightly his father, Alphonse, and his mother, Caroline. Alphonse became Carolines protector when her father died in poverty. They married two years later, and Victor was born soon aft(prenominal). Frankenstein then describes how his childhood companion, Elizabeth Lavenza, entered his family. Elizabeth was discovered by his mother, Car oline, on a trip to Italy, when Victor is about five years old. While visiting a poor Italian family, Caroline notices a beautiful blonde girl among the dark-haired Italian children upon discovering that Elizabeth is the orphaned daughter of a Milanese nobleman and a German woman and that the Italian family can barely afford to feed her, Caroline adopts Elizabeth and brings her back to Geneva. Victors mother decides at the moment of the adoption that Elizabeth and Victor should someday marry.Summary Chapter 2Elizabeth and Victor grow up together as best friends. Victors friendship with heat content Clerval, a schoolmate and only child, flourishes as well, and he spends his childhood happily surrounded by this close domestic circle. As a teenager, Victor becomes increasingly fascinated by the mysteries of the natural world. He chances upon a book by Cornelius Agrippa, a sixteenth-century scholar of the occult experiences, and becomes interested in natural philosophy. He studies the outdated findings of the alchemists Agrippa, Paracelsus, and Albertus Magnus with enthusiasm. He witnesses the destructive power of nature when, during a raging storm, lightning destroys a tree near his house. A modern natural philosopher accompanying the Frankenstein family explains to Victor the workings of electricity, making the ideas of the alchemists seem outdated and worthless.Summary Chapter 3At the age of seventeen, Victor leaves his family in Geneva to attend the university at Ingolstadt. Just before Victor departs, his mother catches scarlet fever from Elizabeth, whom she has been nursing back to health, and dies. On her deathbed, she begs Elizabeth and Victor to marry. Several weeks later, still grieving, Victor goes off to Ingolstadt. Arriving at the university, he finds quarters in the town and sets up a meeting with a professor of natural philosophy, M. Krempe. Krempe tells Victor that all the time that Victor has spent issueing the alchemists has been wasted, furth er souring Victor on the study of natural philosophy. He then attends a lecture in chemistry by a professor named Waldman. This lecture, along with a subsequent meeting with the professor, convinces Victor to pursue his studies in the sciences.Analysis Preface and Letters 14The preface to Frankenstein sets up the novel as entertainment, but with a serious twista science fiction that nonetheless captures the truth of the elementary principles of human nature. The works of Homer, Shakespeare, and Milton are held up as shining examples of the kind of work Frankenstein aspires to be. Incidentally, the reference to Dr. Darwin in the number 1 sentence is not to the famous evolutionist Charles Darwin, who was seven years old at the time the novel was written, but to his grandfather, the biologist Erasmus Darwin. In addition to setting the candidate for the telling of the strangers narrative, Waltons letters introduce an important characterWalton himselfwhose story parallels Frankensteins . The second letter introduces the idea of loss and loneliness, as Walton complains that he has no friends with whom to share his triumphs and failures, no sensitive ear to listen to his dreams and ambitions.Walton turns to the stranger as the friend he has always wanted his search for companionship, and his attempt to find it in the stranger, parallels the monsters desire for a friend and mate later in the novel. This parallel between man and monster, still hidden in these early letters but increasingly clear as the novel progresses, suggests that the two may not be as different as they seem. other theme that Waltons letters introduce is the danger of fellowship. The stranger tells Walton, You seek for knowledge and wisdom, as I once did and I ardently hope that the atonement of your wishes may not be a serpent to sting you, as mine has been. The theme of destructive knowledge is developed throughout the novel as the tragic consequences of the strangers obsessive search for unde rstanding are revealed.Walton, like the stranger, is entranced by the opportunity to know what no one else knows, to get the picture into natures secrets What may not be expected in a country of eternal light? he asks. Waltons is only the first of many voices in Frankenstein. His letters set up a frame narrative that encloses the main narrativethe strangersand provides the context in which it is told. Nested within the strangers narrative are even more voices. The use of multiple frame narratives calls attention to the telling of the story, adding new layers of complexity to the already compound relationship between author and reader as the reader listens to Victors story, so does Walton as Walton listens, so does his sister.By focusing the readers attention on narration, on the importance of the storyteller and his or her audience, Shelley may have been trying to link her novel to the oral tradition to which the ghost stories that inspired her tale belong. Within each framed nar rative, the reader receives constant reminders of the comportment of other authors and audiences, and of perspective shifts, as Victor breaks out of his narrative to address Walton right off and as Walton signs off each of his letters to his sister.Analysis Chapters 12The picture that Victor draws of his childhood is an idyllic one. Though loss aboundsthe poverty of Beaufort and the orphaning of Elizabeth, for modelit is always quickly alleviated by the presence of a close, loving family. Nonetheless, the reader experiences, even in these early passages, that the stability and comfort of family are about to be exploded. Shining through Victors narration of a joyful childhood and an eccentric adolescence is a glimmer of the great cataclysm that will soon overtake him. Women in Frankenstein tog into few roles the loving, sacrificial mother the innocent, sensitive child and the concerned, confused, abandoned lover. Throughout the novel, they are universally passive, rising only a t the most extreme moments to demand action from the men around them. The language Victor uses to describe the relationship between his mother and father supports this construe of womens passivity in reference to his mother, he says that his father came as a protecting spirit to the poor girl, who committed herself to his care.Elizabeth, Justine Moritz, and Caroline Beaufort all fit into this mold of the passive woman.Various metanarrative comments (i.e., remarks that pertain not to the content of the narrative but rather to the telling of the narrative) remind the reader of the fact that Victors narrative is contained within Waltons. Victor interrupts his story to relate how Elizabeth became a part of his family, prefacing the digression with the comment, But before I continue my narrative, I must record an incident. much(prenominal) guiding statements structure Victors narrative and remind the reader that Victor is telling his story to a specific audienceWalton.Foreshadowing is present in these chapters and, in fact, throughout the novel. Even Waltons letters gain the way for the tragic events that Victor will recount. Victor constantly alludes to his imminent day of reckoning for example, he calls his interest in natural philosophy the genius that has regulated my fate and the fatal impulse that led to my ruin. Victors narrative is overriding with nostalgia for a happier time he dwells on the fuzzy memories of his blissful childhood with Elizabeth, his father and mother, and Henry Clerval. But even in the midst of these tranquil childhood recollections, he cannot ignore the signs of the tragedy that lies in his imminent prospective he sees that each event, such as the death of his mother, is nothing but an omen, as it were, of his future misery.This heavy use of foreshadowing has a dual effect. On the one hand, it adds to the suspense of the novel, leaving the reader wondering about the nature of the awful tragedy that has caused Victor so much grief . On the other hand, it drains away some of the suspensethe reader knows far ahead of time that Victor has no hope, that all is doomed. Words like fate, fatal, and omen reinforce the inevitability of Victors tragedy, suggesting not only a sense of resignation but also, perhaps, an attempt by Victor to deny responsibility for his own misfortune. Describing his decision to study chemistry, he says, Thus ended a day memorable to me it decided my future destiny.Summary Chapter 4Victor attacks his studies with enthusiasm and, ignoring his social life and his family far away in Geneva, makes rapid progress. Fascinated by the mystery of the creation of life, he begins to study how the human body is built (anatomy) and how it falls apart (death and decay). After several years of tireless work, he masters all that his professors have to teach him, and he goes one step further discovering the secret of life. Privately, hidden away in his flat tire where no one can see him work, he decides to begin the whirl of an animate creature, envisioning the creation of a new race of wonderful beings. Zealously devoting himself to this labor, he neglects everything elsefamily, friends, studies, and social lifeand grows increasingly pale, lonely, and obsessed.Summary Chapter 5 whiz stormy night, after months of labor, Victor completes his creation. But when he brings it to life, its awful appearance horrifies him. He rushes to the next room and tries to sleep, but he is troubled by nightmares about Elizabeth and his mothers corpse. He wakes to discover the monster looming over his bed with a grotesque smile and rushes out of the house. He spends the night pacing in his courtyard. The next morning, he goes walking in the town of Ingolstadt, frantically avoiding a return to his now-haunted apartment. As he walks by the town inn, Victor comes across his friend Henry Clerval, who has just arrived to begin studying at the university.Delighted to see Henrya breath of fresh air and a rem inder of his family after so many months of isolation and ill healthhe brings him back to his apartment. Victor enters first and is relieved to find no sign of the monster. But, weakened by months of work and shock at the horrific being he has created, he readyly falls ill with a nervous fever that lasts several months. Henry nurses him back to health and, when Victor has recovered, gives him a letter from Elizabeth that had arrived during his illness.Analysis Chapters 35Whereas the first two chapters give the reader a mere sense of impending doom, these chapters depict Victor irrevocably on the way to tragedy. The creation of the monster is a grotesque act, far removed from the triumph of scientific knowledge for which Victor had hoped. His nightmares reflect his horror at what he has done and also serve to foreshadow future events in the novel. The images of Elizabeth livid with the hue of death prepare the reader for Elizabeths eventual death and connect it, however indirectly, to the creation of the monster. Victors pursuit of scientific knowledge reveals a great spate about his perceptions of science in general. He views science as the only true route to new knowledge In other studies you go as far as others have gone before you, and there is nothing more to know but in scientific pursuit there is recurring food for discovery and wonder. Waltons journey to the North Pole is likewise a search for food for discovery and wonder, a step into the tantalizing, dark unknown.The attribute of light, introduced in Waltons first letter (What may not be expected in a country of eternal light?), appears again in Victors narrative, this time in a scientific context. From the midst of this darkness, Victor says when describing his discovery of the secret of life, a sudden light broke in upon mea light so brilliant and wondrous. Light reveals, illuminates, clarifies it is essential for seeing, and seeing is the way to knowledge. Just as light can illuminate, however, so can it blur pleasantly warm at moderate levels, it ignites dangerous flames at higher ones. Immediately after his first metaphorical use of light as a symbol of knowledge, Victor retreats into secrecy and warns Walton of how dangerous is the acquirement of knowledge.Thus, light is balanced always by fire, the promise of new discovery by the danger of temporaryand perhaps tragicconsequences. The theme of secrecy manifests itself in these chapters, as Victors studies draw him farther and farther away from those who love and advise him. He conducts his experiments alone, following the example of the ancient alchemists, who jealously guarded their secrets, and rejecting the openness of the new sciences. Victor displays an unhealthy obsession with all of his endeavors, and the labor of creating the monster takes its toll on him. It drags him into charnel houses in search of old body parts and, even more important, isolates him from the world of open social institutions. Though Henr ys presence makes Victor become conscious of his gradual loss of touch with humanity, Victor is nonetheless unwilling to tell Henry anything about the monster. The theme of secrecy transforms itself, now linked to Victors shame and regret for having ever hoped to create a new life.Victors reaction to his creation initiates a haunt theme that persists throughout the novelthe sense that the monster is inescapable, ever present, liable to appear at any moment and wreak havoc. When Victor arrives at his apartment with Henry, he opens the door as children are accustomed to do when they expect a specter to stand in waiting for them on the other side, a seeming echo of the tension-filled German ghost stories read by Mary Shelley and her vacationing companions. As in the first three chapters, Victor repeatedly addresses Walton, his immediate audience, reminding the reader of the frame narrative and of the multiple layers of storytellers and listeners.Structuring comments such as I fear, my friend, that I shall render myself tedious by dwelling on these preliminary sight both remind the reader of the target audience (Walton) and help indicate the relative importance of each passage. Shelley employs other literary devices from time to time, including apostrophe, in which the speaker addresses an inanimate object, absent person, or abstract idea. Victor occasionally addresses some of the figures from his past as if they were with him on board Waltons ship. Excellent friend he exclaims, referring to Henry. How sincerely did you love me, and endeavor to elevate my mind, until it was on a level with your own. Apostrophe was a favorite of Mary Shelleys husband, Percy Bysshe Shelley, who used it often in his verse line its occurrence here might reflect some degree of Percys influence on Marys writing.