ar from civilization, surrounded by daggers of ice sprung
from profound arctic seas, adventurer Robert Walton is
flabbergasted to cross paths with a desperate man struggling
north, a man propelled by some obsession past the point of
endurance.
Walton rescues the strange traveler, Victor Frankenstein, and
nurses him. When Frankenstein hears of Walton's quest--to uncover
the unknown lands at the North Pole--he insists on telling his
own bizarre and cautionary tale.
Hard work and matchless intellect had once revealed to
Frankenstein a thrilling secret: no less than the secret of life
itself. Obsessed by his discovery, he began assembling a human
creature of superior proportions. He persevered even as he grew
to loathe his morbid task, until one dreary night in November he
applied the spark of life to the form and made it live. But he
beheld what he had wrought with disgust and horror, and fled.
Eventually returning home to his family, Frankenstein was mortified to learn of his brother's murder. Certain the vengeful
creature was guilty, but unable to speak without seeming mad, he
watched in agony as an innocent woman was executed. Encountering
the monster later in the trackless mountains, Frankenstein railed
at him; but the creature implored him to hear his story. He had
watched a rustic family for many months, said the creature,
learning speech and the ways of humans from them, only to be
beaten when he revealed himself. He now despaired of society with
humans and instead demanded a mate of his own kind, with whom he
would live in exile.
Frankenstein reluctantly agreed, but soon recoiled from the
task. The creature reacted with fury. Frankenstein tried in vain
to protect his family and friends, and now was bound to the ends
of the earth to kill, or be killed by, his own loathsome
creation.
Two creatures, bound together
It is not uncommon in 19th-century literature to find a
fantastic tale wrapped in a more ordinary one. This device allows
readers to ease themselves into the story, transferring their
identification from the pedestrian narrator to the more singular
protagonist. Shelley took this device one step further:
adventurer Walton's narration is wrapped around Frankenstein's
starker story, yet Frankenstein's tale conceals an even stranger
gem--the story of the most singular man ever. Moving deeper into
this edifice, meeting first Walton, then Frankenstein and finally
the creature himself, gives a sense of penetrating
great mysteries.
Shelley consciously sets up parallels between Frankenstein and Paradise Lost. Victor Frankenstein is a man who learns the power of
God and is cursed with Lucifer's lonely agony--a fate he
unwittingly visits on his own creation, his own Adam. Yet, like
Lucifer, the creature is at first benevolent and turns to
destruction only when spurned by his creator and protectors.
The introduction to the 1988 Oxford University Press edition of the book points out
contrivances in the plot where Shelley's inexperience as a writer shows. Yet
the achievement of this disturbing story is undiminished. This
teenage writer has dreamed two monsters, two fallen gods each suffused
in misery and wretchedness on account of the other, profoundly
pitiable despite their abominable acts. It is easy to feel
Frankenstein's terror at the threat to his family and friends
from the vengeful monster; yet the creature's own pain at
rejection is equally powerful and moving.
A truly Gothic horror arises from the realization that these
wretched creatures live in the mind long after the book has been
set down. Though instructive and irresistible, Frankenstein and
his creature do not make the most agreeable mental
companions.
