Upon realizing that the boy is Frankenstein's brother, the creature grasps his throat, strangling him. When the creature discovers a boy in the woods, he hopes that the child might be young enough to be unprejudiced toward him, but the child responds to him with shrill screams. Enraged, he curses his life, his creator, and mankind. Rejected by his creator and without guidance, the monster attempts to do good, but is treated harshly by humans he encounters and begins to realize how very shunned and abhorred he is. The story switches to the creature's narrative as he explains to Frankenstein his descent into despair and rage. One day, alone on a glacier, Frankenstein is approached by the creature. Attempting to find peace, he goes to the mountains. Frankenstein is wracked with guilt knowing that the creature he created caused the deaths of two innocents. Justine Moritz, the Frankenstein family's maid, has been accused of committing the crime and, based on circumstantial evidence, is convicted and executed. As he approaches home, he catches a glimpse of his creation in the woods and is convinced that the creature is William's killer, but tells no one. Frankenstein departs for Geneva immediately. More than a year has passed when Frankenstein receives word that his youngest brother, William, has been murdered. He is horrified with the monstrous result and flees from it, then soon falls ill from shock and overwork, taking several months to recover. Working obsessively, he brings to life a man stitched together from body parts harvested from corpses. He furthers his scientific knowledge at the University of Ingolstadt, Bavaria, and immerses himself in a secret project: resuscitating the dead. After the untimely death of his mother, he becomes consumed with unraveling the mystery of life. Born to a distinguished family, his parents are kind and he enjoys the company of Elizabeth (his cousin in the 1818 edition of Frankenstein, adopted sister in the 1831 edition), and best friend, Henry.įrom a young age Frankenstein displays an interest in science. Frankenstein's childhood, in Geneva, is happy and privileged. Victor Frankenstein-as he recounts his life story to Walton. Walton and his men convince him to board the ship, and the narrative shifts to the perspective of this man-Dr. In the last letter, Walton relays that an exhausted man in a dog sledge has strayed toward the ship on an ice floe. The novel opens in the form of four letters from Captain Robert Walton, an explorer on an expedition to the North Pole, to his sister in England. Plot and Major Charactersįrankenstein is structured as a series of framing narratives. Initial critical reaction to Frankenstein was often unfavorable, but in the twentieth century critics began to analyze the novel from a variety of new perspectives and to recognize in it many devices and themes which are now presented as evidence that Shelley's self-described "hideous progeny" was ahead of its time. Her tale of an obsessed scientist who creates and then abandons a human being, thus provoking it to horrible vengeance, has maintained the attention of readers and critics since its publication and has vastly overshadowed Shelley's other works of literature. John Polidori-challenged one another to write a horror story. While on holiday in Geneva, Switzerland, a period that Shelley later characterized as "a wet, ungenial summer" during which "incessant rain often confined us for days to the house," she and her companions-her husband Percy Bysshe Shelley, Lord George Gordon Byron, and Dr. The story began as Shelley's contribution to a friendly competition among several of her literary cohorts. Written by Mary Shelley when she was just nineteen years old and published anonymously in 1818, Frankenstein is one of the most recognizable and enduring novels in English literature.
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