Read an in-depth analysis of Victor Frankenstein. The eight-foot-tall, hideously ugly creation of Victor Frankenstein. Intelligent and sensitive, the Monster attempts to integrate himself into human social patterns, but all who see him shun him. His feeling of abandonment compels him to seek revenge against his creator.
Read an in-depth analysis of the Monster. The Arctic seafarer whose letters open and close Frankenstein. He records the incredible tale in a series of letters addressed to his sister, Margaret Saville, in England. Read an in-depth analysis of Robert Walton.
Alphonse consoles Victor in moments of pain and encourages him to remember the importance of family. An orphan, four to five years younger than Victor, whom the Frankensteins adopt. Read an in-depth analysis of Elizabeth Lavenza. Read an in-depth analysis of Henry Clerval. The monster strangles William in the woods outside Geneva in order to hurt Victor for abandoning him.
A young girl adopted into the Frankenstein household while Victor is growing up. A family of peasants, including a blind old man, De Lacey; his son and daughter, Felix and Agatha; and a foreign woman named Safie. He is first excited about his voyage north and believes that it will be very successful. That is until his ship gets trapped between impassable ice.
While Walton and his crew are waiting for the ice to melt, they stumble across Victor Frankenstein and rescue him. Victor is weak and exhausted from chasing the Creature. Walton and his crew nurse Victor back to health and he recovers enough to tell Walton the story of his life.
Walton has longed for a friend and feels as though he has found that in Victor. When they come back after two days to ask again to turn the ship around and head home to England, Victor agrees.
As the ice begins to melt some and breaks, a path to the south is opened up for Walton and his crew and the ship begins its journey home. Just as all of this is happening Victor passes away and Captain Robert Walton begins to mourn the death of a man with whom he felt a strong friendship had begun to form.
Walton, like Victor, is an explorer who has become completely consumed with a specific task. He is taking his ship and crew north to explore the North Pole, this is a suicide mission. I try in vain to be persuaded that the pole is the seat of frost and desolation; it ever presents itself to my imagination as the region of beauty and delight. There, Margaret, the sun is forever visible, its broad disk just skirting the horizon and diffusing a perpetual splendour. It is this that is his inspiration to continue on his expedition north.
Un-possessed knowledge is what drives and inspires Victor to create his Creature. Both men are completely consumed by their goals and desire for discovery. Their need and consumption of ambition turn each man into a danger to themselves and those around them. Walton and Victor also both desire the fame and acknowledgement that would come along with the discoveries each would make.
Both men feel that they are not only worthy of the fame and acknowledgement, but that they deserve it, as well. In truth this is her story we are reading, for hers are the last hands to touch it before it reaches ours at least fictionally. She is also the omnipresent second reader we both take the place of and feel the presence of throughout the novel.
Because of our awareness of her eyes we are allowed to recognize the unreality of Frankenstein. Meanwhile we are being forced to reckon with the novel on its own terms. To some extent we have to allow for a suspension of disbelief in order to delve meaningfully into the novel. As the person with the least gothic influence on her domestic life, Saville is also a center for the conversation on the domestic vs. Cross, Ashley J. Harold Bloom. New York: Bloom's Literary Criticism, Green, Andrew.
Deddington: Philip Allan Updates, Hathaway, Rosemary. Michael A. Westport, CT: Greenwood, Kelly, Kevin.
Mineola, NY: Dover Publications, Shelley, Mary Wollstonecraft. Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty. Urbanczyk, Aaron.
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