Summary of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein
Uploaded by woodsy on Feb 01, 2012
The first science fiction story ever to be written was the story of Frankenstein. In this story, Mary Shelley, the author attempts to state how fooling around with mother nature can have some very adverse and undesirable effects.
Mary was greatly influenced by Paradise Lost and The Metamorphosis and she has incorporated the main themes of these works in this novel mainly:
1. The making of a living being, by a man
2. The growth of anger and need for revenge in the being.
3. The increase in hatred and hostility in the being, when he is further isolated.
The story begins with the introduction of the reader to a Robert Wallace, a sea- captain who is on a voyage to the North Pole in order to find a passage from the Pacific to the Atlantic. He writes to his sister Mrs. Saville in England telling her how it has always been his dream to embark on a journey of this kind and how he is very pleased that his dream has finally materialized. In one of his letters to his sister he mentions how a very strange thing happened.
In the middle of the ocean he sees a sleigh pulled by dogs with a large figure driving it. All the crew is puzzled as to where the man is bound. Then the next day they see yet another sleigh on the brink of destruction as the sea ice has cracked. Wallace rescues him and asks the stranger what he is doing in so desolate a place. He replies that he is tracking the stranger whom they had seen the day before. When the stranger gets to know that Wallace is playing with his life for the sake of science, he decides to tell him his story so that Wallace may change his mind.
He tells Wallace that he hails from a well to do Italian family and his name is Victor. His father had helped an old friend when he was in trouble and falls in love with his daughter Caroline and marries her in spite of the age difference. They have a very happy marriage but Caroline is not in the best of health which is why they travel to many countries and the narrator is born in Italy. For many years he is the only child. Then one day they are in a poor neighborhood and see a beautiful...