Synopsis and Analysis of Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
Uploaded by spootyhead on Apr 18, 2007
Synopsis and Analysis of Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
His ship surrounded by ice, Robert Walton watched with his crew as a huge, misshapen "traveller" on a dog sled disappeared across the ice. The next morning, as the fog lifted and the ice broke up, they found another man, nearly frozen, on a slab of floating ice. By giving him hot soup and rubbing his body with brandy, the crew restored him to health. A few days later he was able to speak.
This stranger, Victor Frankenstein, seemed upset to hear that an earlier sled had been sighted. Then he began to tell his story:
Victor had been born the only child of a good Genevese family. During a journey with her husband abroad, his mother found a peasant and his wife with five hungry babies. All were dark-complected, save one, a very fair little girl. His mother decided at that moment to adopt the child.
Victor and his adopted sister, Elizabeth came to love one another, though they were very diverse in character. Elizabeth "busied herself with following the aerial creations of poets," while, for Victor, "it was the secrets of heaven and earth that I desired to learn ... the physical secrets of the world."
After the death of his mother when he was seventeen, Victor departed for the University of Inglostadt. There, young Frankenstein grew intensely interested in the phenomena of the human body: "Whence, I often asked myself, did the principle of life proceed?" He investigated the processes of death and decay, and soon became obsessed with the idea of creating life itself.
After days and nights of laboring, "I succeeded in discovering the cause of generation and life; nay, more, I became myself capable of bestowing animation upon lifeless matter." Frankenstein set out to create a superior living being, hoping to eventually uncover the formula for eternal life.
In his brilliant and terrible research ' Frankenstein doggedly collected body parts from charnel-houses and cemeteries. Finally, "on a dreary night of November ... I beheld the accomplishment of my toils": an eight-foot monster. Applying electricity to the "lifeless matter" before him, Victor saw "the dull yellow eye of the creature open; it breathed hard, and convulsive motion agitated its limbs." The scientist was appalled. "Breathless horror and disgust filled my heart." He had created a freak.
Exhausted, Frankenstein fell asleep, seeking...