Frankenstein begins when a young man named Captain Walton who takes a ship into the

Arctic Ocean. He's hoping to make important scientific discoveries. His ship got stranded for
a few days when a sheet of ice forms all around it. To his amazement, he and his crew see a
gigantic man, about 8 feet tall, driving a dog sled across the ice until it disappears in the
distance. A little later they see a normal sized man on another dog sled chasing the first one.
This man is almost dead from exhaustion and exposure, so they take him aboard. The man is
Victor Frankenstein. Walton becomes friends with him and while Frankenstein is recovering,
he tells Walton his story. Frankenstein grew up in Geneva. His father had been an important
figure in the government, and they were well off. He grew up with his cousin Elizabeth,
whom his parents expected him to marry eventually. He had a little brother named William.
He had a best friend named Henry Clairville. Frankenstein goes to a famous university in
Ingolstadt, where he becomes very good at science. He figures out scientifically how to bring
something to life, though he doesn't tell us what the secret is. He makes a creature using parts
from a graveyard. On a rainy night in November, he brings it to life, but he's so horrified by it
that he runs away. The next day, his friend Claire Ball arrives at the university to begin his
studies. But Frankenstein becomes ill and Claire Bold spends all winter nursing. Just as he's
getting better at the beginning of spring, he gets a letter telling him that his little brother
William has been murdered. Justine, a servant in his house whom everyone always liked, has
been arrested because William had been carrying a Locket that was found on her, so
Frankenstein heads home. Just before he gets home, he sees the monster from a distance and
he knows that the monster killed his brother. Frankenstein watches Justine's trial, and his
cousin Elizabeth testifies that she's too nice to have done this, but she's convicted and
sentenced to death. Frankenstein has to watch her die. Frankenstein goes with his family on a
sightseeing trip, and one day when he goes mountain climbing by himself, the monster
appears to him and makes him sit down and listen to his story. Frankenstein would rather kill
him, but he listens. The monster describes how he came to life completely disoriented. He
didn't know how to speak or understand language, and he had to get used to the feel of his
own body and to figure out basic concepts like light and dark, heat and cold, and hunger and
thirst. He eventually wandered out into the forest where he could hide and look for berries
and nuts. The first human he sees is an old man in a Hut who runs away in terror because the
monster is so hideous. He's fascinated by the first village he walks into, but the residents are
terrified and they drive him off by throwing things at him. He finally finds shelter in this little
shed built up against the side of a cottage. He can look through a crack and observe the
people who live there, but they don't know he's there. These people are called the delicacies, a
brother and sister named Felix and Agatha, and they're blind old father who plays the guitar.
The creature sees how much they love each other and he wants to be like them. He starts
learning language by listening to them speak French. One day, an Arabian woman named
Safi arrives. Safety doesn't speak English or know much about European culture, so Felix
teaches are everything from vocabulary and reading to history, and the monster learns along
with her. He learns to read and write, and about good and evil, and about the history of
human societies. In the woods he finds three books. Paradise Lost, the sorrows of Young
Werther, and Plutarch lives. And he reads the papers that were in Frankenstein's dressing
gown, which revealed who Frankenstein is, where he lives and how he came to make the
monster. The monster starts to hate Frankenstein for giving him such an awful, lonely
existence and abandoning him since he's too ugly to make friends with anyone. Eventually,
the monster learns the story of these people. The delay sees were a rich family in Paris, but
Felix helped a wealthy Turk escape from prison because he felt sorry for him. So the
government took the Delacey family's money and banished them, and they went to live in the
cottage. The Turk did escape from prison, but he abandoned Felix afterward. But the Turks
daughter Saffy had fallen in love with Felix. So she escaped to come marry him. The monster
wants to be friends with the delicacies, and he decides that if he goes to talk to the old man
first, the old man will listen because he's blind. When the others leave, he pretends to be a
traveler and speaks to Delacey, and it's going OK until Felix and Agatha and Safie come
back. The women are horrified and Felix drives the monster off with a stick. At first, the
monster goes out into the woods and decides that he's going to declare war on humans, but in
the morning he cools down and decides to go back and try again. But he finds Felix giving up
the lease, and he never sees the delicacies again, which makes him feel doubly rejected. He
comes back at night and destroys the cottage. Then he starts the long walk to Geneva to try to
find his creator. He gets shot while he's on his way there just because he stops to help a
woman who's drowning. When he gets to Geneva, he grabs this little boy, thinking that he
could use the boy to learn his way around. But when the boy mentions his father's name is
Frankenstein, the monster kills him to get revenge on Frankenstein. You might notice that
there's an inconsistency in the story here, because Victor made the creature in November,
then got sick all winter. William got killed the following spring, maybe six months later. But
the creature spends a whole year at the cottage and he kills William more like 18 months after
being created. So there's a difference of a year between the two stories. Just to be even more
hateful, he puts the lock at William was carrying in Justine's pocket, knowing she'll be
condemned for murder. the monster insists that frankenstein make a female as ugly as he is so
he'll have a he promises to go away with her to South America and threatens to kill lots of
people at Frankenstein won't do it. So Frankenstein agrees. Frankenstein decides to go on a
long trip and work on the new monster away from home, so he and Claire Ball going along
sightseeing trip through Germany, England and Scotland. He eventually rents a little cottage
on a remote island in Scotland to do the work. But he gets disgusted and destroys the new
creature before it's finished. The monster comes in to find out what he's doing, and he's
furious that Frankenstein broke his promise. The monster swears he'll get revenge and says
I'll be with you on your wedding day. Frankenstein takes all the parts and puts them in a
basket, then sails out in a boat at night and dumps it all. Then he goes to sleep in the boat.
When he comes ashore, he's in Ireland and the people arrest him. It turns out someone
strangled his friend Claire Ball and they think Frankenstein did it. He gets sick again because
he's so upset that the monster killed another of his friends and a magistrate has him nursed
back to health. He's eventually released since

he didn't kill Clairvaux. He goes back home and he marries Elizabeth like they've been
planning their whole lives. He thinks the monster is planning to kill him on his wedding
night, so he sits up waiting with a gun, but the monster actually kills Elizabeth. His father
dies of grief soon afterward, so Victor has lost everybody. He devotes his life to finding the
monster and destroying it, but the monster keeps going farther and farther N until they're
chasing each other on dog sleds far out to sea. After he tells Walton the whole story, he dies.
The monster comes on board the boat to pay a final farewell to Frankenstein. He tells Walton
he's going to set himself on fire and destroy himself because he didn't mean to be bad. Walter
winds up taking the ship back home, partly because the crew makes him, and partly because
Frankenstein story shows that scientific discovery isn't worth sacrificing your life for.
One of the major questions of the book is how much we should blame Frankenstein for what
happens and how much the monster. Critics like to point out all the things that are wrong with
Frankenstein because he was irresponsible and created this monster for no good reason. Then
he abandoned his creation instead of helping it, and he was very careless about protecting his
friend. Readers tend to see the monster is more at fault though, because even though he gets a
lot of bad breaks, being frighteningly ugly and misunderstood, his decision to kill a child is
just evil, and he keeps killing people out of spite or for revenge. another question is whether
the creature is naturally good like he claims to be and what it is that makes him become evil
his own choices or things that to him.

Frankenstein opens with letters from Captain Robert Walton to his sister describing his
exploratory mission to the North Pole when his ship hits an iceberg and becomes stuck, his
crewmen see a giant man on a dog sled. Shortly after, another man appears on a dog sled and
Walton and his new take him on board. That man, Victor Frankenstein tells Walton his story
leading up to his rescue. Victor takes up the narration, describing his youth in Switzerland
and love of science. Shortly after his mother dies, Victor leaves for the University of
Ingolstadt to study chemistry. He makes a breakthrough, discovering the source of life. He
collects corpses from local graves. Stitches together an 8 foot tall body and animates. He
realizes how hideous was and reject it. Almost a year later he learns that his brother William
has been murdered. Victor suspects it was the monster. He meets the monster in the
mountains and he tells Victor his story of survival. He asks Victor to make him a wife. And
Victor agrees. That begins working on the female monster, but he destroys it after fearing a
race of monsters. The monster, watching his work through a window, becomes enraged and
vengefully kills Victor's wife on their wedding night. For the remainder of his story, Victor
describes how he chased the monster across the globe, leading up to the point that he is
recounting his story. To Walton, he makes Walton swear to kill the monster for him and dies
shortly after. After Victor's death, the monster comes on the ship. He tells Walton he is going
to kill himself.