In the novel there are five narratives, two from Walton, two from Victor and one from the creature itself. The first from Walton is an epistolary narrative where he relates to his sister “Victor’s tale”. The second is Victor narrating directly to Walton, onboard the ship about his life and how he made the creature. The third is that of the creatures, where he explains how he was baby like, hearing his voice for the first time, and not understanding everything around him. The fourth is that of Victor telling Walton about his encounters with the creature after their encounter where you hear the creature’s story. The final narrative is that of Walton, where he finally meets the creature as Victor dies. The novel begins and ends with a narrative from Walton, this is because it draws the story to a close, by making it travel full circle to where it began. Another reason for the five narratives is that it gives you’re the same story from many points of view, having to make the reader decide on whether it is right for humans to do such things as bring people back to life.
In Walton’s first narrative he is telling his sister how things are going with him trying to reach the north pole, he says in these letters how he longs for a friend, “But I have one want which I have never yet been able to satisfy; and the absence of the object of which I now feel as a most severe evil. I have no friend,” this shows his loneliness in reaching his goal he will have to go through. He tells his sister how they were caught in ice and how he saw a man “of gigantic stature” being pulled by dogsled in the distance and how the morning after they found Victor Frankenstein. A few days later having recovered from the cold, Victor begins his tale.
Victor’s first narrative is that of his childhood, how he was brought up in a loving family, how he had an adopted sister and how he found his love for science by accident, where he finds the works of Cornelius Agrippa, Paracelsus and Albertus Magnus. This makes him hungry for knowledge and eventually leads him to the studies of science and alchemy. He observed an electrical storm, sparking his interest in electricity and its possible uses. He starts school work and goes to university at Ingolstadt where he begins to experiment with reanimating the dead. Pathetic fallacy is used when he brings the creature to life he says “It was on a dreary night in November” showing that even the weather was showing that something was up. Victor is so disturbed by what happens that he falls into illness and has to be nursed back to health by his friend Henry Clerval. This is where he hears of William’s murder and decides to travel back to home. Justine is hanged for the murder although Victor knows the creature is responsible. He cannot do anything though because no one knows of this. Victor decides to go into the mountains where he is found by the creature who tells his side of the story.
The creature is baby like “A strange multiplicity of sensations seized me, and I saw, felt, heard and smelt at the same time” this shows that his first feelings where so intense that he didn’t know what they were. Confused by this he goes on to say how he admired all things around him and how it brought him happiness. He learnt to speak by listening to a family he stowed away with, living in a pigsty. He begins his own education by reading the books in Victor’s jacket pocket. He leaves the family as the move away and burns down their cottage. He tells Victor of how he murdered William and how he planted the locket in the pocket of Justine’s dress. The creatures final request is that Victor makes him a mate, to fight off the loneliness just as Walton wanted a friend.
Victor agrees to this and starts to build it. Halfway through the creating of the second female creature, the original creature visits, and in a fit of anger and guilt, Victor destroys the female and tells the creature he will not continue. The creature replies ominously “I shall be with you on your wedding night” and then disappears into the night.
He goes back to Elizabeth to marry her, knowing that the threat of the creature is very real. Victor leaves on his honeymoon unsure of whether the creature will be lying in wait.
While Victor is prowling the halls of the inn where the couple are living the creature strangles Elizabeth in their bedroom. When Victor’s father learns of the death he is stricken with grief and dies. Victor leaves Geneva forever tormented by the creature he chases it across Russia and into the Arctic Circle. The pair is within a mile of one another when the ice begins to break and Victor is left floating where Walton finds him.
Walton’s final narrative starts again at the end in letter form. Walton tells his sister of how Victor proves his tale by the letters that were given to him by the creature, he tells Walton that “knowledge for evil ends leads to disaster” and Victor tells Walton that he must carry on his mission to destroy the creature. Walton grieves that his friend seems on the verge of death and that his own mission has failed. He writes to his sister telling her to remember him fondly and to wish her family well. Walton decides to turn back. This is when Victor dies and the creature breaks into the cabin, telling his side of the story from where the terror began he decides that there is only one constellation, death, he decides to live the remainder of his life in the Arctic saying “I shall ascend my funeral pile triumphantly and exult in the agony of the torturing flames” with this statement he jumps overboard and disappears into the mist, this shows how he really does want it all to end.
I believe that the creature really was just a victim of circumstance rather than a monster that was born it. He shows remorse after the killings that he has taken a life. The responsibility theme in the novel runs deep, starting with Victor running away from it when he creates the creature leaving it to die. I think that from my definitions of monsters and victims the creature is both, and I believe that Victor is the one to blame for the creature changing from a gentle innocent creature who wanted to help to a murderer because if he had showed it love and cared for it and not left it to its own devices things may have turned out differently.
