Frankenstein begins when a young man named captain Walton takes a ship into the Arctic Ocean he's hoping to make important scientific discoveries his ship gets 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 eight 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 dogsled 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 Clerval 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 Clerval arrives at the University to begin his studies but Frankenstein becomes ill and Clerval spends all winter nursing him 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 delay sees a brother and sister named Felix and Agatha and their 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 safee arrives safe he doesn't speak English or know much about European culture so Felix teaches our 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's lives and he reads the papers that were in Frankenstein's dressing-gown which reveal 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 safety had fallen in love with Felix so she escaped to come marry him the monster wants to be friends with the delay seized and he decide 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 okay until Felix and Agatha and safety 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 delay sees 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 can 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 locket 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 companion he promises to go away with her to South America and threatens to kill lots of people of 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 vall go in a long 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 is furious that Frankenstein broke his promise the monster swears he'll get revenge and says I'll be with you on your wedding-night Frankenstein takes all the parts and puts them in a basket then sails out in a bow at Knight 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 Clare 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 Claire ball 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 north until they're chasing each other on dogsleds far out to sea after he tells Walton the whole story he dies the monster comes onboard 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 Walton 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 friends readers tend to see the monster is more a fault though because even though he gets a lot of bad breaks being frightening Lee ugly and misunderstood his decision to kill a child that's 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 happened to him for more information about Frankenstein check out the 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