Frankenstein

Frankenstein

1. Walton's Letters

   • Walton is exploring the Arctic, sees large figure (monster) on a sledge.
     • Walton finds Frankenstein on sledge, takes him in, befriends him, listens to his story
       • Alphonse Frankenstein goes to a freinds house to see how he is doing. finds daughter of Mr. Beaufort, Caroline Beaufort, kneeling at his coffin after spending months taking care of her father. They get married.
         • They give birth to Victor Frankenstein (walton's boi) and end up adopting Elizabeth Lavenza after Alphonse's sister dies.
           • Liz and Vic are good friends along with the son a local Merchant, Henry Clerval
             • Vic starts reading. reads agrippa, dads response only makes him more interested sp he continues to read and gets into weird old natural philosophy like the philosophers stone or like...reanimation of corpses.
               • Vic (now 17) is about to leave for college when Caroline gets sick from caring for Elizabeth and dies. Caroline says she wants vic and liz to marry.
                 • Victor goes to college and talks to professors who tell him htat all the stuff he has been reading is sort of trash. he attends a lecture, decides to focus on learning chemistry.
                   • Vic gets so good at chemistry that he discovers the secret to life (he won't share it because of reasons that will be "obvious" by the end of the story--massive cop out--) so he decides to fashion a creature out of parts from other bodies and breathe life into it
                     • vic finishes the creature, gets scared of it (or himself) and runs away to his room to sleep. He wakes up and the monster is standing over him, he runs again. He ends up running into Henry, and Henry takes care of him after he gets sick. Vic gets a letter from Liz asking if he is alive and telling him what is going on at home.
                       • Vic finally gets better and prepares to go home. Gets a letter from his father saying that his brother William had been killed. Vic Rushes back and walks by the scene of the crime where he sees the monster (he assumes that the monster did it...which seems reasonable) then he goes home and finds out that this handmaiden/family member/friend named Justine has been accused of the murder.
                         • Vic does not speak on behalf of justine in court (because he is afraid that if he tells the truth people will think that he is crazy), Elizabeth does, Justine eventually confesses (lies in order to gain some kind of religious salvation) to the murder and is executed.
                           • Victor feels suuuuuuuuper bad and guilty and stuff so he starts to hate himself and is all gloom and doom. He starts to take walks in nature which seems to help him not be so terrible. He is walking by a mountian or something and sees a figure chargin at him wayyyy to fast. The charger turns out to be hte monster and decides to tell Victor his entire damn life story without anybody asking him to.
                             • After finishing his story the monster asks Victor to make a Female monster. Victor agrees (stupid).
                               • Vic is nervous about everything...making another monster...marrying Liz...all that good stuff...so he basically asks his dad to go on vacation with Henry....He and Henry go bouncing around the UK for a while and eventually end up in Ireland where Vic ditches Henry to go create a female monster in a hut on an island off the coast.
                                 • Vic is making the female and starts to worry about what might happen. Will the female be able to have children leading to a race of corpses taking over the world? Will the new monster be just as evil as the last and kill a bunch of people? Who knows (Vic should totally know seeing as he has investigated science to the point of being able to impart life onto an inanimate body). So at some point he stops and ruins the new body...the monster (who has been stalking him) gets all mad and tells victor he is going to regret it. Vic goes back to shore and is arrested for murder and he gets real confused. the town leader/judge person takes him to go see the body, Vic sees that Henry has been strangled by the monster and starts to seixe for some reason and gets sick again for months. his father comes to visit him in his cell after hearing the news about Henry. Vic is quickly acquitted
                                   • Vic goes back home and gets married to Liz. They go on their honeymoon and Vic goes looking for the monster (who said he would see VIc on the day of his wedding). Vic had brought a pistol to try and kill the monster, but hears a scream from the bedroom. He rushes to see what it is, Liz is dead and the monster runs away.
                                     • Victor chases the monster all over.
                                   • Victor seems to be genuinely afraid of the female power to create life, and just females in general, because he is really not feeling marrying Elizabeth. One of the reasons he ends up not creating the female monster is because he is afraid of its potential ability to reproduce,
                                   • Victor hates the idea of the female monster being able to reproduce because he is afraid that her and his original monster will end up creating a new race of beings that take over the planet. This would make him infamous instead of famous, which is of course unacceptable to him. He is also so egocentric that he never even thinks that the monster will attack anyone else in his life and resolves to have a final showdown with the monster, leaving Elizabeth alone which showcases his lack of care for Liz and how self-involved he is.
                               • Victor caves to the monsters request for the same selfish reasons that inspired him to create the first monster. He wants to be loved by his creation and play the role of benevolent creator.
                             • THE MONSTER STORY
                               • The monster describes his experiences after being born or whatever and how confusing everything was because he was a massive infant with no mental capacity.
                                 • The monster starts to learn/experience things like light and dark, hunger, thirst, cold, and warm. He discovers fire and that he likes to be warm and that he can get burned and that he can cook with it blah blah blah.
                                   • He walks into a hut and freaks an old dude out because he looks gross. same kind of things happens when he is in a town. He is realizes that he is kinda ugly and figures out that he should probably stay away from humans
                                     • He finds a littel cave thing to stay in that is next to this cottage and he can see into the cottage. he watches the people and notices they are unhappy (because they are poor...which he is not helping by stealing their food) and tries to be helpful by collecting stuff for them like wood. He starts to figure out more complicated things, noticing that humans have a language and that language is super powerful. By learning language he starts to earn about material things as well as untouchable concepts like happy, sad, and all those emotional things that cannot really be touched or seen. he notices how good they look and then sees himself and kinda gets that he is super ugly
                                       • He finally figures out that the young man is named Felix and the young woman is named Agatha. He starts to get that Felix is particularly unhappy then one day this really hot woman shows up and Felix is super stoked about it (duh). The new woman is named Safie and she does not speak the cottagers language so she has to learn and the monster learns alongisde her. Felix uses some history books to instruct Safie so the monster gets to know some stuff about human history. The more he learns about humans and family and relationships the sadder he gets because he begins to realize how boo boo his situation is and how alone he is.
                                         • Things only get worse for him because he finds some books in the woods (why are books in the woods?). One of the books is "Paradise Lost" and the monster really identifies with the events of the story. He also finds some of victors notes in the pockets of his old jacket...which he definitiely should have checked a long time ago but whatever...he reads Vics notes and realizes that he is a hand crafted abomination.
                                           • At this point he is feeling so bad that he needs to try and befriend the De Laceys for real. He tries to talk to the blind Mr. De Lacey first because then he will get a chance to talk without his conversation partner running or being disgusted by the monster's appearance. This is a solid paln and it seems like it is working but then Felix comes back a little too soon and chases the monster out of the house.
                                             • The monster is obviously shook and vows to get revenge on humanity, especially Vic. He walks to where Vic lives, runs into his lil bro William and when William mentions the name Frankenstein the monster gets pissed and strangles WIlliam and plants evidence that gets Justine convicted and killed.
                       • Victor shows a incredible amount of either arrogance, desire to be powerful or famous, hubris, desire to not need women to create life. Whichever of those applies, the reasons that Victor wants to create the monster have more to do with his selfishness than general scientific purposes
                       • Frontispiece + Analysis.....Humanizes the monster and shoes a conflicted Victor
                   • Victor holds less respect for the professor who tells him that the subjects he likes are trash and that he needs to read x,y,z books. Victor responds by adjusting himself and pursuing another area that is interesting to him and ends up surpassing all of his colleagues.
               • Victor details how He, Elizabeth, and Henry are different kinds of people who have different academic interests. Victor likes the sciences, Elizabeth is more creative, Henry likes stories and adventure. They are all allowed to pursue their individual interests. For Victor, this leads him down the path that leads to the creation of the monster. This teaching philosophy is similar to the philosophy of Montessori education, and although Victor ends up creation something horrible when he is left to do as he pleases, it is undeniable that he achieved something great and that people would have thought impossible.
         • The story starts with a strong female character (Caroline) who maintains her father's house and supports him as he wastes away to nothing after things go wrong for him. This seems like a parallel with the relationship between Elizabeth and Victor
       • SO Vic lives on the ship while they go north pursuing the monster. the men eventually want to turn back and vic gives them a biiiig speech to try and make them keep going but eventually, they decide to head back and vic dies on board.
         • The monster comes to see Vic dead and decides that he is goin to go and light himself on fire at the north pole because his life is meaningless. He cruises off on a sledge and the book ends.

Images and files in the map

• 
• Frankenstein Frontispiece (application/pdf)