Frankenstein
Mary Shelley (1818)
“A teenage girl invented science fiction, the ethics of creation, and the monster who is more human than his creator — all in one novel.”
Short Summary
Robert Walton, an Arctic explorer, rescues Victor Frankenstein from the ice and records his story. Victor, a brilliant but reckless student, creates a living being from assembled corpse parts. The creature — rejected by Victor and by every human he encounters — turns to murder, demanding a companion. Victor refuses to make one, and the creature kills everyone Victor loves. Victor pursues his creation to the Arctic to destroy it, but dies first. The creature vanishes into the polar darkness to die alone.
Detailed Summary
The novel opens as a series of letters from Robert Walton, a British explorer sailing toward the North Pole, who rescues a gaunt, dying man from the Arctic ice. That man is Victor Frankenstein, a Swiss scientist, who tells Walton his story before he dies — and the novel's nested frame structure is e...