Summary
In a series of letters, Robert Walton, the captain of a ship bound for the North Pole, recounts to his sister back in England the progress of his dangerous mission. Successful early on, the mission is soon interrupted by seas full of impassable ice. Trapped, Walton encounters Victor Frankenstein, who has been traveling by dog-drawn sledge across the ice and is weakened by the cold. Walton takes him aboard ship, helps nurse him back to health, and hears the fantastic tale of  The Monster that Frankenstein created.

Victor first describes his early life in Geneva. At the end of a blissful childhood spent in the company of Elizabeth Lavenza (his cousin in the 1818 edition, his adopted sister in the 1831 edition) and friend Henry Clerval, Victor enters the university of Ingolstadt to study natural philosophy and chemistry. There, he is consumed by the desire to discover the secret of life and, after several years of research, becomes convinced that he has found it.

Armed with the knowledge he has long been seeking, Victor spends months feverishly fashioning a creature out of old body parts. One climactic night, in the secrecy of his apartment, he brings his creation to life. When he looks at the monstrosity that he has created, however, the sight horrifies him. After a fitful night of sleep, interrupted by the specter of the monster looming over him, he runs into the streets, eventually wandering in remorse. Victor runs into Henry, who has come to study at the university, and he takes his friend back to his apartment. Though the monster is gone, Victor falls into a feverish illness.

Sickened by his horrific deed, Victor prepares to return to Geneva, to his family, and to health. Just before departing Ingolstadt, however, he receives a letter from his father informing him that his youngest brother, William, has been murdered. Grief-stricken, Victor hurries home. While passing through the woods where William was strangled, he catches sight of the monster and becomes convinced that the monster is his brother’s murderer. Arriving in Geneva, Victor finds that Justine Moritz, a kind, gentle girl who had been adopted by the Frankenstein household, has been accused. She is tried, condemned, and executed, despite her assertions of innocence. Victor grows despondent, guilty with the knowledge that the monster he has created bears responsibility for the death of two innocent loved ones.

Hoping to ease his grief, Victor takes a vacation to the mountains. While he is alone one day, crossing an enormous glacier, the monster approaches him. The monster admits to the murder of William but begs for understanding. Lonely, shunned, and forlorn, he says that he struck out at William in a desperate attempt to injure Victor, his cruel creator. The monster begs Victor to create a mate for him, a monster equally grotesque to serve as his sole companion.

Victor refuses at first, horrified by the prospect of creating a second monster. The monster is eloquent and persuasive, however, and he eventually convinces Victor. After returning to Geneva, Victor heads for England, accompanied by Henry, to gather information for the creation of a female monster. Leaving Henry in Scotland, he secludes himself on a desolate island in the Orkneys and works reluctantly at repeating his first success. One night, struck by doubts about the morality of his actions, Victor glances out the window to see the monster glaring in at him with a frightening grin. Horrified by the possible consequences of his work, Victor destroys his new creation. The monster, enraged, vows revenge, swearing that he will be with Victor on Victor’s wedding night.

Later that night, Victor takes a boat out onto a lake and dumps the remains of the second creature in the water. The wind picks up and prevents him from returning to the island. In the morning, he finds himself ashore near an unknown town. Upon landing, he is arrested and informed that he will be tried for a murder discovered the previous night. Victor denies any knowledge of the murder, but when shown the body, he is shocked to behold his friend Henry Clerval, with the mark of the monster’s fingers on his neck. Victor falls ill, raving and feverish, and is kept in prison until his recovery, after which he is acquitted of the crime.

Shortly after returning to Geneva with his father, Victor marries Elizabeth. He fears the monster’s warning and suspects that he will be murdered on his wedding night. To be cautious, he sends Elizabeth away to wait for him. While he awaits the monster, he hears Elizabeth scream and realizes that the monster had been hinting at killing his new bride, not himself. Victor returns home to his father, who dies of grief a short time later. Victor vows to devote the rest of his life to finding the monster and exacting his revenge, and he soon departs to begin his quest.

Victor tracks the monster ever northward into the ice. In a dogsled chase, Victor almost catches up with the monster, but the sea beneath them swells and the ice breaks, leaving an unbridgeable gap between them. At this point, Walton encounters Victor, and the narrative catches up to the time of Walton’s fourth letter to his sister.

Walton tells the remainder of the story in another series of letters to his sister. Victor, already ill when the two men meet, worsens and dies shortly thereafter. When Walton returns, several days later, to the room in which the body lies, he is startled to see the monster weeping over Victor. The monster tells Walton of his immense solitude, suffering, hatred, and remorse. He asserts that now that his creator has died, he too can end his suffering. The monster then departs for the northernmost ice to die.

The major conflict in Frankenstein revolves around Victor’s inability to understand that his actions have repercussions. Victor focuses solely on his own goals and fails to see how his actions might impact other individuals. The monster functions as the most stark reminder of how Victor has failed to take responsibility for his actions in defying the laws of nature. The first signs of the conflict appear when Victor throws himself into his studies at the University of Ingolstadt, neglecting his family and fiancée. The conflict deepens when, having “succeeded in discovering the cause of generation and life,” Victor becomes obsessed with creating a monster. He does not stop to think about what the experiences of that monster might be like, nor is he fazed by the fact that he ignores his family to pursue his work. He is so obsessed with his ambition that he does not consider anything else. The rising action of his reckless quest to create life comes to a peak when, immediately after animating the monster, he reacts with horror and disgust and runs from the room. This incident illustrates the conflict between Victor and moral responsibility: he has been responsible for making the monster and bringing him to life, but when he doesn’t like the result, he simply rejects it.

The tension increases when Victor learns of the death of his brother William and the false accusation against Justine. The murder creates another situation in which Victor can choose to act, or fail to take responsibility. He heightens the conflict by allowing Justine to be executed, rather than disclosing what he knows about the monster. The conflict is heightened further when the monster meets up with Victor amidst the mountain peaks and tells him the story of all the suffering he has experienced, as well as his loneliness and alienation. The meeting between the monster and his creator is another moment where Victor could potentially turn away from his selfish path. The plot suggests potential resolution when Victor reluctantly agrees to fashion a mate for the monster in exchange for the two of them going somewhere remote.

However, the conflict is reignited when Victor is too disgusted to carry out this plan and destroys the female monster before completing it. Yet again, he doesn’t think about what this reckless choice will mean, even though the monster vows revenge. Victor is genuinely surprised when his friend Henry Clerval is killed, and then again when his fiancé Elizabeth is also murdered, despite the monster’s explicit statements that he is now dedicated to making Victor’s life a living hell by depriving him of everyone he loves. The murder of Elizabeth shifts the conflict into its final stage, in which Victor vows to hunt down and kill the monster in revenge for all of the deaths. This vow partially resolves the conflict in that it gives the monster what he wants: he now has the total attention of his creator, and the fates of the two individuals are interlocked.

After Victor pursues the monster around the world, he arrives in the Arctic and encounters Walton, bringing the story full-circle back the point at which the narration switched from Walton to Victor. Victor’s travels have exhausted him so much that he dies aboard the ship after relaying his tale, his role in the story fulfilled. The novel climaxes with Walton finding the monster in the room, gazing at Victor’s dead body and weeping. Victor never acknowledges the role he played in creating the chaos and tragedy that resulted in the deaths of several innocent people, as well as the torment of his creation. Unlike Victor, the monster expresses remorse and self-loathing, suggesting that he ultimately has become more “human” than his creator. Walton finally gets to see and hear the monster from his own perspective, and he is able to feel “a mixture of curiosity and compassion.” The falling action of the novel quickly concludes with the monster explaining his plan to kill himself, then setting off alone to carry out his plan.