I can, even now, remember the hour from which I dedicated myself to this great enterprise. Walton also mentions a poem by Samuel Taylor Coleridge in letter two, called The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, a work that is all about a the journey of a lonely and tormented sailor lost at sea. His ship gets stuck in a thick sheet of ice. Walton finds in this stranger the companion he has been searching for. I said in one of my letters, my dear Margaret, that I should find no friend on the wide ocean; yet I have found a man who, before his spirit had been broken by misery, I should have been happy to have possessed as the brother of my heart.
Our situation was somewhat dangerous, especially as we were compassed round by a very thick fog. I shall continue my journal concerning the stranger at intervals, should I have any fresh incidents to record. If I fail, you will see me again soon, or never. Is the whole story only a drama of Mary Shelley's adolescent mind, the dream-work fabricated by a troubled girl? Your affectionate brother, Robert Walton Letter 3 To Mrs. He is so gentle, yet so wise; his mind is so cultivated, and when he speaks, although his words are culled with the choicest art, yet they How with rapidity and unparalleled eloquence.
I am about to proceed on a long and difficult voyage, the emergencies of which will demand all my fortitude: I am required not only to raise the spirits of others, but sometimes to sustain my own, when theirs are failing. Weather slows the beginning of the trip, but Walton reassures his sister that he will use caution and prudence. Six years have passed since I resolved on my present undertaking. My courage and my resolution is firm; but my hopes fluctuate, and my spirits are often depressed. The cold is not excessive, if you are wrapped in furs--a dress which I have already adopted, for there is a great difference between walking the deck and remaining seated motionless for hours, when no exercise prevents the blood from actually freezing in your veins. This is the most favourable period for travelling in Russia.
Frankenstein Letter 1 Summary & Analysis from LitCharts
I shall depart for the latter town in a fortnight or three weeks; and my intention is to hire a ship there, which can easily be done by paying the insurance for the owner, and to engage as many sailors as I think necessary among those who are accustomed to the whale-fishing. What may not be expected in a country of eternal light? Have you drunk also of the intoxicating draught? Frankenstein explodes not just with the complicity of language which Victor fears, but also with the prolific power of discourse. The discussion about his educational background seems to be a continuation from his first letter. But until then, I conjure you, do not mention or allude to it. Having conquered the violence of his feelings, he appeared to despise himself for being the slave of passion; and quelling the dark tyranny of despair, he led me again to converse concerning myself personally. I do not intend to sail until the month of June; and when shall I return? Prepare to hear of occurrences which are usually deemed marvellous. As Percy Shelley continues, the combinations do not remain within the author's mind, nor does the startling catastrophe remain contained within a single tale.
For my own part, I begin to love him as a brother, and his constant and deep grief fills me with sympathy and compassion. I am practically industrious-- painstaking, a workman to execute with perseverance and labour-- but besides this there is a love for the marvellous, a belief in the marvellous, intertwined in all my projects, which hurries me out of the common pathways of men, even to the wild sea and unvisited regions I am about to explore. At the conclusion of this last letter, Walton tells his sister the man will begin his story-the rest of the novel-the next day. I am about to proceed on a long and difficult voyage, the emergencies of which will demand all my fortitude: I am required not only to raise the spirits of others, but sometimes to sustain my own, when theirs are failing. My swelling heart involuntarily pours itself out thus. It was, in fact, a sledge, like that we had seen before, which had drifted towards us in the night on a large fragment of ice.
That chose to frame her first novel with letters from an arctic adventurer, Robert Walton, to his England-rooted sister, Margaret Saville, seems consistent with literary trends in a society anxious for connections and continuity, for human correspondence in an age of instability and incertitude. Discovery is one step, animation another; but neither guarantees the widespread communication of life. Two days passed in this manner before he was able to speak, and I often feared that his sufferings had deprived him of understanding. At all points, the reader must enter the active world of the novel. The epistolary novel could not contain that deformity figured in the monster, or in Walton's fractured letter. Farewell, my dear, excellent Margaret. I shall commit my thoughts to paper, it is true; but that is a poor medium for the communication of feeling.
Readers who have skillfully articulated the question of authority in this text are and ; and. I commenced by inuring my body to hardship. Have you drunk also of the intoxicating draught? I may there discover the wondrous power which attracts the needle; and may regulate a thousand celestial observations that require only this voyage to render their seeming eccentricities consistent for ever. His story, like his body, moves constantly, delving into one text after another, just as he himself pops in and out of Victor's dwellings. Why did you form a monster so hideous that even you turned from me in disgust? We were, as we believed, many hundred miles from any land; but this apparition seemed to denote that it was not, in reality, so distant as we had supposed. There, Margaret, the sun is forever visible, its broad disk just skirting the horizon and diffusing a perpetual splendour.
I heard of him first in rather a romantic manner, from a lady who owes to him the happiness of her life. I shall satiate my ardent curiosity with the sight of a part of the world never before visited, and may tread a land never before imprinted by the foot of man. These reflections have dispelled the agitation with which I began my letter, and I feel my heart glow with an enthusiasm which elevates me to heaven; for nothing contributes so much to tranquillise the mind as a steady purpose— a point on which the soul may fix its intellectual eye. One man's life or death were but a small price to pay for the acquirement of the knowledge which I sought, for the dominion I should acquire and transmit over the elemental foes of our race. I accompanied the whale-fishers on several expeditions to the North Sea; I voluntarily endured cold, famine, thirst, and want of sleep; I often worked harder than the common sailors during the day and devoted my nights to the study of mathematics, the theory of medicine, and those branches of physical science from which a naval adventurer might derive the greatest practical advantage.
This novel is the offspring of correspondence. Due to the nature of magnets, magnetic instruments are prone to distortion in such places. Even the orientalism popular in the literature of this period enters the novel; enunciated by Clerval and represented by Safie, the language of the East broadens our perspective on the Western tradition. Unlike Victor, however, the letter-writer proffers no hope of verifying evidence. Letters always call out for this blind faith, yet even when Walton's letters dissolve the appeal remains. You seek for knowledge and wisdom, as I once did; and I ardently hope that the gratification of your wishes may not be a serpent to sting you, as mine has been. By involving so many languages in the refraction of her own intentions, Shelley remains free of the conventions, while refusing to cancel the voice of any one tradition.
Continue for the present to write to me by every opportunity: I may receive your letters on some occasions when I need them most to support my spirits. Such a man has a double existence: he may suffer misery and be overwhelmed by disappointments, yet when he has retired into himself, he will be like a celestial spirit that has a halo around him, within whose circle no grief or folly ventures. It also frees her from a single literary {16} tradition. You have hope, and the world before you, and have no cause for despair. Literary correspondence must be able to function with no central position, without even two fixed and balanced points. I arrived here yesterday, and my first task is to assure my dear sister of my welfare and increasing confidence in the success of my undertaking.
