Walton's letters and Chapters 1 to 5 — AQA GCSE English Literature 8702
AQA GCSE English Literature · 8702
Walton's letters and Chapters 1 to 5
The plot, part by part
What you need to know
Walton's letters from Russia and the Arctic, the stranger rescued from the ice, Victor's childhood with Elizabeth and Clerval, his mother's death,
his studies at Ingolstadt, the creation of the creature and Victor's flight from it.
What the frame and the opening chapters establish about character and theme, with key quotations.
Key quotations: 'I shall satiate my ardent curiosity with the sight of a part of the world never before visited', 'a being which had the shape of a man, but apparently of gigantic stature', 'Do you share my madness?', 'may not be a serpent to sting you, as mine has been', 'Natural philosophy is the genius that has regulated my fate', 'nothing remained but a blasted stump', 'Destiny was too potent, and her immutable laws had decreed my utter and terrible destruction', 'such the words of fate, enounced to destroy me', 'It was on a dreary night of November', 'I saw the dull yellow eye of the creature open', 'Beautiful!—Great God!', 'the beauty of the dream vanished, and breathless horror and disgust filled my heart', 'the grave-worms crawling in the folds of the flannel', 'His jaws opened, and he muttered some inarticulate sounds, while a grin wrinkled his cheeks'.
Structure: Walton's letters open the frame, and the stranger's warning turns Victor's story into a lesson for Walton.
Foreshadowing: Victor tells his youth with hindsight, in the language of fate and destiny.
Context: galvanism and electricity, from the lightning that destroys the oak to the 'spark of being' Victor gives his creature.
