Walton's letters

Question 1

Letter 1: altruism or ambition?

Answer 1

• As Walton hopes to penetrate the mysteries of the Artic, Victor hopes to penetrate the secrets of life.
• Like Victor, Walton rejects a life of domestic ease - allegedly preferring “glory” to “wealth”
• Walton alternates between expressing a desire for personal “glory” and the desire to confer some “inestimable benefit… on all mankind”
• is this real altrusim, or is it another way of obtaining “glory”, a personal ambition?

Question 2

Letter 1: dark and light

Answer 2

• ‘country of eternal light’
• this is used literally by Walton, but the idea of ‘light’ comes to assume metaphorical meaning in the novel: it has associations with ‘Enlightenment’ and discovery or knowledge
• the search for ‘light’ ultimately leads to darkness for both men

Question 3

Letter 2: ‘the land of mist and snow’

Answer 3

a direct reference to Coleridge’s ‘The Rime of the Ancient Mariner’
mariner shoots an albatross and is cursed
mariner alone in foreign world
like Victor, the mariner defies God, thus disturbing the natural order. for this, he is punished to a life of penance.
the mariner also ends up alienated and isolated: we see all of Shelley’s main characters experience this. Both Victor and Walton end up isolated as a result of their ambition, and we also see the monster isolated from its very birth.

Question 4

Letter 2: ‘I desire the company of a man who could sympathise with me… I bitterly feel the want of a friend.’

Answer 4

• connects Walton to the monster, who himself longs for love and companionship: ‘sympathies necessary for my being’. one example of doubling in the novel.

Question 5

Letter 2: ‘an excellent disposition’ vs. ‘wholly uneducated’ and ‘no one near me’

Answer 5

Walton’s unreliability as a narrator is emphasised. Walton’s insularity becomes increasingly apparent as he claims that he has “no one near him” and “bitterly feel[s] the want of a friend”, yet discusses one of his shipmates who is of “an excellent disposition”. Walton focuses on the fact that this man is “wholly uneducated”, and this is why they cannot be friends.

This contradiction emphasises Walton’s unreliability.

Question 6

Letter 3: Margaret Saville

Answer 6

• as the narratee of Walton’s letters, Margaret provides our first and final images of domesticity
• Walton commends her for her ‘gentle and feminine fosterage’
• She has no voice as we do not see her responses

Question 7

Letter 3: Sublime!

Answer 7

• like the alps, the ocean of the Artic is a sublime landscape, associated with the divine, something mysterious and immensely powerful.
• these locations, though, are also gothic sublime - they are as terrifying as they are beautiful

Question 8

Letter 4: ‘savage inhabitant of some undiscovered isle’

Answer 8

Walton’s initial description of the monster opposes his focus on Victor as being ‘European’ and ‘cultivated’. There is a binary opposition between Victor and his creature as presented through Walton’s perspective: the civilised and cultured vs. the primitive and natural.

Question 9

Letter 4: ‘divine wanderer’ (Walton describing Victor)

Answer 9

connotations relating to spirituality or godliness

Question 10

Letter 4: “Hear me… and you will dash the cup from your lips”

Answer 10

• Victor suggests ambition or the desire for knowledge is like poison.
• “Have you drunk also from the intoxicating draught?”