What happens in Letters I–IV of Frankenstein?
Mary Shelley's Frankenstein begins not with its well-known scientist but with Robert Walton, an ambitious English explorer who writes letters to his sister, Margaret Saville, from St. Petersburg and later from a ship venturing into the Arctic. In Letter I, Walton shares his obsessive dream of reaching the North Pole, brushing off the dangers with romantic bravado. By Letter II, he finds himself in Archangel, lamenting his lack of a true intellectual companion among his crew, although he commends his lieutenant's selfless bravery. In Letter III, the ship becomes trapped in Arctic ice, with the crew feeling tense in the alien landscape. Letter IV presents the novel's key turning point: the crew sees a gigantic figure driving a dog-sledge across the ice and, hours later, rescues a second man—emaciated, frostbitten, and nearly dead—from a piece of floe. This stranger, who immediately asks if they are sailing north, is Victor Frankenstein. As Victor recuperates, Walton notes their growing bond, observing in Victor a ruined grandeur that reflects his own yearning for glory. Recognizing the same dangerous ambition in Walton, Victor decides to share his story as a cautionary tale, and Shelley's nested narrative structure falls into place.
Analysis
Shelley uses Walton's letters as a structural and thematic frame that is far from neutral scaffolding. By starting with an epistolary voice—domestic and directed to a sister who never responds in the text—she sets up the tension between the domestic sphere and the masculine urge to transgress. Walton's Arctic is more than just a backdrop; it symbolizes the novel's main focus on boundaries: geographical, scientific, and moral. His repeated references to "glory" and "inestimable benefit" for humanity echo Victor's rationalizations, positioning Walton as a potential Frankenstein rather than a reliable narrator.
The technique of revealing the monster before the creator is quietly devastating. The reader senses the creature's inhuman scale before discovering its origins, creating a sense of dread that the later domestic chapters of Victor's childhood must contend with. Shelley also employs ice as a motif: static, featureless, and indifferent—a landscape that denies the usual comforts of the Romantic sublime.
Walton's loneliness, revealed with unexpected honesty, serves as the novel's first expression of the creature's future grievance: the anguish of existing without a sympathetic counterpart. The tone shifts dramatically in Letter IV when Victor arrives; Walton's writing becomes reverent, almost elegiac, echoing Victor's own rhythms. This stylistic shift illustrates how ambition can deeply influence the language of those who bear witness to it.
Key quotes from Letters I–IV
“I am going to unexplored regions, to 'the land of mist and snow'; but I shall kill no albatross, therefore do not be alarmed for my safety.”
Walton invokes Coleridge's *Rime of the Ancient Mariner* in Letter I, simultaneously courting and deflecting its omen of hubris punished—an irony Shelley expects the reader to hold.
“I have no friend, Margaret: when I am glowing with the enthusiasm of success, there will be none to participate my joy; if I am assailed by disappointment, no one will endeavour to sustain me in dejection.”
Walton confesses his isolation in Letter II, articulating a longing for companionship that directly anticipates the creature's central anguish and frames solitude as the novel's governing wound.
“I never saw a more interesting creature: his eyes have generally an expression of wildness, and even madness, but there are moments when, if any one performs an act of kindness towards him, or does him any the most trifling service, his whole countenance is lighted up, as it were, with a beam of benevolence and sweetness.”
Walton describes the rescued Victor in Letter IV, and the language—wildness, madness, sudden tenderness—uncannily prefigures descriptions of the creature itself, collapsing the distance between maker and made.