ENGLISH LITERATURE (CBSE/UGC NET)

Detailed explanation-1: -Frankenstein is a multi-strand narrative with 3 different first person narrators. Shelley uses a framing device (the reason for the telling of the main narrative) and epistolary narration (when a story is told through letters).

Detailed explanation-2: -The novel begins with explorer Robert Walton looking for a new passage from Russia to the Pacific Ocean via the Arctic Ocean. After weeks as sea, the crew of Walton’s ship finds an emaciated man, Victor Frankenstein, floating on an ice flow near death.

Detailed explanation-3: -Robert Walton is a polar explorer who meets Victor Frankenstein in the Arctic. It is to Walton that Victor tells his story and he, in turn, writes the narrative down in a series of letters to his sister, Margaret Saville, back in England.

Detailed explanation-4: -Walton describes Victor as a “stranger [who] addressed me in English, although with a foreign accent.” Two days pass before Victor begins to tell his story of how he came so far from land. He remarks to an officer that he “seek[s] one who fled from me."