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Victor succeeds in bringing his creation, an eight-foot man, to life in November of his second year. Excited and disgusted at "the monster" he had created, he runs from the apartment.

He wanders the streets of Ingolstadt until Henry Clerval finds him in poor condition. Henry had come to see about his friend and to enroll at the university. Henry and Victor return to Victor's apartment to find the monster gone. Victor finds the disappearance of his monster a source of joy and falls down in a fit of exhaustion from the release of anxiety over his creation. Henry spends the rest of the winter and spring nursing Victor back to health after the tumultuous fall. Henry advises Victor to write home, as a letter had recently arrived from his family in Geneva.

Victor throws himself into his schoolwork, reading all he can about the sciences, particularly chemistry. Gaining a reputation as a scientist and innovator among the professors and fellow students alike. Believing his tenure at Ingolstadt was nearing an end, Victor thinks of returning home to Geneva. However, he launches into a new venue of scientific experimentation — creating life from death and reanimating a dead body.

Elizabeth and Victor grow up together as best friends. Victor’s friendship with Henry Clerval, a schoolmate and only child, flourishes as well, and he spends his childhood happily surrounded by this close domestic circle. As a teenager, Victor becomes increasingly fascinated by the mysteries of the natural world. He chances upon a book by Cornelius Agrippa, a sixteenth-century scholar of the occult sciences, and becomes interested in natural philosophy. He studies the outdated findings of the alchemists Agrippa, Paracelsus, and Albertus Magnus with enthusiasm. He witnesses the destructive power of nature when, during a raging storm, lightning destroys a tree near his house. A modern natural philosopher accompanying the Frankenstein family explains to Victor the workings of electricity, making the ideas of the alchemists seem outdated and worthless. (In the 1818 version, a demonstration of electricity by his father convinces Victor of the alchemists’ mistakenness.)

The stranger, who the reader soon learns is Victor Frankenstein, begins his narration. He starts with his family background, birth, and early childhood, telling Walton about his father, Alphonse, and his mother, Caroline. Alphonse became Caroline’s protector when her father, Alphonse’s longtime friend Beaufort, died in poverty. They married two years later, and Victor was born soon after.

Frankenstein then describes how his childhood companion, Elizabeth Lavenza, entered his family. At this point in the narrative, the original (1818) and revised (1831) versions of Frankenstein diverge. In the original version, Elizabeth is Victor’s cousin, the daughter of Alphonse’s sister; when Victor is four years old, Elizabeth’s mother dies and Elizabeth is adopted into the Frankenstein family. In the revised version, Elizabeth is discovered by Caroline, on a trip to Italy, when Victor is about five years old. While visiting a poor Italian family, Caroline notices a beautiful blonde girl among the dark-haired Italian children; upon discovering that Elizabeth is the orphaned daughter of a Milanese nobleman and a German woman and that the Italian family can barely afford to feed her, Caroline adopts Elizabeth and brings her back to Geneva. Victor’s mother decides at the moment of the adoption that Elizabeth and Victor should someday marry.

This letter, written on three separate days (August 5, August 13, and August 19), begins quietly enough when Walton describes how his ship is stuck in an ice field far from land. On July 31, the crew sees a man "of gigantic stature" trailing a dog sled team going north and passing to within one-half a mile of their ice bound ship. The next morning on August 1, the crew finds another man floating free on an ice flow near their ship. The survivor is Victor Frankenstein. After a few days rest, Victor begins telling his story to Walton.

Written on July 7th, this short letter describes Walton's journey so far as a "triumph." His men remain resolved and loyal, and the weather has been fine, though sheets of ice in the ocean suggest worse conditions may soon threaten. Walton closes his letter with the rhetorical question, "What can stop the determined heart and resolved will of man?"

In his second letter on March 28th of the following year, from Archangel, Russia, Walton describes himself as lonely. He worries that his refined upbringing has made him too sensitive for the "brutality" of life at sea.

Walton's experience of loneliness as a terrible experience establishes the idea of the horror of isolation that is so important throughout he rest of Frankenstein.

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Walton writes that his resolution to carry out his journey is "fixed as fate." He confesses his "romantic ... love for the marvellous" and his passion for the dangers of the sea, which he attributes to his fondness for Coleridge's poem, "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner."

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The trial for Justine Moritz begins at 11:00 the next morning. Victor suffers silent torture while the entire scene plays out in front of him. Yet, he can do nothing to stop it. Justine carries herself calmly at the trial, answering the charges and getting a sterling defense from Elizabeth. Although Justine proclaims her innocence, she is convicted of the crime. Her sentence is to die by hanging the following day.

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Victor receives a letter from his father telling him to return home immediately. William, the youngest in the family, has been killed by strangulation. The family were out on an evening stroll near their home when the young boy ran ahead of the group. He was later found "stretched on the grass livid and motionless; the print of the murder's finger was on his neck." Missing was a locket that Elizabeth had given William of their mother.

When Victor arrives at the city gates, they are closed, so he must remain outside the city in Secheron until the gates are reopened at dawn. It is at this time that he realizes that he had been gone six years from home and that two years have passed since the creation of his monster.

While near Secheron, on Mont Blanc, Victor catches a glimpse of the monster between flashes of lightning. Having a nagging feeling that the murder of his little brother could be the handiwork