Plot Summary
The final section of Frankenstein, titled "Walton, in continuation," returns the narrative to Robert Walton's epistolary voice as he writes to his sister Margaret from a ship trapped in Arctic ice. Walton recounts how Victor Frankenstein has finished telling his extraordinary story and now lies gravely ill aboard the vessel. Victor has corrected and augmented Walton's notes of the tale, insisting that a complete account survive him.
As the ship remains locked in ice, the crew grows desperate. Several sailors approach Walton with a demand: if the ice breaks, he must turn the ship south toward England rather than press on into further danger. Before Walton can respond, Victor rouses himself from his sickbed and delivers a passionate speech urging the men not to abandon their glorious undertaking. His eloquence temporarily inspires them, but their resolve fades, and Walton ultimately agrees to return home if the passage opens.
When the ice finally breaks on September 9th and the crew rejoices, Victor attempts to rise and continue his pursuit of the Creature alone but collapses. In his final moments, Victor reflects on his life with a mixture of self-justification and regret. He tells Walton he was right to refuse to create a companion for the Creature and asks Walton to destroy the monster if fate brings them together, though he no longer insists upon it. Victor dies quietly, a faint smile crossing his lips.
That midnight, Walton discovers a towering, hideous figure mourning over Victor's corpse. The Creature has come to grieve his creator. In an anguished monologue, the Creature confesses the torment that accompanied every act of vengeance. He declares that with Victor dead, his own suffering is complete. He announces his intention to travel to the northernmost point of the globe, build a funeral pyre, and destroy himself so that no one can ever replicate Frankenstein's experiment. He then leaps from the cabin window onto an ice raft and vanishes into the Arctic darkness.
Character Development
Robert Walton undergoes the novel's most consequential character arc in this chapter. Faced with the same temptation that destroyed Victor—the lure of glory at any human cost—Walton ultimately chooses to turn back. His decision to prioritize his crew's survival over personal ambition marks him as the moral counterpoint to Victor and suggests he has absorbed the cautionary lesson of Victor's story.
Victor Frankenstein remains tragically unchanged even in death. His fiery speech to the sailors reveals that he still romanticizes dangerous ambition, and his deathbed reflections contain more self-justification than genuine remorse. He acknowledges his duty to the Creature yet insists he was right to deny it a companion, showing the limits of his moral growth.
The Creature achieves the most profound transformation. Stripped of anger, he expresses devastating self-awareness and genuine remorse. His grief over Victor's body and his plan for self-immolation reveal a being who has moved beyond vengeance to a tragic acceptance of his own monstrousness—a monstrousness imposed on him by rejection and isolation.
Themes and Motifs
Ambition and Its Consequences: Victor's speech to the sailors glorifies the same reckless ambition that ruined his life, while Walton's decision to turn back offers a counter-narrative in which restraint preserves life. The chapter frames unchecked ambition as a fundamentally destructive force.
Isolation and Connection: Walton laments losing the friend he has long desired, Victor dies separated from everyone he loved, and the Creature departs into ultimate solitude. Each character's fate underscores the novel's insistence that isolation—whether chosen or imposed—leads to suffering.
Responsibility and Justice: Victor's deathbed speech raises unresolved questions about moral obligation. He admits he owed the Creature happiness yet maintains he was justified in refusing the companion. The Creature, meanwhile, asks whether he alone should be called criminal "when all humankind sinned against me."
The Fallen Angel Motif: Both Victor and the Creature invoke Miltonic imagery. Victor compares himself to an archangel "chained in an eternal hell," while the Creature declares that "the fallen angel becomes a malignant devil." These parallels to Paradise Lost reinforce the novel's exploration of pride, creation, and damnation.
Literary Devices
Frame Narrative: The return to Walton's letters completes the novel's nested structure. The reader must judge Victor's and the Creature's accounts through Walton's interpretive lens, emphasizing the subjectivity of all storytelling.
Allusion: References to Milton's Paradise Lost and the fallen archangel deepen the moral complexity. Victor casts himself as a tragic overreacher; the Creature sees himself as Satan cast out, yet more pitiable because he is utterly alone.
Dramatic Irony: Victor urges the sailors to brave death for glory—the very philosophy that destroyed his own life. The reader recognizes what Victor cannot: that his speech is a mirror of his fatal flaw, not a moment of heroism.
Symbolism: The Arctic ice functions as a symbol of both the sublime and the deadly. Its cracking liberates the ship but coincides with Victor's death, linking the breaking of natural barriers with human fragility. The Creature's disappearance into darkness and distance leaves his fate ambiguous, a final act of Romantic mystery.