Frankenstein Bedside Lamp.3: An English Learning Reader

Author: Li Zhengshuan
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2004-06-01
Features: Young British captain Robert Walton leads his crew on a ship to the frigid Arctic region for exploration, hoping to find a route through the Arctic Ocean to Asia. Due to the severe cold, the ice in the Arctic Ocean becomes thicker and thicker, and the ship is about to be trapped by solid ice. Suddenly, they spot a person driving a sled across the ice toward the distance. To their shock, the figure was the size of six men—truly a legendary giant. The next day, they discover another person on the ice. This person is drifting on a floating ice floe, with all the sled dogs dead. He is weak and appears to have gone without food or water for many days. The captain orders his crew to rescue him and provide aid. After a slight recovery, the man tells the captain his story: His name is Victor Frankenstein, and he lives in Geneva. His family is wealthy and highly respected. To study science and benefit humanity, he left his father, younger brother, and beautiful fiancée, Elizabeth, to attend university in Germany. After years of dedicated research, he created a human being using bones taken from human corpses and animal organs—a grotesque and enormous creature. He is terrified of the monster and abandons it. The monster wanders the world, and due to its grotesque appearance, everyone treats it as a monster and no one is willing to befriend it. He saves a child from drowning but is shot and injured by the child's father. In anger, he decides to take revenge on Dr. Frankenstein, believing that it is the doctor's fault that he is lonely and ostracized in the world. He kills the doctor's younger brother and frames the incident on the maid. In exchange for a promise not to seek further revenge, he forces the doctor to create a mate for him. After being refused, he kills the doctor's friend Henry and, on the night of the doctor's wedding, kills his bride, Elizabeth. To avenge himself, the doctor chases the monster across the world and eventually reaches the Arctic. Knowing his own time is limited, the doctor asks Captain Walton to kill the monster to prevent more people from being killed. But as he dies, he tells the captain that he has forgiven the monster, as he did not treat him kindly, allowing him to live a miserable and lonely life. In the end, the monster also takes his own life out of remorse for his actions.