Frankenstein - Analysis of Vol 1 Chapter 5

Plot Summary

“on a dreary night of November” Victor finishes his creation but finds it horrific and grotesque, despite thinking he had picked “beautiful” features for it. He runs to his room and tries to sleep in order to forget, and dreams that he saw Elizabeth “in the bloom of health, walking in the streets of Ingolstadt” but when he kissed her she turned into the corpse of Caroline Frankenstein. He woke and saw the creation was in his room making “inarticulate sounds” and he ran out, spending the rest of the night wandering the streets until discovering at morning that he is at the church of Ingolstadt. He was very nervous to return to his apartment in case the creature was still there (“my heart palpitated”). He sees Clerval in the street and felt “calm and serene joy”. Clerval is beginning his studies soon with the blessing of his father. He reveals that Victor’s family miss him, and comments on how ill Victor looks. Victor realises he doesn’t want Clerval to see the creature so makes him wait while he checks his apartment. When he sees it is empty he is overjoyed and runs to fetch Clerval before seemingly going mad, falling into a seizure and passing out. He spends months in incomplete death (“I was lifeless and did not recover my senses for a long, long time. He was mentally haunted by the monster. Clerval wrote to the Frankenstein family and reassured them Victor would be okay. Victor eventually recovered and thanked Clerval for…