Frankenstein Letter 4 Summary: The Stranger on the Ice

Walton's 5 August letter records what happened after the ice closed the ship on 31 July. Fog held them, scarcely leaving sea-room. When the mist cleared they beheld vast irregular plains of ice that seemed to have no end. Some of the men groaned. About two in the afternoon a sledge passed, drawn by dogs, driven by a being of gigantic stature. The next morning the sailors found another sledge broken on a drifting fragment, one dog still alive, and a European man half dead in the wreck. They wanted to leave him. Walton had him brought on board.

The stranger asked first where the ship was bound, and said he would not be taken south. He was seeking one who fled from him, travelling in the same fashion. Walton's men had seen that first figure the day before. The rescued man speaks several languages, recovers slowly, and calls his quarry a daemon. Walton, starved for a friend, loves him at once.

When Walton confesses his own hunger for discovery and glory, the stranger is horror-struck and begs him to hear a history before he wrecks himself on the same ice. Walton agrees to record the tale each night, as nearly as possible in the stranger's words. He begins that manuscript with the man's full-toned voice still in his ears.