walton hallucinates the whole story

Walton dreams up the entire story of Frankenstein and the monster. During his adventure to the North Pole, he constantly describes gigantic blocks of ice surrounding the ship. Before he sees Frankenstein's sled, he most likely suffered a head injury from the ship colliding with the ice. This would explain all the odd questions that we discussed in class, like why the monster is eight feet tall but made of many different normal-sized human and animal parts. This is also why Walton's ship-mates are so eager to sail back to land so they can leave Walton at a mental institution.

-Walton is lonely. So desperately lonely that he will dream up a companion to fill in his emptiness. He writes and tells Magaret that he desires the company of a man who could sympathise with me; whose eyes would repy to mine" (19).

-The man (Frankenstein) that Walton creates with his mind greatly resembles his own self. Like Walton, Frankenstein is ambitious and possesses a thirst for knowledge. They both feel a need to achieve some great purpose in life. They are also both lonely. Walton complains to Magaret that he has "no one near me, gentle yet courageous, possessed of a cultivated as well as of a capacious mind, whose tastes are like my own" (19).

- Walton is on an adventure to the north pole where the temperatures are below freezing. It seems to me that the cold has affected his mind, for he tells Magaret "how slowly the time passes here, encompassed as I am by frost and snow!" (19). He writes this as if he were trapped in time in another world which does not exist.