Who narrates the first five chapters of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein?
The first five chapters (which do not include the letters) of the novel are narrated by Victor Frankenstein. He is telling his life story to Robert Walton.
The book begins with letters, however, and sometimes those are confused as being the first few chapters of the book. Those letters are narrated by Robert Walton. The letters help us to understand Walton, his background, and how he came to meet Frankenstein. Walton appears again towards the end of the novel and, in a way, acts as bookends for the story.
Shelley uses multiple narrators in the novel (Walton, Victor, and the Creature) in order to show different perspectives. For example, because Victor and the Creature feel so differently about the different actions each of them has taken, their accounts provide different perspectives that help the reader to understand all of these characters.
Who becomes the new narrator in Frankenstein?
Frankenstein is a frame tale. What this means...
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is that it is a story within a story, involving a change in narrators. A traditional frame tale has two narrators, but there are three narrators in Frankenstein. The first is Robert Walton, who writes several letters home to his sister, Mrs. Saville. The second narrator is Victor Frankenstein himself, who tells us the story of his young life and of his growing fascination with the idea of reanimating the dead. It is through Victor that we learn of the creature’s creation and his initial “birth.” It is also through Victor that we learn of his horror when the creature comes to life and his mental instability as a result. The third narrator is the creature himself. The creature tells us the story of loneliness and rejection, of revenge and sorrow.
Robert Walton comes back at the end of the story to relate to the reader not only the being forced to turn back and abandon his journey, but also the death of Victor Frankenstein and his creature. This also serves to close out the “frame.” In other words, Robert Walton started telling the story, and he finishes it at the end, creating closure to the frame tale.