Since the publication of Frankenstein in 1818, scholars and lay readers alike have drawn numerous parallels between Robert Walton and Victor Frankenstein-the two young, brilliant, and keenly ambitious explorers of the unknown who narrate the bulk of the novel. Because Walton has long dreamed of uncovering some of nature’s most profound secrets-despite the many attendant risks-and then basking in the personal glory of such discovery, he has often been described unflatteringly. For example, Laura Claridge refers to him as “Victor’s shadow self’ (15), calling Walton “a potential Frankenstein, another man [. . .] seeking out ultimate knowledge by conquering the world’s uncharted regions”-at once as ruthless, proud, moody, and selfcentered as the frozen scientist he rescues and then comes to admire (23). There is something far more intriguing than mere youth, ambition, intellect, and privileged upbringing, however, to link this pair of headstrong, adventurous twenty-somethings who yearn to sunder the envelope of scientific knowledge and write their names large in the history books: in essence, both young men, not just Victor, are reanimators. Four years prior to his rescue in the Arctic by Walton, Frankenstein had built a man by reinvigorating dead human tissue; in a symbolically parallel tableau, during their short time together aboard ship, Robert Walton becomes the hands-on reanimator of Victor Frankenstein, in effect, bringing him back to sentient life in a dark and private chamber, closely reenacting-but this time in a most positive way-Victor’s earlier gift to the monster of animation.

both Victor Frankenstein and the Arctic explorer Robert Walton, whose letters open the novel, hold a greedy thirst for privileged knowledge of those things that are unknown to the common person.

They are both seekers of knowledge.