Robert Walton

Captain Robert Walton was an arctic explorer. During one voyage, he and his crew found a strange man, Victor Frankenstein, stranded on an ice floe and dying from exposure. Despite his state, Frankenstein resisted being taken aboard Walton's ship at first, but eventually relented. After some coaxing, Walton learned that Frankenstein was from Geneva and that he had been a medical student there, and had conducted experiments probing the secrets of life and death, secrets which yielded a being Frankenstein only referred to as "the creature" or "the monster."

Frankenstein refused to tell Walton the secret being the monster's creation, for fear that the captain might try to replicate his experiment. After telling his story, Frankenstein died. Not long after his death, the very monster he spoke of crept aboard Walton's ship, to pay his respects to his dead creator and make amends. Walton confronted the creature, who told him he planned to commit suicide. Before Walton could stop him, he then leaped off of the ship and was lost in the frozen sea forever.