Letters 1 to 4 · Letter 1 to Letter 4 — Teaching Companion

This chapter's big question

Is the stranger warning Walton against seeking knowledge, or against seeking it at any price?

The tension What Walton calls “the burning ardour of my soul” his listener calls madness: when Walton says “One man’s life or death were but a small price to pay for the acquirement of the knowledge which I sought,” the stranger weeps behind his hands and asks, “Do you share my madness?”

Today's focus

What the letters show their writer wanting, from the voyage and from a friend, and what the half-frozen man he takes aboard makes of those wants.

The shape at a glance

Four letters from Captain Walton to his sister Margaret, written as he sails north. From St. Petersburgh he dreams of a polar land of light and asks whether he does not deserve to succeed. From Archangel he admits he has no friend. At sea he promises to be prudent, then cries that nothing can stop the will of man. In the last letter the crew sees a gigantic figure on a sledge, then takes in a half-frozen man from a second sledge. Walton comes to love his guest. When Walton speaks of the price he would pay for knowledge, the stranger weeps, and later he agrees to tell his history.

A way in

Read aloud the opening of the second paragraph of the first letter, through “Do you understand this feeling?” Ask the student what answer Walton hopes his sister will give.

Lesson plan

Retell The student retells the four letters in order and says where Walton is for each one: St. Petersburgh, Archangel, at sea, and in the ice.

Imitate the author After copying the passage, the student writes a long sentence that keeps adding one thing after another, then a short sentence that stops it, about a hope of their own.

Debate The student argues one side of the closing written question, then switches and argues the other, using the stranger’s own words each time.

Purpose Close by asking why the book gives the reader the listener before it gives the teller, and what a reader does with that.

Three levels

Easier Read the last letter aloud together, from the first sledge to the stranger’s promise to tell his history, then talk through discussion questions 4 and 5 only.

On level Talk through all five discussion questions, then have the student complete both written questions, each as a thesis, an objection, and a revision.

Harder Ask the student to set the stranger’s “nothing can alter my destiny” beside his hope that his tale may “direct” Walton, and to say whether one man can hold both beliefs.

Discussion

1. Walton tries “in vain to be persuaded that the pole is the seat of frost and desolation.” Yet he will “put some trust in preceding navigators.” Is he weighing the evidence, or has he already decided?Inference

What it asks It asks whether Walton’s trust in earlier sailors is a way of weighing what is known or a way of finding support for a hope he already holds. The pole is the first thing he wants to know, so how he treats evidence about it shows what he counts as knowing.

A strong answer A strong answer might notice that Walton asks his sister’s leave to trust the navigators, and that the pole he goes on to describe, where “snow and frost are banished,” is the one he already pictures. It might argue that he is weighing, since he calls his own hopes “conjectures” and offers a second reason for the voyage. Or it might argue that he has decided, since “in vain” says no argument can move him, and the second reason would carry him north even if the first failed. The more convincing answer says which of his words shows the doubt and which shows the will to go on.

2. Walton wants a friend whose “tastes are like my own” and who can “amend my plans.” What would a friend have to be like to do both?Theme

What it asks It asks what kind of friend could both share Walton’s tastes and correct his plans. The two pull apart, since a friend who loves what he loves may only cheer him on. The letters hold two answers, Walton’s own and the stranger’s.

A strong answer A strong answer might start with the pull inside Walton’s wish: a friend whose tastes match his may only cheer him on. Walton gives his own answer in the same letter, a friend with “sense enough not to despise me as romantic, and affection enough” to “regulate my mind,” so love, more than likeness, earns the right to correct. Another answer starts from the stranger, who says a friend ought to be “wiser, better, dearer than ourselves.” On that view the friend who can amend Walton’s plans must stand ahead of him, not beside him. The best answers say whether the two pictures could fit one person, and what each asks of the friend who has to tell Walton no.

3. Walton promises his sister, “I will be cool, persevering, and prudent.” A few lines later he asks, “What can stop the determined heart and resolved will of man?” Then he admits, “My swelling heart involuntarily pours itself out thus.” Does that admission make his promise easier to trust, or harder?Moral reasoning

What it asks It asks the student to weigh a promise of prudence against the voice that follows it, and to decide what the writer’s own admission does to the promise. His sister can judge only by his words, so the words are the whole case.

A strong answer A strong answer might argue that the admission helps him. A man who says his heart “involuntarily pours itself out” knows what he is like, and from Archangel he had already named “a love for the marvellous” that “hurries me out of the common pathways of men.” It might argue the opposite: “involuntarily” says he cannot help it, and “cool” means little from a man who speaks of “my triumph” before he has arrived. The strongest answers say what each reading asks of his sister, who has nothing but his words to go on.

4. The stranger weeps and cries, “Do you share my madness?” In the same speech he says, “let me reveal my tale.” Walton writes, “Such words, you may imagine, strongly excited my curiosity.” Why might the stranger’s cry make Walton curious instead of careful?Theme

What it asks It asks why a cry of pain stirs Walton’s appetite for the tale and not his caution. He never answers the stranger’s question in the letters, so what he writes next is the only evidence of how he heard it.

A strong answer A strong answer might point to the echo: Walton first used “curiosity” for what he hopes to satisfy at the pole, so the same hunger answers the stranger’s cry. It might also argue that the curiosity is partly kindness, since Walton says it is “partly from curiosity and partly from a strong desire to ameliorate his fate.” Either reading should say what the stranger’s tears have already told Walton, and what Walton chooses to write down about them.

5. The stranger once meant his history to die with him. Now he tells Walton, “you have won me to alter my determination.” What was it about Walton that won him?Character

What it asks It asks what moved the stranger from silence to speech: what Walton is, or what Walton has done. The stranger names a reason, but “won” is a word for winning a person over, so the student may find a second one.

A strong answer A strong answer might start with the reason the stranger states: Walton is “pursuing the same course,” and the stranger hopes his tale can direct him. It might then argue that “won” points elsewhere, to the rescue and the care, since the stranger says Walton has “benevolently restored me to life” and calls him “my friend, if thus you will allow me to name you.” The best answers keep two things apart: what made the stranger willing to speak, and what he hopes the telling will do.

Critical thinking

1. In the first letter Walton wishes for “some encouraging voice.” In the second he says, “I have no friend.” In the fourth, a stranger comes aboard, and the letters end just before he tells his story. Why might the book open with Walton and not with the stranger?

What it asks It asks what the four letters give the stranger’s history that the history could not give itself. The student builds a thesis about the book’s opening choice from Walton’s wish for a voice, his want of a friend, and the man he finds on the ice.

A strong answer A strong thesis might say the letters give the stranger’s history a listener and a reason: he tells it to this man, for what this man might do with it. Another might say the letters make the reader feel Walton’s hope first, since Walton asks his sister, “Do you understand this feeling?” long before the stranger asks him, “Do you share my madness?” A good objection to the first is that a story can be told with no listener named. A good objection to the second is that a reader may not feel what Walton feels at all. The revision keeps what survives and stays inside what these four letters show.

2. Walton says that one man’s life or death is “a small price to pay” for the knowledge he seeks. The stranger answers with tears. Later he hopes Walton may draw a moral from his tale. Is the stranger warning Walton against seeking knowledge, or against seeking it at any price?

What it asks It asks the student to decide what the stranger fears in Walton: the seeking itself, or a price Walton would pay without counting it. The stranger’s own words leave both open, and the letters stop before Walton answers.

A strong answer A strong thesis might argue that he warns against the price: he weeps at “a small price,” and by the last entry he hopes his tale may “direct” Walton “if you succeed” as well as console him in failure. A strong objection is his own line, “You seek for knowledge and wisdom, as I once did,” which names the seeking as what hurt him, together with his promise that the tale will make Walton “dash the cup from your lips.” The revision might then hold that he fears what a hunger for knowledge does to a man who stops counting the cost, while admitting that the letters never say which fear is his. A thesis from the other side starts with “a serpent to sting you” and has to explain why, by the last entry, he never tells Walton to turn back. Either way, the revision should change because of the objection.

Vocabulary definitions