Letter 4
Walton describes rescuing a mysterious stranger from the ice and begins to record his extraordinary tale.
3 argumentative units
0 complete
- 01Walton discovers the mysterious traveller
Walton recounts seeing a gigantic figure on a sledge cross the ice, and later rescuing a frost-bitten European who had drifted near the ship on a fragment of ice.
- 02Walton's growing bond with the stranger
Walton records the stranger's gradual recovery, his melancholy and gentleness, and his own deepening affection—finding in this broken man the friend he had longed for.
- 03The stranger agrees to tell his tale
The stranger warns Walton that knowledge can sting like a serpent, then agrees to relate his disasters so that Walton may draw an apt moral before plunging forward.