Frankenstein starts out with the preface and a series of four letters written by the explorer Robert Walton addressed to his sister. These four letters set up the rest of the novel. Walton is setting out to find the answers to something no one at that time knew. He wants to find a northern passage to the Pacific, and he craves to find that answer. In the second letter he writes about how lonely he is and how he longs for a friend. In the fourth letter, Walton finds a man on a sledge, who later turns out to be Victor Frankenstein, because Walton states the following story is his the stranger's own. These letters and Frankenstein and Walton meeting already set a series of parallels. Walton and Frankenstein parallel each other, because Walton