• a black and comfortless sky

    After the allusions to hell in these paragraphs the absence of any conventional sign
    of heaven is starkly telling. So "hellish" has Victor's psychological state become
    that the universe seems to have changed to reflect it. Even as one posits moral or
    theological implications to this language, however, one must be conscious that the
    megalomania that allowed Victor to presume to usurp God's prerogatives in the first
    place might just as easily issue in changing the universe to suit the mood of his
    mind.