it the vexed tension between father and son observed in the early chapters when Victor
was an adolescent. Victor's silence here, of course, is of no advantage in bringing
Alphonse to a better understanding of his by-now adult scion. Perhaps the son's reticence
is meant not just to mark his fear that the truth of his guilt would not be countenanced
by his father but also to implicate this strained history between them.