affairs, social obligations, legal contracts, uses of knowledge—even, in Victor's
rationale for suspending his second creation, the human race. This occasion is different
from all the rest, involving the question of what is the moral duty of a human to
another sentient but alien being. This assertion of the priority of moral obligation
requires willed self-abnegation on Walton's part. No other figure in the novel, certainly
not Victor Frankenstein, has ever assumed that the Creature was owed anything.