This phrase, which is the first written in reflexive thought about the Creature, immediately
establishes a threat to presumptions of scientific facticity, as the presence of this
alien existence casts its shadow over all facile assumptions and assurances, leaving
uncertainty in its wake. Such indeterminacy will increasingly come to dominate the
narrative of events in Frankenstein. The fact that the Creature and Victor are traveling
not over solid land but upon the fragile surface of ice is exactly emblematic of the
problematic nature of reality that Mary Shelley introduces to the novel here.