The last word of Percy Bysshe Shelley's "Mont Blanc" is vacancy. In that poem the
mountain is a "blank" slate upon which the mind writes the nature of reality. The
present scene, we must recall, takes place not in the hovel attached to the De Lacey
cottage, but rather in a hut above the Sea of Ice on Mont Blanc. It is here, fittingly,
that the Creature, another blank slate, lives removed from humanity and where he appeals
to his creator for identity, to be written upon.