NOTES

father's dying injunction

To disobey such an injunction, with its almost institutionalized cultural sanction, is to commit a transgression of substance, preparing us for other instances of conflicting goals between son and father—Victor and Alphonse Frankenstein, Felix De Lacey and his blind father—on other narrative levels of the novel, as well as other, much greater transgressions for the sake of knowledge. The fact that Walton is orphaned at a young age introduces yet another common theme of the novel.