NOTES

what were my duties with regard to this destroyer

"Duty" has been a charged concept throughout Frankenstein, invoked in regard to family 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.