• wantonness of power

    The Creature knows about the effects of unchecked power through the account of Safie's
    father's persecution (II:6:3) and the De Laceys' ruination (II:6:14), and he may have
    gleaned something of its underlying assumptions from William Frankenstein's instinctive
    reliance on his father's ability to punish arbitrarily (see II:8:27 and note). Yet,
    it is to Victor that the Creature speaks, and, since he has used a derivative of "wantonness"
    in his earlier condemnation (II:8:1 and note), it is perhaps to that particularized
    sense of irresponsibility that he reverts here.