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The Creature is thoroughly demonized in his mind.
The Creature is thoroughly demonized in his mind.
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phrase. In the second case, although the revised edition lacks the epigraph from Milton's
Paradise Lost that marks the original title page ("Did I request thee, Maker, from
my clay / To mould me Man?"—X.743-44 ), Mary Shelley's recast diction seems to recall
it with a deliberate irony. In this reconstitution the new Adam, lacking all free
will, is animated by his own revenge, which is the pattern, the "mould," established
by Satan in Milton's epic.
On a mundane rather than cosmic level, however, we might want to contemplate what
it is to have one's entire emotional life formed by the sentiment of revenge? In accord
with the loss of "voluntary thought" mentioned in the previous sentence, Victor also
gives up any feeling, any instinctual sense of identification, that might lead him
away from his obsessive rage against his double. He thus confesses himself as being
wholly shaped, both intellectually and emotionally, by this bond of negation. As he
embarks on a pursuit of high adventure, he casts himself, ironically, as a totally
passive victim of his own choosing.
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shared by Victor Frankenstein and the Creature. Unconscious of his repetitive language,
Victor has named the Creature a "wretch" on first looking at him (see II:4:2) and,
again upon seeing him a second time, as the being approaches him across the Sea of
Ice (II:2:5). But he likewise refers to himself by the same term in the last sentence
of Volume 1 (I:7:33), and Elizabeth characterizes him similarly at the beginning of
the second volume (II:1:8).
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novel than the way in which this term shifts its application as the narrations unfold.
The two words are first juxtaposed by Victor as he contemplates his newly vivified
Creature (I:4:3). This exact phrase is then employed by the Creature (though, of course,
we must recall that in terms of strict chronology, his usage predates that of Victor's
narrative), as he tells of his sensations upon awakening on the first night of his
existence (II:3:2). Now it is he who applies it to Victor. In its final use Victor,
having internalized its truth, will invoke the term, in conversation with Walton,
to describe the total failure of his existence (III:Walton:9).
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with the implication of how unfortunate it will be should Victor once more be "let
loose" upon the world. Here, the term by which Victor first denominated his Creature—wretch
(see I:4:2 and note)—which is descended from the Old English word for exile, is expanded
to encompass the entire world.
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when, awaiting his trial in Ireland, he resolved on the destruction of his Creature
as the sole purpose of his future existence (III:4:43). Once again, we discern language
(e.g. "miserable," "wretch"), which was originally applied to the Creature (I:4:2,
I:4:3), then thrown back upon Victor by the Creature's taunts (III:7:7), operating
as a standard diction for his own self-reference.
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creator exist, miserable and incapable of producing anything else but misery. Its
terms are as applicable to the speaker as to the object of his hatred, as may be indicated
by the simple fact that Victor Frankenstein dies first.
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the primitive Furies of classical myth. Their most prominent realization in Greek
literature is in Aeschylus's Oresteia, where, as enacted in the third part of the
trilogy, The Eumenides, the Furies are persuaded by Athena to give over their ritual
vengeance to a new and more civilized system of justice that will henceforth regulate
human behavior. For Victor thus to invoke the Furies suggests his reversion to a primitive
bloodlust incompatible with modern civilization. Although not yet written, P. B. Shelley's
representation of the Furies in Prometheus Unbound (see I.444), as psychological agents
of self-victimization who lacerate the psyche, is wholly in accord with Mary Shelley's
conception here.
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of Cinderella's coach into a pumpkin) or strange apparitions (witches, elves). It
was at midnight that Victor Frankenstein first encountered his Creature in the wild,
on his return to Geneva after the murder of William (I:6:25).
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he otherwise mirrors in so many aspects. Victor was so preoccupied with inscribing
his experiences in such a way as to exonerate himself that he corrected Walton's transcript
of his narration (III:Walton:4). Oddly enough, the only tangible memory that the Creature
existed is embodied in Walton's manuscript, of which he is ignorant.