1425

the wind was unfavorable As would be natural in this environment, the storm descends from the west or northwest,
picking up energy and precipitation in traversing Lake Geneva. To return to Geneva,
Victor must drive squarely against the wind. With sails thus rendered useless, only
manual exertion can prevail against the storm.

1423

Who feared that if I lost all trace I should despair and die The egotism of this statement is less strange than its underlying logic, which is
that the closed circle of revenge enacts a kind of perverse sympathy in which the
Creature sustains Victor so that he may continue on his mission to destroy his Creature.
Throughout this final chapter of Victor's narration Mary Shelley is ingenious in following
through on the implications of a life cast wholly in an ironic mode.

1433

young man As the weight of circumstances and of tragedies accumulates it may be somewhat difficult
to remember the actual chronology of the novel. Victor is yet only 24 years old.

1432

you, my friend Not since Volume 1 (I:3:13, I:6:18 and note) have the narrative lines been broken
to remind us of the circumstances in which this story is being told. As was the case
in those instances Victor signals a new intensification in the circumstances of the
plot, with Henry Clerval reentering the novel.

1410

I lay for two months It has been less than three years since Victor Frankenstein had been seized with
a similar "nervous fever" that, after the creation of his being, confined him for
months (see I:4:17 and note). Mary Shelley emphasizes how severely debilitated his
physical state has become as a result of the acute psychological stress under which
he has been laboring and from which no amount of diversion can seem to liberate him.

1411

the threatened fate as unavoidable Victor's constant attention to his unavoidable fate is at least partly to be construed,
at this point in the discourse, as a justification for the blindness with which he
worried so exclusively about himself, leaving Elizabeth unprotected. But it falls
in line as well with his reiterated invocation of destiny during this narration to
Walton, a rhetorical ploy by which, whether or not it is his explicit intention, he
exonerates himself of acknowledged responsiblity for the events his actions produce.

1416

the love of virtue The Creature unwittingly echoes the language with which Victor surveyed his past
life after the execution of Justine Moritz (II:1:1).

1376

tears gushed from my eyes Victor's emotional instability is underscored by this sudden excess of sensibility.
That his rekindled joy will soon be transformed into the despair his isolation in
the boat had prefigured is indicative of the irony in which, from the point in which
he spurned his Creature's desire for sympathetic rapport, he finds himself invested.
Later, hope will come to him in a "burning gush" of ironically inverted expectation
(III:7:22).

1377

tears . . . streamed from my eyes Even as Victor thinks of himself as reacting with compassion to the assumed plight
of Elizabeth, it is clear to any reader that he is actually weeping for himself. His
giving in at last to his feelings is thus ironized, for rather than opening him to
a renewal of his emotional life, his convulsive weeping results from a maudlin theatrical
representation of his own death that wholly mistakes the threat to his future wife.

1375

the sympathy of a stranger In accentuating his own lack of any ties but the common ones of humanity, Mr. Kirwin
quietly establishes his link with Walton, who in the immediate context of the narrative
recital has likewise altruistically attended to Victor's well-being without any sense
of obligation or self-congratulation.

Subscribe to