1051

  • a criminal judge Although time easily becomes blurred in this novel, the reader should remember that
    it is actually less than two-and-a-half years since the miscarriage of justice that
    resulted in Justine Moritz's execution. That Victor, who on that occasion condemned
    the entire criminal magistracy of Geneva (I:7:14), should now repair to one of them
    to justify his own murderous pursuit of his Creature underscores the intellectual
    distance he has traversed in the intervening months, as well as the extremity of his
    current mental state.

    • 1057

  • the daemon Such nomenclature has been absent from the novel since early in the second chapter
    (see, for instance, II:2:7): from this point on, Victor resorts increasingly to this
    term, which increasingly lends his Creature a larger-than-life, fantastic presence
    in his mind and in the representation of him.

    • 1060

  • when you . . . danger Compare with this the stanza quoted from Coleridge's "Rime of the Ancient Mariner"
    to characterize Victor's precipitous walk the morning after the Creature came to life
    (I:4:7 and note). Victor's sense of helplessness, which will soon reach an extremity,
    becoming transformed into a catatonic physical state, will increasingly dominate the
    novel's late events.

    • 1059

  • a dæmon Such dehumanized nomenclature is becoming Victor's standard term for his Creature.

    • 1062

  • deserts and barbarous countries As elsewhere in the novel (see III:3:1 and note) and in accord with contemporary
    usage, "desert" here means any wilderness. In classical references the land of the
    barbarians is generally construed as Scythia, which is the far interior of Russia.
    Fittingly, then, it is to that exact geographical region that Victor will pursue the
    Creature.

    • 1061

  • The threat appeared more as a delusion So heavily ironized has become Victor's existence by this point in the novel that
    he can entertain a notion of a wholesale inversion of reality without remarking on
    the distortion. The return to an actual reality will come, we can be sure, with a
    devastating finality.

    • 1064

  • my demoniacal design As "design" had an ambiguous sense in its recent application to Victor (III:Walton:18
    and note), so here the reader is brought short by the Creature's assertion that his
    series of acts have been freely willed. The very adjective he employs embodies an
    internalization of Victor's demonization of him. Although he certainly bears responsibility
    for his acts through an abiding remorse, at the same time we are aware that he has
    been conditioned into the state of the demonic. To adapt the logic of his own rhetoric,
    negated as a human being, he has been recreated as a demon by the relentless scapegoating
    he has suffered.

    • 1063

  • deserts The term is a generic locution for an area uninhabited by humanity (see II:2:13 and
    note). Thus, the Creature's plan to seek "the vast wilds of South America" is compatible
    with this meaning.

    Compare the OED:

    1. An uninhabited and uncultivated tract of country; a wilderness: . . . b. formerly
    applied more widely to any wild, uninhabited region, including forest-land.

    See also Johnson's definition from the Dictionary of 1755:

    DESERT. n.s. [desertum, Latin.] A wilderness; solitude; waste country; uninhabited
    place.

    Be alive again,
    And dare me to the desert with thy sword.
    Of trembling I inhibit; then protest me
    The baby of a girl. Shakespeare's Macbeth. He, looking round on every side, beheld

    A pathless desert, dusk with horrid shades. Paradise Reg.

    • 1066

  • in proper detail This remark may be seen as less innocent than it appears at first. Victor is about
    to recount a trial in which it is essential that he exonerate himself. On a more interior
    level of the discourse we as readers are privy to a second narrative, which is meant
    by Victor to exonerate the course of his life to Walton and, through Walton, to posterity.
    This comment, then, links up with other instances, both early and late in the novel,
    in which Victor's concern with rhetorical propriety shadows a desire to write history
    so as to reflect well on him (see I:L4:30, I:3:13, and III:WC:2 and III:WC:4).
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