That is, reserved for destruction, the same usage as in the encounter with Victor
on the Mer de Glace (II:2:11 and note.)

This is the first word that Victor utters to his Creature. Perhaps, as the allusions
to Satan in the previous paragraph suggest, it is already in his mind. But, there
is a dimension to this epithet beyond its effectiveness as an index to Victor's mental
state, a timeless and mythic dimension. Although rigorously suppressed wherever organized
Christendom extended its arms into secular society, the writings of heretical theology,
particularly from Gnostic sects, continually revert to the concurrence of creation
and the fall as two aspects of a single event. Thus to create is to cast out, on a
universal level as well as, literally so, in childbirth. The cast-off in this case
functions as Satan in a dual sense—as a disrupter of the putative unity of God and
his coextensive creation, and—from the Hebrew root—as the accuser, who here immediately
upbraids Victor Frankenstein for not doing his duty by his creature.

Note how carefully Milton embeds this coincidence, without heretically stressing a
linkage, in the moment where God divides himself so as to function on a second level,
as a Creative Word, the Logos that will render God's conceptual blueprint for the
universe into a workable reality (Paradise Lost, V.594-617).

Johnson's 1755 Dictionary offers us the appropriate definitions for this period, definitions
virtually lost to modern English usage:

To addict; to give up to ill.
To curse; to execrate; to doom to destruction.

For the second meaning Johnson helpfully cites the Satanic legions in Paradise Lost,
V.890.

The phrase "devoted head" is so common a usage as to appear to be a customary eighteenth-century
idiom.

This suggests a different kind of determinism from that continually evoked by Victor
Frankenstein, a social and economic form of destiny, what Marx was to denominate as
wage slavery.

Twice in the paragraph stressing the word "cause," the Creature learns that pleasure
and pain proceed from the same force, a considerable development in his education
and mental sophistication. If this is the groundwork of morality, however, it is important
to recognize that it shares a common bond, as the earlier quotation from Percy Bysshe
Shelley's "Mutability" may remind us, with the scientific systems that form so conspicuous
a context for the novel (see II:2:3 and note). There are other elements emphasized
in the novel that likewise exist on a neutral ground that can result in either good
or ill: curiosity is an obvious case in point (II:2:16).

In this phrase the Creature encapsulates what will become the dynamic force of the
third volume, an intense desire turned inside out and thus ironized, so that hatred
is pursued with the single-minded obsession of passionate love.

The reference seems again to be to Paradise Lost (IV.49-53), and specifically to Satan's
attempt to break the chain with which God links all his creatures in an eternal sharing
of selves.

Felix's companion is the owner of the house, who holds as security a quarter-year
deposit that because of his abrupt departure Felix will have to forfeit.

In effect, the Creature asks Victor to look the other way and listen to his story.
We will recognize the similarity of this plea to that made to the blind De Lacey when
the Creature first attempts to establish human community later in the volume (II:7:15).
Throughout Frankenstein sound, rather than sight, is the means by which human sympathy
is evoked.

An appeal to justice must necessarily depend on compassion, fellow-feeling. This is
the only occasion in the Creature's existence where, even momentarily, he has been
accorded what we assume to be that fundamental right of human beings.