Perhaps the Creature comprehends that is he talking to a person from a long line of
civic magistrates, or perhaps his plea has simply been predicated on their shared
Enlightenment discourse. Whatever the case, in his long narration he has consistently
been touching on the nerve from which he at last gets a response. For the first time
in his dealings with the Creature, from the original thought of his creation down
to this moment of moral decision, Victor acknowledges an abstract concept of the justice
owed him.

By this point in the novel, after two trials and an education in ancient and modern
political science, this word may be thought to carry large public as well as private
associations. But in this context they are theological as well, invoking the notion
of a theodicy (from Greek theou dike), a justification of God, which is Milton's announced
purpose for Paradise Lost: that is, to "justify the ways of God to men" (I.26).

Behind this utterance, one can hear what is truly the locus classicus, the classic
statement, of how one is impelled by exile to provide sympathetic assistance to other
exiles, that of Dido before the shipwrecked Aeneas: "Non ignari mali, miseris succerere
disco—Not ignorant of evils myself, I learn to succor the miserable" (Aeneid, I.630).
Without question Mary Shelley's educated readers would have heard the resonance of
this Latin tag, an allusion few women novelists of this time would have had sufficient
classical training to make.

This is the route from Geneva to Chamonix represented in the standard nineteenth-century
British guidebook to the region.

From Edward Whymper, Chamonix and the Range of Mont Blanc (London: John Murray, 1896).

Evidently the journal is written in French, and it suggests that Victor's claim to
Walton that he had thought his creation beautiful until it was infused with life (I:4:2
and note) to some extent masked his original feelings.

Here, as elsewhere in the novel, we sense some strain in Victor's relationship with
his strict father. Usually it is marked by his being recalled by a paternal admonition
to obligations that he has not met: see, for instance, I:3:10 and note; I:3:12 and
note.

That is, he will not abide by rules of combat stipulated by human beings.

The Creature repeats his claim, which amounts to his saying that, like Adam, he was
created free of original sin.

With telling artistic assurance Mary Shelley has the Creature, who up to this point
has referred to himself only by personal pronouns, name himself with the same word
originally used by Victor, "wretch" (I:4:3). Here, however, he defines himself as
what King Lear calls "the thing itself . . . unaccommodated man" (III.iv.100). Perhaps,
indeed, Mary Shelley means us to hear in the insistent repetition of the word "wretch"
the memorable accents of that unsceptered, sorrowing monarch:

Poor naked wretches, whereso'er you are,
That bide the pelting of this pitiless storm,
How shall your houseless heads and unfed sides,
Your loop'd and window'd raggedness, defend you
From seasons such as these? O, I have ta'en
Too little care of this! Take physic, pomp;
Expose thyself to feel what wretches feel,
That thou mayst shake the superflux to them,
And show the heavens more just.
—III.iv.28-36

This is actually the second such vow. The first, uttered after being driven from the
De Lacey's cottage (paragraph 3 above above and note) was, upon sober (and mistaken)
self-reflection, withdrawn. This time the Creature will carry out his threat.