Although we are apparently returned here to Alphonse Frankenstein's worries over "immoderate
grief" with which the volume began (II:1:3). We are reminded both that "misery" is
the last noun of Volume 1 and that the Creature ended his account of his life with
the declaration of his own misery (see II:8:36 and note).

Mary Shelley seems deliberately to invoke the terms of Percy Bysshe Shelley's "Alastor:
or, the Spirit of Solitude," published in March 1816 a few months before the summer
trip to Geneva. The title was suggested by their friend Thomas Love Peacock, poet
and novelist, and an autodidact in classical Greek, who conveyed to Percy Bysshe Shelley
the aptness of using the Greek word for a kakodaimon, "alastor," as the governing
term for his poem. The word kakodaimon translates exactly into the "evil spirit" invoked
here by Victor Frankenstein, and its association with solitude is manifest in these
circumstances as well. At the same time, a sensitive reader cannot help observing
the likeness of this term to the diction Victor commonly uses to describe his Creature,
which he now, without recognizing the similarity, applies to himself.

Victor, with something like a Genevan Calvinist's sense of original sin, cannot bring
himself to think of his Creature as created without internal flaw. What we hear in
his phrase is the language of depravity, which is not an element that ever informs
the Creature's narrative of his life.

The "as yet" introduces an ominous tone into this account, but it also reminds us
that the Creature as a voyeur hiding from the world, experiences that world only vicariously.
That his retreat is fragile and his faith in the future tentative are all that he
can be sure of. Elizabeth Lavenza, expressing a similarly impossible desire to escape
the world, had articulated similar sentiments at the beginning of this volume (II:1:9).

That it is to stop a child's naming that impels the Creature almost accidentally to
kill him is significant in several ways. Most importantly, the Creature is existentially
unnamed, lacking an identity that denominates a particularized selfhood and a socialized
connectedness, the sort of implicit identity by which William himself immediately
commands authority. It was Victor Frankenstein's initial duty as his creator to accord
him that name but he fled from the responsibility. Thus, everywhere else in the novel,
with Victor from his distance actively participating in the process, the Creature
is identified, not by a name but through epithets, as being outside a human sphere.
In a symbolic sense at least, William dies for his naming, for taking on a function
only his brother has the right to perform.

Nineteenth-century travelers entering the valley of Chamonix.

The diction reminds us of the numerous uses of "ardent" and its derivatives (from
Latin ardere, 'to burn': see definitions) in Volume 1: see I:3:1 for instance, and
note. Out in the world rather than confined to a hovel, the Creature's capacity for
ardor carries dangerous implications.

Victor directly rejects the Creature's overture and vow not to be set in opposition.
To Victor, whose rejection of his Creature has hardened into a way of life, there
is no alternative to such opposition.

A curious, unusual vocative, but one indicating the Creature's continual association
with natural forces.

This is only the second occasion in which the Creature has shed tears, the other being
on the first night of his existence (II:3:2). Yet how different is this repetition,
another sign of the growing refinement of his emotional life. His oxymoronic response
to music (and perhaps to Safie as well) is a further example of how his education
proceeds by encompassing opposites (see II:3:6 and note).