The naming of the cottagers depends not just on their individual identities but also
on their family, i.e., their social, relations. That they thus have several different
names, depending on which aspect is being emphasized, constitutes a new level of awareness
on the Creature's part.

Such incongruity of tone can have its value (though Mary Shelley did decide in the
third edition to remove the family presence altogether from Victor's excursion to
Mont Blanc). We will shortly be reminded that there is another part of Victor's family
he has assiduously avoided and to whom, unlike his conventional family, he has given
no solicitude whatsoever. The oddity of tone here, quickly rectified by the gloomy
weather of the next morning, almost unconsciously prepares us for the conversation
so feared and so long postponed but now, given the state of Victor's psychological
condition, clearly urgent.

The power of the Creature's rage is shocking, perhaps as well to himself after having
spent an entire year in isolation and under a regimen of strict and carefully enforced
self-control. The infinitive, however, reminds us how severely that control has been
earlier exercised by him. It might likewise call to mind the lack of restraint with
which Victor Frankenstein pursued the researches that resulted in the Creature's birth
(I:3:3).

This is, it should be obvious, the novel's second such condemnation of an innocent
victim after a summary trial.

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.

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.

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.

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.

This was the easiest route into Italy, across southeastern France from Chambery to
Turin in northwestern Italy. The Mont Cenis Pass rises to only 6825 feet. This was
Napoleon's invasion route to Italy in 1796, and thereafter the post-road was improved
to allow uninterrupted traffic between the two countries. It was this road, indeed,
that the Shelleys themselves would take shiortly after publication of the novel, in
March 1818, on their trip to Italy.

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.