This fable is told by both Aesop and his French follower, Jean de la Fontaine (1621-1695),
in his Fables.

This is the Creature's second knowing reference to Milton's Paradise Lost (see I.670ff.
and X.418ff.): the first was when he remarked that Victor, in creating him, had cast
him as Satan rather than Adam (II:2:11). The oddity of these learned citations goes
unremarked for now, but will be explained five chapters later (II:7:7).

The simile is telling here. We will discover in the next chapter that the Alps can,
indeed, support another "race" of beings. Yet, however much human imagination may
discern in these altitudes the possibility of a transcendence of the human condition,
neither a human nor another kind of being can effectually manage to do so. Moreover,
"another race" of beings, if brought down from an imaginary conception to the solid
ground of normative human existence would be considered, like Victor's Creature, alien
and hounded from human society. The conflict between the unrestricted imagination
and human society is total.

The Arveiron is a glacial tributary the Shelleys visited on their excursion to Mont
Blanc. Their visit is described in the account headed July 24 in Letter 4 of A History
of a Six Weeks' Tour.

The Arve is fed by the glacier called the Mer de Glace (Sea of Ice), where the remaining
chapters of Volume 2 will take place: the river descends from the mountain through
the Chamounix Valley, turns to the east, and joins the Rhone river in its progress
toward Lyons.

Although Mary Shelley in this chapter seems deliberately to be emphasizing the Creature's
"ardour" to place it within the context of the ambitions driving both Walton and Victor
Frankenstein (see paragraph 9 above and note), she is effectively contrasting them.
In the Creature's education language has a moral function, allowing communication
among beings and operating as an instrument by which they may think and feel in common.
True sympathy, the object of his utmost desire, is thus dependent upon language.

Here the Creature joins the other principal male figures of the novel in the diction
of burning intellectual ambition, repeating the phrasing earlier uttered by Walton
and by Victor Frankenstein: see I:L3:1 and I:2:7.

In Paradise Lost Satan bears this designation (I.81)—or is named Arch-foe (VI.259)—but
it is ironically reversed here to apply to the figure who stands in place of God.
Yet, to contemplate the phrase in isolation is to discern serious implications about
the relation between sire and scion of a type that have greatly concerned modern psychoanalytic
discourse.

The Creature's sense of his destiny stands in marked contrast to Victor's. Whereas
the scientist sees himself as passively compelled by his destiny within an obsessive
solitude, whether in his experiments with the principle of life or, later, in pursuit
of the being that is its result, the Creature conceives of himself instinctively within
a domesticated social context where he will be guided by others toward his self-realization.

The Creature had, of course, seen Victor before, but it was by dim moonlight, with
Victor first in bed, then rushing hastily from the room (I:4:3). This is his first
conscious encounter with another human being, whose mundane business is wholly disrupted
by this unanticipated and sublime intrusion.