Frankenstein

Chapter 24

Mary Shelley · Mountaineers 10th–12th

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Copywork

I trod heaven in my thoughts, now exulting in my powers, now burning with the idea of their effects. From my infancy I was imbued with high hopes and a lofty ambition; but how am I sunk!

But now crime has degraded me beneath the meanest animal. No guilt, no mischief, no malignity, no misery, can be found comparable to mine. When I run over the frightful catalogue of my sins, I cannot believe that I am the same creature whose thoughts were once filled with sublime and transcendent visions of the beauty and the majesty of goodness. But it is even so; the fallen angel becomes a malignant devil.

Read both passages aloud. Victor’s fall comes in one short cry. The creature’s comes in a row of four “no”s and then one long, slow sentence. What can the slow telling do that the cry cannot?

For the educator Two passages, six sentences, one from each speaker. The first is Victor’s, from the week of talk on Walton’s ship. Its first sentence is short and bold at the start, “I trod heaven in my thoughts”, and then hangs two matching phrases on it, each opening with the same word: “now exulting in my powers, now burning with the idea of their effects.” Here “now” means at one moment and then at another; the whole sentence is past, and the repeated word keeps it swinging. The second sentence climbs through “high hopes and a lofty ambition”, then turns on a semicolon to a cry with its word order inverted, “but how am I sunk!” The fall takes five words. The second passage is the creature’s, over Victor’s body. It opens on “But now”: the turn has already happened. The next sentence lists four nouns after the same small word, “No guilt, no mischief, no malignity, no misery”, three of them sharing an m, and holds its verb back until the list is done, then closes on “mine”. The third sentence is the longest in either passage. It opens with a when-clause, names a “catalogue” (he has just made one), and reaches back to “the beauty and the majesty of goodness”, ending on that word. The last sentence concedes in five plain words, “But it is even so;”, and then states a law in the present tense: “the fallen angel becomes a malignant devil.” Both speakers tell a fall, and both use the same root for it: Victor speaks of his “degradation” a moment after his passage, and the creature says crime has “degraded” him. Both also reach for the same figure. A few lines before his passage Victor says he is “like the archangel who aspired to omnipotence”; the creature ends his on “the fallen angel”, then adds that even that angel “had friends and associates in his desolation; I am alone.” For the talk prompt, listen for a student who hears the long sentence as more honest because it stays with what was lost and names its own sins, and for one who hears it as more practised, the measured speech of a speaker Victor called “eloquent and persuasive”. Both can point to the sentences.

Discussion

Narration Tell the end of the book back in your own words, from Victor’s vow at the graves to the creature’s leap from the cabin window.

On the chase, Victor sometimes finds a meal set out for him. He says he “will not doubt” that the spirits he called on left it there. What would it cost him to doubt it? Inference
Victor asks to see the notes Walton has kept on his story. He corrects them and adds to them, most of all the talks he had with his enemy. Why those parts? Character
On his deathbed, Victor tells Walton to “avoid ambition”. Then he asks, “Yet why do I say this?” and adds that “another may succeed.” Walton has already given up his voyage and is heading home. How might that advice sound to him? Theme
In the cabin, the creature hears Walton come in and leaps toward the window. Walton tries to remember his duty toward “this destroyer.” Then he calls on him to stay. What does Walton want him to stay for? Inference
The creature says that when Elizabeth died, he was “not miserable.” Why say that at all? Character
The creature says he will go to the far north and burn himself there. The book never shows it. The last we see, the waves carry him off, “lost in darkness and distance.” What would the book give up by showing the fire? Author's choice

Make a Connection Think of a story, a trial in history, or a time in your own life when you heard two sides of the same quarrel. What made one side easier to believe than the other?

Vocabulary

adjuration: I had begun my adjuration with solemnity and an awe which almost assured me that the shades of my murdered friends heard and approved my devotion, but the furies possessed me as I concluded, and rage choked my utterance. A solemn vow or appeal made by calling on something sacred as witness (from the Latin for swearing to, as in adjure). At the graves Victor swears “By the sacred earth” and “by thee, O Night”, and calls on the spirits of the dead to help him; then he names the whole speech his “adjuration”. It is a promise and a summons at once, and on the chase he credits every help he gets to the powers he summoned.
asseverations: His tale is connected and told with an appearance of the simplest truth, yet I own to you that the letters of Felix and Safie, which he showed me, and the apparition of the monster seen from our ship, brought to me a greater conviction of the truth of his narrative than his asseverations, however earnest and connected. Earnest, solemn statements that something is true (from the Latin for declaring seriously). Walton says the letters of Felix and Safie and the monster seen from the ship convinced him more than Victor’s “asseverations, however earnest and connected.” The word marks the gap between a man insisting and a thing shown, and it tells us how Walton weighs a tale.
imbued: From my infancy I was imbued with high hopes and a lofty ambition; but how am I sunk! Filled through and through, the way cloth takes in a dye (from the Latin for soaking or wetting). Victor says, “From my infancy I was imbued with high hopes and a lofty ambition”. The word makes ambition something soaked into him from childhood rather than a choice made once, which raises the question of how far he chose it.
malignity: No guilt, no mischief, no malignity, no misery, can be found comparable to mine. A deep, active wish to do harm; ill will (related to malignant and malice). Three speakers use the word in this chapter. Dying, Victor says the creature “showed unparalleled malignity”; Walton, in the cabin, calls Victor “the victim of your malignity”; and the creature, in his own list, says “no malignity” can be compared to his. The accusers and the accused agree on the word, which leaves the reader to weigh what each means by it.
paramount: This was my duty, but there was another still paramount to that. Highest in importance; above every other (from the old French for above). Dying, Victor grants that he owed the creature its happiness, “but there was another still paramount to that”, his duty to his own kind. The word is how he ranks his duties, and the ranking is his whole defence.
blamable: During these last days I have been occupied in examining my past conduct; nor do I find it blamable. Deserving blame; at fault (also spelled blameable). Dying, Victor says he has examined his past conduct, “nor do I find it blamable.” It is a verdict in a trial he holds on himself, with himself as the only judge.
abhorrence: You hate me, but your abhorrence cannot equal that with which I regard myself. Deep hatred mixed with disgust (from the Latin for shrinking back in horror; related to abhor). The creature tells Walton, “You hate me, but your abhorrence cannot equal that with which I regard myself.” He takes Walton’s strongest feeling against him and claims to feel it more.
conflagration: The light of that conflagration will fade away; my ashes will be swept into the sea by the winds. A great fire that destroys what it burns (from the Latin for burning up together). The creature pictures his own pyre: “The light of that conflagration will fade away”. He pictures the fire and even its fading, though the book never shows it.

Critical thinking

Victor says that the friends we grow up with judge our motives best. Walton has known him for a few weeks. He meets Victor’s enemy once, at midnight. How good a judge can Walton be?
Dying, Victor looks back on what he has done and does not find it “blamable.” Later, over his body, the creature tells Walton, “You hate me,” and adds that he hates himself more. Whose account should Walton trust more, the dying Victor’s or the creature’s?