Frankenstein Chapters 17-20

Chapters 17-20

The wretch asks that Victor create another monster with the same defects of another sex. More than request he demands it as a right from his creator and vows to make Victor's life a living hell should he refuse to comply with the demands of the monster. At first, Victor adamantly refuses to fulfill the request irrespective of how dire the consequences might be, for the telling of William's murder had once again made him feel the rage and disgust he had nurtured for the creature before learning of his tale. The creature attempts to reason with him instead of relying on his passion. He promises Victor that if such a woman were to be made for him, then they would both quit the company of man and instead live under the blue sky, and sleep on dried leaves in the deserted countryside of South America.

At last, Victor is moved by the supplication of the creature and decides to create another. Frankenstein's monster promptly quits him and bids him begin his work at the earliest. Victor begins his journey back down the mountain with a heavy heart, he reaches the village the following morning but doesn't stay any longer and instead journeys back home immediately. Victor spends many days at home upon his return, unwilling and unable to recommence the work he had grown to detest so terribly. He spends many an hour aboard his boat sailing aimlessly in the lake. One day upon his return from such an activity, his father stops him and enquires the source of this melancholy. He conjectures that Victor was unhappy because he no longer wished to marry Elizabeth and had instead found another whom he loved. Victor reassures his father that such wasn't the case, and so his father suggests that Victor and Elizabeth get married as quickly as possible.

Victor finds such an idea repulsive, he cannot enter into a union with the lovely Elizabeth without first reaching an end of his slavery with the monster. He is aware that creating a female would require a lot more research, and he had also heard of an English philosopher who may be able to assist him in gleaning some important information. Thus he decides to marry Elizabeth only after he has freed himself from the monster, and begins preparations for a trip to England.

His family is supportive of his decision, but to ensure that he may continue to remain in good spirits and health, they secretly contrive to have Henry join Victor in his journey to England. The time for his departure soon arrives and Elizabeth bids him a teary and silent farewell. Along the way, he thinks about what the monster is likely to do now that he had quit his home, but feels certain that he would follow Victor to England and leave his family alone.

Henry soon joins Victor along for the journey and loves the scenery of the trip, so much so that even Victor begins to see a little bit of the joy in his surroundings. Victor stops his retelling here briefly, to mourn the loss of his dear friend Henry and wonders whether his spirit perished along with his body.

Victor arrives in London along with Clerval, who makes use of the gentry of the town to advance his plan of traveling to India to aid in the colonization of the country. Victor seeks out the information he requires by visiting the relevant people, but his heart no longer finds joy in the smiling countenance of strangers, instead, his only solace remains in his friend Henry. Victor begins collecting the materials for his deed, and soon both Victor and Henry are invited to Scotland.

Hoping that the wild environs of the country would alleviate some of the angst they felt in being away from Switzerland, they both agree readily. They journey slowly through England as they visit historically important towns, but always at the back of Victor's mind remains a worry for his family, and that the monster may decide to harm them. He worries for Henry as well, sometimes thinking that the monster may choose to kill his friend because of the delay in fulfilling his promise.

Once they arrive in Scotland, Victor bids his friend goodbye and requests a few months in solitude, although Henry is reluctant to leave him alone. Victor heads north and sequesters himself on a tiny rock island, where he rents a hut and begins his despicable labor. When earlier he had worked on the project, he had been led by a deep passion, but now his blood is cold and his disgust for the work inevitably grows. Somedays he finds it difficult to even begin his work on the specimen, and on other days he works day and night to expedite the process.

One night as Victor is near the completion of his project, he begins to reconsider the implications of creating yet another monster. While the wretch had promised to leave the lands of man, this new monster that he was just then creating had made no similar promises. It could be that the monster he now created became more evil and wretched than the first, and it was also possible that the two daemons could come together and have children that could then ruin the whole species of man. Just then, he perceives the daemon through his window, he had followed Victor from Switzerland to Scotland. Seeing the monster resolves Victor to his course of action, immediately he turns to his labor and tears it to shreds. The monster on seeing this is moved to howls of despair and anger.

The daemon soon comes to Victor and orders him to continue his work, but Victor is unmoved by the threats. The monster promises him a life full of misery, and with a promise to see Victor on his wedding night, he quits the island. Victor is miserable and afraid of what the daemon might do to him and his friends, but his resolve to never again create another monster remains strong. The next day he receives letters from home, and one from Henry, who requests Victor to hurry to him, as he is soon going to depart for England and from there to India. Victor decides to leave the island and rejoin his friend, but before that he wishes to get rid of all traces of his past labors. He stuffs the remains of the creature he had been fashioning into a basket and loads it with stones.

He takes the basket out into the ocean on a little skiff and in an isolated part of the waters, drops the basket into the depths of the water. He falls asleep in the boat and awakens to find himself stranded on the boat with no sight of land. However, the winds change later in the day and he can find a trace of land, and so directs his little skiff towards a visible town. He is received with hostility in Ireland and immediately taken to the magistrate in connection with the murder of a man that had occurred the previous night.

Analysis

The creature changes his tone when he bids Victor to create another monster, he has been almost an empathetic and compassionate individual throughout his tale, he now clearly displays maliciousness in the way he threatens Victor. The roles that both of them occupy also interchange in this encounter, whereas before Victor had occupied the dominant position, he now begins to think of himself as the slave of the monster.

Throughout the novel, Victor displays questionable ethics, never are these instances explained to the reader. Out of the several examples, the most poignant one is his selfishness in not preserving the life of Justine, which is contrasted by the heroic actions of Felix who risks all to rescue a wrongfully convicted unknown man. Another instance of significance is his belief that the monster will only attempt to harm him and somehow spare his family, when the monster has harmed those close to Victor in the past.