tfw u rly want this dying guy you found whimpering on a floe of ice but one can ever be to him as clerval was, because even when the affections are not strongly moved by any superior excellence, the companions of our childhood always possess a certain power over our minds which hardly any later friend can obtain (rolling eyes emoji)
Robert Walton laying on his bed kicking his feet up while he writes in his diary letters to his sister about the cute new guy onboard and how he's like a celestial spirit that has a halo around him, and how even now in wreck he's soo attractive and amiable, and omg he is like so gentle yet so wise, and when he speaks, ugghhh, although his words are culled with the choicest art, yet they flow with rapidity and unparalleled eloquence 💖💝💞
victor's belief that he's responsible for the deaths of his family (by extension of creating the creature) was borne out of excessive guilt, i might go as far as to say bordering on delusions of persecution. id argue walton was more directly responsible for deaths than victor ever was (several members of his crew died on his ship as a result of his inexperience and persistence), but first and foremost the creature was responsible, not victor, and to suggest otherwise i think is blatantly ignoring the creature's autonomy. he had a cultivated understanding of morality and the world's evils and chose, while knowing and feeling that it was a moral wrong, to murder. i think, eventually, it is this willingness to deliberately go against his own morals to commit evil acts that victor considers monstrous, not just the creature's monstrous appearance in of itself, which is one of the defining factors of his choice not to create the female creature.
if anything, id argue this passage is actually proof of victor acknowledging his "failure as a parent" or rather his duty as a parent, its just not done so directly. this is a story being told in retrospect, and that fact colors victor's narration because he already knows the events that are being described. in this sense, the quote seems more of an acknowledgement of this than anything else, particularly with the language of "creature" and "being to which they had given life" used to describe a child, which, like youre saying, are both blatant parallels to how victor describes the creature. if you look at this and then consider it within the context of victor and creature's confrontation on the alps, where victor does actually explicitly admit to his duties as a creator, i think it changes things:
For the first time, also, I felt what the duties of a creator towards his creature were, and that I ought to render him happy before I complained of his wickedness. These motives urged me to comply with his demand.
and then, later:
I was moved [...] I felt that there was some justice in his argument. His tale, and the feelings he now expressed, proved him to be a creature of fine sensations; and did I not as his maker, owe him all the portion of happiness that it was in my power to bestow?
in both quotes victor mentions he feels he owes the creature happiness, i.e. the same "train of enjoyment" he experienced in his own childhood, and it is the feelings the creature expressed (stemming from his mistreatment by victor, but also more importantly by society as a whole; i think people tend to overinflate the importance of the creature's "abandonment" by victor in the grand scheme of things) that push victor to this idea. that is, victor pretty directly admits to the effect of his absence on creature.
Victor Frankenstein admits multiple times that him creating the creature led to multiple deaths so he’s responsible in that sense but he assumes it’s because he created a monster but in my opinion, he knows him failing as a parent/abandoning the creature is why it turned out the way that it did, he just won’t admit it, and this passage from chapter one is my prime evidence.
I was their plaything and their idol, and something better—their child, the innocent and helpless creature bestowed on them by Heaven, whom to bring up to good, and whose future lot it was in their hands to direct to happiness or misery, according as they fulfilled their duties towards me. With this deep consciousness of what they owed towards the being to which they had given life, added to the active spirit of tenderness that animated both, it may be imagined that while during every hour of my infant life I received a lesson of patience, of charity, and of self-control, I was so guided by a silken cord that all seemed but one train of enjoyment to me.
i was trying to find a specific post that i half-remembered at like 4am last night but out of context this is really funny
it’s come to my attention that apparently there’s a kanye west adaptation of the re-animator novelization and i couldn’t bear the burden of this awful information alone:
look at it... and its got such impassioned reviews too:
robert walton laid down in his bed and wrote every letter gushing about victor to margaret in this pose
SORRY FOR ANY 60s cringe. but behold...
does anyone remember that time demian called a guy a kitten and then procceeded to beat his ass so bad he had to leave the country
“victor frankenstein was selfish” name 5 choices he actually made for himself
While the concept of little victor summoning ghosts is very funny and adorable just imagine an older, grieving victor digging out his old books to give it one more try. Just imagine.