I have devoted my creator, the select specimen of all that is worthy of love and admiration among men, to misery; I have pursued him even to that irremediable ruin. To you first entering on life, to whom care is new and agony unknown, how can you understand what I have felt and still feel? A frightful selfishness hurried me on, while my heart was poisoned with remorse. Oh! This morning, as I sat watching the wan countenance of my friend—his eyes half closed and his limbs hanging listlessly—I was roused by half a dozen of the sailors, who demanded admission into the cabin. Fittingly, the last few pages of the novel are taken up with the monster’s own words as he attempts to gain self-definition before leaving for the northern ice to die. Be steady to your purposes and firm as a rock. "That is also my victim!" Oh! ", I was at first touched by the expressions of his misery; yet, when I called to mind what Frankenstein had said of his powers of eloquence and persuasion, and when I again cast my eyes on the lifeless form of my friend, indignation was rekindled within me. Our conversations are not always confined to his own history and misfortunes. Echoes of the monster’s earlier statements now appear in Victor’s speech, illustrating the extent to which Victor has become dehumanized. Behold, on these desert seas I have found such a one, but I fear I have gained him only to know his value and lose him. When I reflected on the work I had completed, no less a one than the creation of a sensitive and rational animal, I could not rank myself with the herd of common projectors. He begins his story just slightly before his birth. Frankenstein Quotes – Chapters 22 – 24. Chapter 24. Your toils only begin; wrap yourself in furs and provide food, for we shall soon enter upon a journey where your sufferings will satisfy my everlasting hatred.". Sometimes, seized with sudden agony, he could not continue his tale; at others, his voice broken, yet piercing, uttered with difficulty the words so replete with anguish. 24) Lyrics. Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus (Revised Edition, 1831)/Chapter 24. This is the final lesson in our chronological Frankenstein series! Frankenstein discovered that I made notes concerning his history: he asked to see them, and then himself corrected and augmented them in many places; but principally in giving the life and spirit to the conversations he held with his enemy. The monster keeps eluding Victor, while keeping the chase "Close" in Victors eyes, which keep Victor eager to chase the monster. They are dead, and but one feeling in such a solitude can persuade me to preserve my life. Shelley delays revealing who the murder victim is while offering clues that the murderer is the creature and the victim might be Clerval. The text begins: Chapter 24 My present situation was one in which all voluntary thought was swallowed up and lost. 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. What do these sounds portend? But this was not the time for delay; I disencumbered the dogs of their dead companion, gave them a plentiful portion of food, and after an hour's rest, which was absolutely necessary, and yet which was bitterly irksome to me, I continued my route. He tells her that he believes in the truth of Victor’s story. Do not think that I shall be slow to perform this sacrifice. When the sailors saw this and that their return to their native country was apparently assured, a shout of tumultuous joy broke from them, loud and long-continued. He tracks the monster for months, guided by slight clues, messages, and hints that the monster leaves for him. They were for ever ardent and craving; still I desired love and fellowship, and I was still spurned. Frankenstein Chapter 24 Analysis. I knew that I was preparing for myself a deadly torture, but I was the slave, not the master, of an impulse which I detested yet could not disobey. 01:10:14. Sometimes, when nature, overcome by hunger, sank under the exhaustion, a repast was prepared for me in the desert that restored and inspirited me. Chapter 24 My present situation was one in which all voluntary thought was swallowed up and lost. Yet I seek not a fellow feeling in my misery. The blue Mediterranean appeared, and by a strange chance, I saw the fiend enter by night and hide himself in a vessel bound for the Black Sea. I have murdered the lovely and the helpless; I have strangled the innocent as they slept and grasped to death his throat who never injured me or any other living thing. And I call on you, spirits of the dead, and on you, wandering ministers of vengeance, to aid and conduct me in my work. Use up and down arrows to review and enter to select. Similarly, while Walton and Frankenstein deem the monster a malevolent, insensitive brute, the monster casts himself as a martyred classical hero: “I shall ascend my funeral pile triumphantly and exult in the agony of the torturing flames,” he says. I am interrupted. Be men, or be more than men. September 9th, the ice began to move, and roarings like thunder were heard at a distance as the islands split and cracked in every direction. Start studying Frankenstein - Chapter 24. Warm tears filled my eyes, which I hastily wiped away, that they might not intercept the view I had of the dæmon; but still my sight was dimmed by the burning drops, until, giving way to the emotions that oppressed me, I wept aloud. He seems to feel his own worth and the greatness of his fall. Turning towards the men, he said, "What do you mean? It rang on my ears long and heavily; the mountains re-echoed it, and I felt as if all hell surrounded me with mockery and laughter. Think you that the groans of Clerval were music to my ears? By this point in the novel, Victor has assumed the very inhumanity of which he accuses the monster. But I will endeavour to detail these bitter circumstances to you, my dear sister; and while I am wafted towards England, and towards you, I will not despond. Even where 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. I attempted to speak, but the words died away on my lips. Frankenstein and the Scientific Revolution. Not the ten-thousandth portion of the anguish that was mine during the lingering detail of its execution. Victor leaves Geneva forever, goaded on by the monster 's laughter. But my plan was unsettled, and I wandered many hours round the confines of the town, uncertain what path I should pursue. Summarise parts of the text. Did you not call this a glorious expedition? If playback doesn't begin shortly, try restarting … He told me that he and his companions had been chosen by the other sailors to come in deputation to me to make me a requisition which, in justice, I could not refuse. The Twenty-Fourth Chapter. Farewell, Frankenstein! I recollected my threat and resolved that it should be accomplished. "Yet I cannot ask you to renounce your country and friends to fulfil this task; and now that you are returning to England, you will have little chance of meeting with him. they were my brethren, my fellow beings, and I felt attracted even to the most repulsive among them, as to creatures of an angelic nature and celestial mechanism. Yet when she died! I must arise and examine. I was hurried away by fury; revenge alone endowed me with strength and composure; it moulded my feelings and allowed me to be calculating and calm at periods when otherwise delirium or death would have been my portion. Yet at the idea that the fiend should live and be triumphant, my rage and vengeance returned, and like a mighty tide, overwhelmed every other feeling. I spoke; I told them to retire and consider of what had been said, that I would not lead them farther north if they strenuously desired the contrary, but that I hoped that, with reflection, their courage would return. Must I then lose this admirable being? On every point of general literature he displays unbounded knowledge and a quick and piercing apprehension. We have finished the story of Frankenstein, and what a story! I dare not ask you to do what I think right, for I may still be misled by passion. My thoughts and every feeling of my soul have been drunk up by the interest for my guest which this tale and his own elevated and gentle manners have created. Learn my miseries and do not seek to increase your own. They are momentarily moved, but two days later they again entreat Walton, who consents to the plan of return. I am by birth a Genevese, ... Again shall you raise the funeral wail, and the sound of your lamentations shall again and again be heard! "Do you think that I was then dead to agony and remorse? "Wretch!" Scroll down the post for the printable PDF version. He wants to kill himself but he makes a vow that he will get revenge on the creature. Yet why do I say this? I shall no longer feel the agonies which now consume me or be the prey of feelings unsatisfied, yet unquenched. If you had listened to the voice of conscience and heeded the stings of remorse before you had urged your diabolical vengeance to this extremity, Frankenstein would yet have lived.". I have traversed a vast portion of the earth and have endured all the hardships which travellers in deserts and barbarous countries are wont to meet. A complete lesson on Chapters 24 from Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein ( 1831 ed.). what a scene has just taken place! What his feelings were whom I pursued I cannot know. One inscription that he left was in these words: "Prepare! How did I cling to their dear forms, as sometimes they haunted even my waking hours, and persuade myself that they still lived! He is cold, he cannot answer me.". Why, that requires not this preparation; ye need not have come thus far and dragged your captain to the shame of a defeat merely to prove yourselves cowards. This ice is not made of such stuff as your hearts may be; it is mutable and cannot withstand you if you say that it shall not. Victor's story finally comes to an end when Victor becomes so weak looking for the monster in the Northern ice and falls in the hands of Walton. "Do so, if you will; but I will not. Chapter 24: Frankenstein has lost the capacity for voluntary thought; his entire consciousness is occupied by fantasies of revenge. I will hover near and direct the steel aright. To quit Geneva forever. He tells her that he believes in the truth of Victor’s story. I cannot doubt it, yet I am lost in surprise and admiration. Want study tips sent straight to your inbox? Soon these burning miseries will be extinct. I called on him to stay. When will my guiding spirit, in conducting me to the dæmon, allow me the rest I so much desire; or must I die, and he yet live? Everything was silent except the leaves of the trees, which were gently agitated by the wind; the night was nearly dark, and the scene would have been solemn and affecting even to an uninterested observer. You were hereafter to be hailed as the benefactors of your species, your names adored as belonging to brave men who encountered death for honour and the benefit of mankind. I knelt on the grass and kissed the earth and with quivering lips exclaimed, "By the sacred earth on which I kneel, by the shades that wander near me, by the deep and eternal grief that I feel, I swear; and by thee, O Night, and the spirits that preside over thee, to pursue the dæmon who caused this misery, until he or I shall perish in mortal conflict. The rivers were covered with ice, and no fish could be procured; and thus I was cut off from my chief article of maintenance. How all this will terminate, I know not, but I had rather die than return shamefully, my purpose unfulfilled. All that I should express would be inadequate and feeble. I pressed on, but in vain. A scene has just passed of such uncommon interest that, although it is highly probable that these papers may never reach you, yet I cannot forbear recording it. But when I discovered that he, the author at once of my existence and of its unspeakable torments, dared to hope for happiness, that while he accumulated wretchedness and despair upon me he sought his own enjoyment in feelings and passions from the indulgence of which I was for ever barred, then impotent envy and bitter indignation filled me with an insatiable thirst for vengeance. Follow me; I seek the everlasting ices of the north, where you will feel the misery of cold and frost, to which I am impassive. With what a burning gush did hope revisit my heart! About half an hour afterwards he attempted again to speak but was unable; he pressed my hand feebly, and his eyes closed for ever, while the irradiation of a gentle smile passed away from his lips. But this thought, which supported me in the commencement of my career, now serves only to plunge me lower in the dust. "But soon," he cried with sad and solemn enthusiasm, "I shall die, and what I now feel be no longer felt. Chapter 24. I strained my sight to discover what it could be and uttered a wild cry of ecstasy when I distinguished a sledge and the distorted proportions of a well-known form within. I, who irretrievably destroyed thee by destroying all thou lovedst. Investigating the noise, Walton is startled to find the monster, as hideous as Victor had described, weeping over his dead creator’s body. Years will pass, and you will have visitings of despair and yet be tortured by hope. To Mrs. Saville, England. He was soon borne away by the waves and lost in darkness and distance. Once I falsely hoped to meet with beings who, pardoning my outward form, would love me for the excellent qualities which I was capable of unfolding. Hypocritical fiend! Just as the monster earlier haunts Victor, seeking revenge on him for having destroyed any possibility of a mate for him, Victor now experiences an obsessive need to exact revenge on the monster for murdering his loved ones. These Frankenstein discussion questions will get students sharing, analyzing, debating, and evaluating. Amidst the wilds of Tartary and Russia, although he still evaded me, I have ever followed in his track. His soul is as hellish as his form, full of treachery and fiend-like malice. I have myself been blasted in these hopes, yet another may succeed.". Often, when most miserable, I sank to repose, and my dreams lulled me even to rapture. Why do you not execrate the rustic who sought to destroy the saviour of his child? I am weak, but surely the spirits who assist my vengeance will endow me with sufficient strength." Watch later. Deprived of this respite, I should have sunk under my hardships. Frankenstein; Or, The Modern Prometheus by Mary Shelley. You may give up your purpose, but mine is assigned to me by Heaven, and I dare not. Oh! Farewell, Walton! I said. I shall die. I have divided the questions into four sets that align to my reading … He endeavours to fill me with hope and talks as if life were a possession which he valued. Farewell.". During these last days I have been occupied in examining my past conduct; nor do I find it blamable. It requires more philosophy than I possess to bear this injustice with patience. Provide textual support. Great God! There he lies, white and cold in death. I had no conception that vessels ever came so far north and was astounded at the sight. O blessed sleep! Blasted as thou wert, my agony was still superior to thine, for the bitter sting of remorse will not cease to rankle in my wounds until death shall close them for ever. "In his murder my crimes are consummated; the miserable series of my being is wound to its close! I had determined, if you were going southwards, still to trust myself to the mercy of the seas rather than abandon my purpose. From my infancy I was imbued with high hopes and a lofty ambition; but how am I sunk! Frankenstein tells Walton to "'[s]eek happiness in tranquility and avoid ambition, even if it be only the apparently innocent one of distinguishing yourself in science and discoveries.'" Victor chases the monster from Geneva south to the Mediterranean Sea. Would you also create for yourself and the world a demoniacal enemy? I cannot guess how many days have passed since then, but I have endured misery which nothing but the eternal sentiment of a just retribution burning within my heart could have enabled me to support. Yet even that enemy of God and man had friends and associates in his desolation; I am alone. One morning, Walton’s crewmen enter his cabin and beg him to promise that they will return to England if they break out of the ice in which they have been trapped ever since the night they first saw the monster’s sledge.