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"On the ice—the men saw it, circling in the mists."
The winds here are no less savage in the palm of mid-day than in the gullet of night. Oh, Margaret, what use is it to attempt to describe the conditions our vessel found itself in. The line of horizon was swallowed—sea, the colour of sky, the colour of ice, until all was an oblivion of white. And somewhere, beyond the reach of sight, paced a monstrosity beyond my courage to imagine.
As I have described in previous letters that I hope have reached you unmolested, threats of squall and store are threats to any mariner, and hardly bear recording. But an Arctic expedition can find the sea itself close up around it, crushing it in an indefinite prison of ice. The dangers then become the endurance of the crew, in body and spirit, and just as there are oceanic hunters, sharks and great whales that circle and wait for the unwary seaman, here also be dragons that live on the edges of human population.
Borne by the endless plains of icy confinement, Arctic bears are dogged and unrelenting in their pursuits. They are sensible only to the eternal threat of starvation, such that the voice of a rifle--which could dissuade many of their cousins of warmer climes--falls on their ears like the cries of Troy to their conquering Greeks. Their pursuit ends with either the death and evisceration of their prey, or their own annihilation.
My companion's hunter and destruction lay in those freezing mists, sharpening its teeth for on the whetstone of its own monstrous hunger.
It was evidently capable of some small speech; perhaps it was capable of reason. It had emulated humanity as the savages of the New World emulate the European races, draping itself in the cast-off clothes of Man and the stinking pelts of beasts. This, to me, demonstrated a base intelligence. And if it indeed possesses a base intelligence and a degree of reason, I must parlay with the creature. It was my duty, I reasoned, forcing my feet to comply as I moved to the bow, and against the sense that told me that to speak to it would be to enrage it further, or cause its wrath to be delivered on my ship and crew with equal ferocity, I called into the whiteness, certain that it was near enough to hear.
"Wretch! Speak, if it is in your power! Or can you only groan and howl and bark as a wildman?"
From all places, the voice answered, sonorous as an impending avalanche, and all my senses raged in terror as it spoke.
"It is in my power."
The music of its words surprised me, as the voice of an elk has some melody that resembles the instruments of an orchestra, and held in it the rumbling timpani and the threat of storm. Its words too were distinct, its tongue agile and well-spoken—accented, even, with the filigree of French—entirely unlike the clumsy, half-witted mumble Frankenstein had described, and unrecognizable from the monstrous howls the night before, when it had cracked through the air as the wind shatters frozen boughs.
Having expected it to answer me with inarticulate groans or slow, half-grunted words, I spoke again with a new wariness. Devils, I knew, had sweet voices when it suited.
"Your master has told me all: the nature of your creation, that you have killed men, and now pursue him with the intent of murder. What defense have you for your crimes?"
The silence of the wastes answered for a time, until the creature spoke again.
"If you are convinced of my nature, why thus do you ask?"
"I am the captain of this vessel." Still unable to find the source of its malodious speech, I spoke this to the frozen nothingness, as if to the Northern winds. Indeed, I felt as if I parlayed with the icy grip of Father Winter himself. "I have seen the strength you wield, devil; I know it is in your power to destroy us, by violence or by attrition. The lives and deaths of my men stand at the call of my judgment. If I am to decide their peril, I must judge the truth of that poor sinner's tale. "
"Oh, praise the eternal justice of man!" It bit the last with bitter fury, and the beast showed its nature in the growl that shuddered the frozen wood and steel around me. "The guilty are allowed, by human laws, bloody as they may be, to speak in their own defence before they are condemned. Think thee to take the seat of judge on my wretched claim? Already you are compelled against me! No impartial magistrate are you, arbiter of this desolation. I have destroyed a number of your crew, Captain; if you are sensible of your responsibility for the lives of the others, then your decision should be made without such ceremony. I seek only the life of Victor Frankenstein; your life and the lives of all under your command shall be spared, if only you provide me that which I ask: my creator, so that I may lay vengeance upon him that has wronged me."
"What wrong do you claim? How has he injured you?"
"He has cursed me with life; is there any greater curse?"
"Life, a curse? The gift of God to man?"
"Not just to man, and not just by God. If he has spoken to you of my existence, he could not have helped himself but to boast of his hand in my creation, his pretensions to the World's creator. Eager are you to believe his condemnations, while he is beautiful and I am so deformed; while his speech is gentle as the thrush, and mine harsh as the raven. So eagerly does the man listen to the song of one, and spurn the other. Am I to trust your judgment, prejudiced as you are against me?"
"He has come to us for sanctuary; it would be faithless to surrender him to a fate we do not know he deserves. While we stand as men, we cannot hand a man willingly to a bloody and unjust fate."
"You speak of peril and do not place yourself in that danger you claim to know. Come down," the voice said. "Come down; speak to me as a man, not from your perch like a judge upon his captive. Though I stand accused, you would not speak to Frankenstein in such indignity. Come down, Captain."
I had not anticipated, when first I spoke to those howling winds, that any voice might answer. And now, poised to be given full answer to a tale beyond my wildest imagination, I faltered.
"Come down!" it roared with sudden and leonine fury, its ferocity whetted by my indecision.
"I must have some promise of safety," I answered in sudden good sense. It might grasp the ladder as soon as it touched the ice, and climb like a fox into the hen-coop, slaughtering my men once more as it sought its master. I confess I feared for my own life, but is it not my duty as captain to place myself as lamb in the mouth of the wolf, for the preservation of my flock? Dear sister, I stood in agony in the throes of my decision, knowing that only the Devil could have conceived of this fate when I set out on this journey.
"My oath I give, if any oath of mine you might believe."
At this, my first mate spoke to advise against the choice. I did my best to explain the necessity of my course, and gave direction for the Creature to stand to the starboard side and reveal itself, where the sharp-eyed crew could watch and warn me should it move. The others I commanded to lower the ladder and let me down, and pull the ladder back up after my descent. In this way, should the creature betray its flimsy oath, mine would be the first life taken, in service to all others.
The crew that had gathered at the railings to spy for the creature recoiled in surprise and horror, as a shape they had taken as a drift of snow lifted up its sunken eyes and hollow face to glower at them. Ice had accumulated on the coarse fabric and furs, crusting even over the mouth of its scarf, where the warmth of life should have melted a path to air.
"I shall do as you ask, Captain. Then shall you hear my testimony and judge the justice of Frankenstein's charges."
And it was done. It was not only the cold of arctic ice that shuddered through my boots and up my body, but the cold terror of death that struck my heart. Still, I shook the ice from my fear-frozen heart to shout again, to tell it that I was in the place I had said, and prepared to meet it.
I regretted then, asking it to stand so far--though it had been for my crew's safety--for in the time the creature required to move through the heavy snow, my fear had grown to near madness, and I recognized in myself less a man, and more a pallid mouse, watching for the shadow of a cat to draw ever closer.
When at last I perceived its shape around the bow of my ship, I rallied every fiber of my courage and manly pride to resist the impulse to throw myself into the desolation of the deadly wasteland around me. How had my companion borne the countenance of this creature? How had he rallied the strength to pursue it? And as it drew closer, I brought my mitts to my mouth—as if to warm them, but in fact, to muffle the scream that threatened to burst from me.
It told its tale. I listened, transfixed by grief and compassion that any human's heart would be moved to give. The creature had no thought to suppress its expressions of affection, pity, grief, fury, or despair, as a man might, and it impressed upon me a sensation of almost paternal sympathy. The furrows of its twisted visage writhed with every hellish agony, and shone with every sublime hope.
"And now, judge," the creature said, after much time had passed, and the bite of cold was sharp against every extremity of my body. "Will you permit me, wretch that I am, to extract that which is due? Or will you, against all reason, against all justices to which you claim adherence, doom yourself and your crew on the behalf of a venal, selfish man? Am I to be denied my justice?"
"I am yet uncertain," I said after some consideration. "Is there nothing else that can be done? No other recourse, no agreement to be reached?"
"I seek the torment of my creator—would that he could feel one ten thousandth of the agonies I have suffered. Death is a kindness that, if he is unable to grant to me, I intend to deny him in turn. What compromise you might see in your own mortal wisdom, I shall willingly hear."
At length, I labored to convince it to cease the violent pursuit. I reasoned that perhaps its wants could be satisfied by collaboration, better and more humanely than by this fruitless conflict. After all, in confining Frankenstein to these wastes, the creature rather denied him any instrument or tool of modern invention that might otherwise grant it the peace of death it sought. Greater tools of destruction than dynamite existed, in the civilized centers of the world.
My reason—and perhaps a greater part the dignity with which I delivered it—convinced it of my course. And so I shouted up to my men that the ladder should be lowered again, which they did with much reluctance. The creature, in its enormity, was obliged to stoop as it entered my quarters, and Frankenstein cringed at the shadow that loomed through my door, shouting:
"Good God man, what has compelled you to allow such abomination entrance? Have you lost your senses?! Now surely, you have doomed us all!"
"Do you not savor the vision of that which you have labored for, my creator? Did you not select my features as beautiful?" The creature's face contorted in rage like the wounded animal; the teeth curled back in a horrid simulacrum of smile, which resembled nothing so much as the snarling mouth of a wolf. It looked as if it might betray its oath, and take up Frankenstein by the shirt and dash his skull against the wall as a hound does a rat.
"Begone! Relieve me from the sight of your detested form.”
“Thus I relieve thee, my creator,” it said, and placed one gargantuan, varicose hand before Frankenstein's eyes, as if to gently shut the eyes of the deceased. The gesture reminded me instantly of my little nephew, your son, who, having been caught with some little dainty from which he had been forbidden, stuffs it entire in his mouth and declares that he does not know where it might have gone. The act, placed in that of such monstrous frame, was at once confoundingly endearing and uncanny.
"Begone!" Frankenstein cried again, and flung the hand away, flinching.
"Shut your eyes against me, if I am so unbearable. Still you will hear me—or shall you condemn me forever, forever ignorant? The Captain has interceded on your behalf to entreat you as I always shall: Help me. Give me some consolation. You have made my heart; whyfore have you built it to be broken? Why, in all of existence, am I cursed to roam this world desolate and deprived of all gentle kindness, of all companionship? I am as a son to you, yet you have no fatherly duty or care, even for the dispatch that in God's eyes is more abhorrent, that sin of self-destruction. The Seventh Circle of Hell would be welcome comfort; there at least, I would find companions in forms twisted and agonized as I."
"If you wish for death, then fling yourself into that pit of fire and leave the world the better! I regret having ever formed you—would that I had cut off my own hands before moulding your form."
"I have said before, I cannot! The gates of Hell are barred to me as Heaven is, and I cannot even seek the sleep of total obliteration. I alone on this Earth may speak to my creator without the interpretations of prayers and signs; my words have no need of wings to reach the ears of Heaven. But thus I am answered not by the faultless grace of God, but the base and filthy corruption of Man, rotten with prejudice and stained with blasphemous pretensions. Still, though my prayers go answered by curses in kind, I beg of thee: destroy me. Abandon me not to misery."
"It is not possible," my friend said with a harshness I would not have thought his voice was capable of. Oh, how had I ever found that sound beautiful?"I cannot in my current condition contrive any means by which you can find the peace you seek."
"Are you not Victor Frankenstein? Have you not done the impossible, in full sight and spite of God?"
"I have done the impossible! I have shown that what God can wield, so too can man! With discipline, with application, nothing was to remain beyond my reach! I have been a God!—your God! But how has my benevolence been met with ungrateful insolence! I tried to teach you! Teach you, and this is my reward! I tried to enlighten you to the world of man, but you bleated like a mindless sheep—to madness! You wrenched the life from me, I had to escape! And still, you were not content to have ruined me as I was; you have blasted all my hopes and ambitions to smithereens, selfish, stupid thing, and even now you gawp at me like a dog begging for the teet—even now you would beg a solution for which I am not responsible."
Unrecognizable was Frankenstein to my eyes! I had seen in him—hoped for, rather than was given—a friend of my heart, that would know and understand what it was to pursue greatness, to every sacrifice necessary! Instead I saw how callous, how unfeeling he was, to his own creation, the child of his hands. I thought then of the corpses that lay on the ice below, and the others we had left in the waters behind, and my own cold indifference to the destruction in my wake.
"'Not responsible'," the monster echoed. Its face had sagged into despair as it saw its satisfaction slipping from its grasp. "'Not responsible'—" it said again, and this repetition enraged Frankenstein to a new height of fevered anger; he levered himself up as if to throw his body against the creature, only to fall heavily to the ground, unsupported by the crutches by his bedside. He cried out in pain and here, his manner shifted entirely. The strength lent to him by fury flagged into exhausted surrender, as his degraded condition demanded. He looked up at the creature, and I could see his expression sag into a haggard supplication.
"I lay here on the verge of my own destruction. I have done what I can for you, my son. Will you not take pity on me, these last breaths? Say my name, like you did in the beginning. When it meant the world to you."
I saw on the face of that creature such a flurry of emotions that would bewilder any ancient sage, before it crouched to the ground, and with no more effort than lifting a small bundle of kindling, it clutched its creator to its chest and laid him gently once more on the cot, like a father setting his sickly child to a bed from which he knew it would never rise. Frankenstein's weak hand remained lifted, and the creature took it in its own, looking at his diminutive shape in its titanic grasp. I thought for one mountainous moment that it would submit to the longing of its heart, to accept that affection that thusfar in the whole of its existence had been denied to it.
"Oh, Victor," it said, and Frankenstein's expression curled weakly into an expression of relief that in my heart I deemed unwholesome; it seemed gentle and sweet, but in it the devil lay. "One final gift you have unknowingly bestowed. Oh, Frankenstein, my father, your obsessions have harmed all who might have claimed your affection. You flail like a child who, having struck his brother with it, rages at the confiscation of its toy, and then weeps at the injustice. Thank you, creator, for through you I am confronted by my own childish, impotent rage, demonstrated as your final lesson for my improvement. I recognize in you my own infantile anger of a child in want of its parent. As oak from oak doth spring, so I am sprung from thee; from your stunted selfishness, so grows my own. Still also, I may grow beyond that root that fathered me. Since first I observed myself through the eyes of Man, I have held myself in abhorrence; an abomination, a wretch. I now would choose the abomination of my form to the fairness of your own face, and the gentle disposition of my heart to the conceit of yours. Thus, I thank thee, for making me so."
My once-friend's face furrowed in confusion as he tried to understand. The creature said more.
"Father, you have cursed me to live forever. Thus, through me, through my forgiveness, you wish a kind of immortality, selfish to your own glory. I know this, as Adam knew the poison of death when he first beheld the cursed fruit of Eden in Eve's proffered hand. And as Adam, I shall eat of that fruit. I shall not deny thee; I forgive thee not for the sake of your own contrition—you have none that I can see—but my own grace. I forgive thee unasked, father, for thine sins against me. I forgive thee, from the love in my heart for you, in part gratitude, but in greater part pity."
Frankenstein's expression twisted like the viper, and with a final venom, on his final breath, he hissed:
"Keep it."
And thus the light of Victor Frankenstein faded from this world.
I stepped from my quarters and soothed my crew as they stirred uneasily, preparing to grapple once more the creature.
I informed them of Frankenstein's passing and assured them that he had succumbed to the injuries sustained not only from the night before, but from the prolonged exposure and harsh conditions he had endured.
No sooner had I made this pronouncement, then a cry rose from my quarters, the agonized howl of the wretch in the throes of bitter grief. So terrible was the sound that even I, who now understood the shadows of its heart, felt a wrenching fear and sharp and painful sympathy.
After a time, I ventured to open the doors and peer once more into the room that was my friend's death-chamber. The monster clutched at Frankenstein's wrinkled shirt in an agony of mourning, and its body shook with sobs it did not attempt to suppress. Upon hearing me enter, it lifted its head only to gaze again at the cold face of its creator.
"I am in confusion," it said, its voice a clamor of tears. "I grieve him for whom injury was our shared language. Never were words exchanged when blows of pain or cruelty would suffice. But here, I find I cannot hate him. Or rather find that hating him is another fetter by which I can hate myself and my own shape, formed by his hand. I cannot separate our two beings completely, and now he who is part myself is gone from this world, where I cannot follow. What now lies before me? How am I to go forth, ever shrinking before the burning witness of others, never warmed by the light of the sun, or serenaded by the sweet music of brotherhood and companionship? Am I doomed to creep in shadows, for fear of being exposed to the hatred and abhorrence of Man? What life is this that I see before me, stretching out barren and cold as these icy wastes?"
To this, I was moved again to give what little comfort I could.
"I can't say that your life—if life you say you have—won't be lonely and harsh. Indeed, you have already weathered winters of frost and loneliness before which I would have crumbled. You have already endured that which the species of man would call unendurable. But there are corners of this world where even men are rejected by the greater world, and there you might find the friendship you seek."
I explained to the wretch that there were colonies of doomed lepers and other modern sanitariums, where the ill might convalesce, and whose caretakers fear their contagion or abuse their charges. There, it might find siblings of its heart, whose malady of the body or brain have driven them to such desperation that they would not spurn the aid of such a creature. It seemed comforted by this idea, and I could see it form a pearl of hope as it said:
"I have been merciful to my own hurt. Humanity has greeted me with brutality, and I have answered it in kind. It is said that every rose must have its thorn, but is not the reverse also true? Does not every thorn collar the rose? Within my short life, I have experienced the supreme cruelty of Man, but likewise have witnessed the sublime kindness of which humanity, above every animal, is most capable. The kindness of Elizabeth, mother of my spirit. The wisdom of Monsieur DeLacy, patron of my mind. If the world can harbor these gentle people, may my own heart not also make space for mercy upon the species of Man? I shall follow the direction of your own kindness, Captain, with my greatest gratitude. But what of you? When the ice breaks, where shall your path lead?
"My men have requested that we return to Archangel."
"Make it so! If the lessons of this poor wretch before us be not wasted, do not pursue senseless glory! Or if you do, abandon that title of 'human' and name yourself 'hubris', and bear ever more the flag that is the folly of ambition. You stand on the ledge of obliteration, for no purpose but your own pride. Turn back! Life, although it may only be an accumulation of anguish, is dear! Defend it! Go, and cast what brief light you may, to brighten this world, such that a thousand candles might shine as dawn on tears of dew! God has given you Ambition; turn it to illuminate the heavens, not in jealous imitation of His own First Labor, but in exaltation and highest praise, so that the warmth of your love might be a heaven on Earth. "
Its words spoke to the wisdom of my own heart. I had recognized in Frankenstein my own doomed ambition. I had abandoned all friendship and every advantage of station and experience, even the advantage of your own sweet company, the human warmth of my nieces and nephews, the opportunity to witness their growth and becoming, all for the emptiness of this polar ice and the potential enshrinement of history. What use is the joy of celebration to a dead man? What joy has he of the laurels thoseafter place on his gravestone? And all this, presupposing a success that was by no means determinate.
With these thoughts storming my frame, I watched the creature stood and, stooping to kiss its creator's cold cheek once more and anoint him with its tears, turned at last away from its first hope. We proceeded to the doors, where I went before and warned my crew to let it depart in peace. Copper hues of sunlight cast all in bright glow as the Sun turned to its own rest, the dusk of a day most terrible and wondrous. We scarce moved to breathe, absorbing those last drops of light until at last it was extinguished into watery death.
We lowered once more the ladder, and the creature set its feet again on solid ice. With a gargantuan strength I could never have imagined possible, it freed our vessel from frigid folly and clambered onto a raft of ice that survived the shattering. I gave command for the men to bring us about with our great heaving steam engines, and begin our journey South.
And the creature; He was soon borne away by the waves and lost in darkness and distance
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Lines I stole/that inspired certain feelings in this fic:
"The sea turned the color of sky turned the color of sea turned the color of ice." - Punch Brothers/Josh Ritter - Another New World
(Yes I stole the title and a full line from a song, this is Fanfiction. Yes I have a Frankenstein playlist, don't you? https://open.spotify.com/playlist/5ouf6kQmiLiqlI8gRsC4Lp?si=4edbcd81b34d4715 )
"I am no tyrant. I have been merciful to my own hurt." - Euripides - Medea
"You can make honey in your mouth, like the brown bee—when it serves your purpose." - Euripides - Medea
"The devil might cite scripture for his purpose." - Shakespeare - Merchant of Venice
"And all our yesterdays have lighted fools the way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!" - Shakespeare - Macbeth
"Did I request thee, Maker, from my clay to mould me Man?" - Milton - Paradise Lost
"Life, although it may only be an accumulation of anguish, is dear to me, and I will defend it." - Mary Shelley - Frankenstein
"The guilty are allowed, by human laws, bloody as they may be, to speak in their own defence before they are condemned. Listen to me, Frankenstein. You accuse me of murder; and yet you would, with a satisfied conscience, destroy your own creature. Oh, praise the eternal justice of man!" - Mary Shelley - Frankenstein
"Begone! relieve me from the sight of your detested form.”
“Thus I relieve thee, my creator,” he said, and placed his hated hands before my eyes, which I flung from me with violence; “thus I take from thee a sight which you abhor. Still thou canst listen to me, and grant me thy compassion. By the virtues that I once possessed, I demand this from you." - Mary Shelley - Frankenstein
"He was soon borne away by the waves and lost in darkness and distance." - Mary Shelley - Frankenstein
"Now I know how it feels to be God!" - Frankenstein (1931)
"The harpy's as real as you are, and just as immortal. And she was just as easy to catch, if you want to know."
"Do not boast, old woman. Your death sits in that cage, and she hears you."
"Oh she'll kill me one day or another. But she will remember forever that I caught her, and I held her prisoner. So there's my immortality, hey?" - Last Unicorn (1982)
"You are my daaaad! Boogie woogie woogie!" https://youtube.com/shorts/BsuY9lHxg88
"For PRESTIGE???! PEOPLE CARE ABOUT YOU." - Brennan Lee Mulligan - Magical Misfits
"We imagine what would make us feel better and create what I call a healing fantasy—a hopeful story about what will make us truly happy one day... We believe that if we keep at it long enough, we will eventually get people to change. We might think our emotional loneliness will finally be healed by a partner who always thinks of our needs first or a friend who never lets us down. Often these unconscious fantasies are quite self-defeating." - Gibson - Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents
This entire channel Books'n'Cats. This one is on the themes of racial/gender prejudice in Mary Shelley's original work. https://youtu.be/Qa6144Ctl0E