Important Quotations
“Did I request thee, Maker, from my clay
To mould me Man, did I solicit thee
From darkness to promote me?”
This quote describes the monster’s perspective on the world as an unwanted being hated by society.
The monster compares himself to a tragic figure, similar to Adam and Satan. The monster is shunned by
his creator although he strives to be good. He struggles to survive in a hostile world as an ugly creature
after being abandoned by Victor.
What may not be expected in a country of eternal light?
This quote from Walton’s first letter to his sister in England captures the theme of light as a symbol of
knowledge and discovery. Like Victor and his search for the creation of life, Walton travels as far north
as possible to discover places unknown and leaving a previously comfortable realm of knowledge. The
brevity of this line also symbolizes the idea of rationalists at the time Mary Shelley wrote the novel that
knowledge is purely good.
So much has been done, exclaimed the soul of Frankenstein—more, far more, will I achieve; treading in
the steps already marked, I will pioneer a new way, explore unknown powers, and unfold to the world
the deepest mysteries of creation.
Victor’s reference to himself in the third person reveals a level of fatalism such that he is driven by his
passion beyond the point of control. He has, in essence, lost sanity and hands his soul to fate. The
assertive quality of this statement foreshadows that Victor and his passion drives the experiment such
that he has not considered the negative consequences of such a feat.
I, the miserable and the abandoned, am an abortion, to be spurned at, and kicked, and trampled on.
The monster explains his feeling of abandon to Walton while he presides over Victor’s dead body. This
outbreak of self-pity and outrage by the monster as Walton listens reveals the suffering the monster has
underwent that motivated his crimes. He questions the injustice in the world as he is treated unfairly by
society based on his appearance. The monster compares himself to an abortion: the monster is
unwanted life, a creature abandoned and shunned by his creator.