FRANKENSTEIN TIME WITH ALLIE: Chapter 23 and 24 Summary and Analysis

The monster killing Elizabeth

CHAPTER 23

A storm rolls in after they arrive at the cottage.  Victor, armed with a pistol and terrified that the monster will attack at any moment, sends Elizabeth to bed for her own safety.  But as he searches the house, he hears a scream.  Elizabeth has been murdered.  While huddled over her lifeless body, Victor sees the monster at the window.  He fires at it, but misses.  Victor assumed the monster would attack him, not realizing that the monster wanted revenge by subjecting him to the same horror to which he subjected it: isolation.  This mistake resulted in Elizabeth’s death.  Victor rushes back to Geneva.  The news of Elizabeth’s death overwhelms his father, who dies a few days later.  Now the monster’s revenge is complete: Victor is alone (besides Ernest).  Victor goes mad for several months and is kept in a cell.  When he regains his senses he tells his entire story to a local magistrate, hoping to enact justice on the monster.  The magistrate listens but doesn’t entirely believe Victor and, anyway, considers tracking down the monster impossible.  Victor resolves to seek his revenge on his own.  Finally, Victor tells his secret.  But it’s too late.  Now he faces the same predicament as the monster: rejected by humankind, he must seek revenge on his own.  He curses the magistrate and all of humanity.  “Man,” he cries, “how ignorant art thou in thy pride of wisdom!”  Victor’s curse is similar to the monster’s curse of him.  They are now essentially the same.

Victor trekking the monster in the icy North

 CHAPTER 24

Victor decides to leave Geneva forever.  While visiting the graves of his family he swears revenge, and hears the monster’s voice calling him a “miserable wretch.”  The monster’s revenge is successful; now Victor suffers isolation as it does.  For months, Victor tracks the monster northward into the frigid Arctic regions, led by clues and taunting notes the monster leaves behind. Victor chases the monster onto the frozen ocean with sleds and dogs, and comes within a mile of the monster’s own sled, but then the ice breaks up beneath Victor’s sled.  The barren arctic is a perfect symbol of isolation and the power of nature. A man in this tundra is utterly alone and entirely at the mercy of nature.  This is the point at which Walton’s ship rescued him.  The narrative comes to the present.  Victor, knowing he’s dying, begs Walton to take vengeance on the monster if he should happen to see it.  Victor has finally told his story and secret to a sympathetic audience.  But is there any difference between Victor and the monster but appearance?