Frankenstein - Chapter 15

Well that was heartbreaking.

I feel in some ways like this is two chapters that were sort of jammed together. The first half is more akin to the previous chapters describing Adam’s journey and burgeoning consciousness/education. While the latter half actually stings a bit more because it doesn’t even get a whole chapter to itself.

Adam is walking one day when he finds several books: Plutarch’s Lives, Goethe’s The Sorrows of Young Werther, and Paradise Lost. Luckily they are in French (the De Lacey family speaks French it turns out, not German), and Adam sets about reading them. While reading he begins to develop a sort of sense of identification with and apart from humankind. In Werther, he seems fond for the main character, but can’t quite comprehend all of his struggles. Similarly, he comes to admire certain people from Plutarch over others. He favors more pacifistic historical figures than martial heroes like Romulus. It’s around this time that I remembered reading that Shelley had experimented with vegetarianism, and that Adam also has never eaten meat. Finally, he reads Milton and finds himself at once identifying with Adam and Satan. Like Adam, he figures, he is the first of his kind and somewhat alone in a strange world. However, unlike Adam, he does not have anyone he can turn to for advice or help. Instead, he feels envy for humans like Satan does for God. Later on, he discovers one of Vic’s journals that was in an article of clothing that Adam had managed to take with him. In it, Victor records the months leading up to his creating Adam.

Wow, Adam really calls Victor out here and it’s pretty wonderful. He is angry at Victor for creating a being if he was only going to abandon it for being ugly. I hope Vic takes some of this to heart. After all, it isn’t Adam’s fault by any means that he’s not living up to human beauty standards. Something tells me Vic’s going to be too stuck in his own feelings about this too, though.

From here, Adam decides one day that he’s going to go try to introduce himself to the De Lacey’s. Specifically, he’s going to wait until Safie, Felix, and Agatha have gone one day so that he can talk to M. De Lacey, who, being blind, is less likely to react negatively upon seeing him.

Adam begins speaking to De Lacey and it’s so sad already. He’s evasive about the “friends” he has nearby, and is unable to particularly communicate the entirety of his situation without letting on that he isn’t human. Just when he bursts into a fit of emotion, pleading for De Lacey to take him in, the three younger members of the house burst in.

From here it’s just sadness again. Agatha faints, Safie runs off, and Felix begins to immediately beat Adam into submission. Adam, although he knows he’s stronger than Felix, just takes it before running away back to his hovel. He was so close (assuming De Lacey continued to just be an awesome person), and then it was snatched away with the same amount of ceremony as every other encounter he’s had with people.