Frankenstein - Chapter 20

Overall: Well I didn’t expect that. An interesting introduction to the final stretch

I guess it was inevitable in some ways that Vic would have another encounter with Adam on the island. Although, now that I’m reading it, I have to wonder what the purpose of the whole journey to the island was. Nothing about Vic’s revelation and decision here came from his trip to the British isles, it’s actually a lot of the same things he had been saying. Just a thought.

One night while he’s working on constructing Eve, he notices that Adam is watching him and, deciding that he can’t go and inflict another one of these creatures onto the world, he destroys all of his work right in front of Adam.

While in some ways his reasoning is altruistic, it’s one of those things where I again must question the logistics. Vic is worried that his creations might breed, and specifically that their children, as a race, might become an enemy to society. I’m going to ignore the fact that the creations probably wouldn’t be able to breed, given that they’re made of cadaver flesh, as the book’s already kind of waved this sort of thing away on Vic’s account once. Also I’m not going to fault Shelley for a misunderstanding of genetics, so what’s left to critique? Well… I mean... Vic, some women can’t have children. Hell, some women don’t have a uterus, some have their fallopian tubes blocked, some may not have ovaries. This isn’t an insurmountable problem when you’re constructing this being piece by piece.

This said, I do like Vic’s sudden fridge moments about this whole process. What if this second creature thinks the first one is ugly? What if she prefers humans? What if she doesn’t want anything to do with romance or this whole ‘travel to South America’ plan? They seem like such obvious questions and I’m actually kind of surprised Vic tore himself away from his dramatics to consider these much more apparent scenarios.

After Vic destroys his work, Adam shows up and begins barking threats at Vic again. Vic is resolute though, and Adam swears to make Victor’s life miserable. He tells Vic that he’ll see him on his wedding night. Somehow Vic doesn’t realize what he’s talking about until well after Adam has left. Even then, Vic (unsurprisingly) thinks that Adam specifically means to kill him on his wedding night. He doesn’t really consider that Elizabeth might not be safe. Oh Vic… some things never change.

Sailing back to (I think we’re still in Scotland) where he’s met by a crowd of upset Irish people. Are we in Ireland now? The crowd of folks says that there’s been a murder and they suspect Victor of it. Taking him to the magistrate, Vic tells the good captain that he didn’t expect the horror to come. It’s Clerval, isn’t it?