Frankenstein's Monster

Captain Robert Walton. Private log
.

Behind me, stiffened with frost, lie the remains of Victor Frankenstein
.

It is so cold I expect ice and not ink from my pen. Hoar encrusts the inside of the porthole, icicles drop from the hinge, and over this page my breath hangs like a cloud. Should I turn, I might find even the corpse in my bed to be dusted wholly white
.

I must write quickly, for my log may be all that survives me—but—O Margaret! How can I describe what has happened without appearing to be mad?

I said I would keep a true record for you of all events occurring during our separation. You imposed on me exile; I would have turned that exile into an occasion of grace. If I had succeeded in discovering the North Pole, I would have enlarged man’s knowledge of our Lord’s sovereign majesty—and you would have welcomed me home; for could I have been thus favored as God’s servant unless He also deemed me worthy of forgiveness?

The answer is no. Now I have been exiled by God as well
.

My hand trembles with more than cold, and these words, which only you have the power to comprehend, condemn me with their wavering letters and great blots of ink
.

Some weeks ago, I rescued a man from the ice. Though half-dead, he should not have been alive at all. Resolve had fed him the scalding food of obsession, giving him a fiery strength to survive
.

He said his name was Victor Frankenstein
.

He said he had discovered the secret of creation
.

Ever since I rescued that poor man, he told me over and over a story both fantastic and profane about a huge creature made by his own hands, which then rose up against him and destroyed all he loved. Realizing his folly, Frankenstein pursued the thing till he had tracked it to these desolate regions
.

His words were those of a man driven mad by the elements, for, in truth, who could undertake what he had claimed, much less imagine an act of such presumption? Yet, despite his madness, there was between us a wild affinity that pulled at me as the North pulls at the needle and that made me listen day after day as he unfolded his tale. I finally understood that he was clearly the friend denied me all my life. You know how I have suffered in this regard, Margaret; how I’ve believed myself fated to solitude, alone but for you. Yet even knowing my anguish, you can only guess at my admiration for him and my hunger for his fellowship and love
.

Already I envisioned the pleasure of your meeting, already grew jealous of your too-generous affection for each other
.

But the evil that has isolated me still grips me in its jaws: my rescue came too late for Frankenstein to regain his health. The clear weather failed, and so did he. He died yesterday before dawn as the icy wind keened in mourning. I do believe the sweetest part of me died with him
.

It was strange to have found my twin in one whose desires were so blasphemous as to turn the natural into the unnatural. And then he died … I became afraid to look in the mirror. Whose face would I see reflected? If I pulled back the blanket from the corpse, whose face would be there?

I have not truly repented
.

Oh, Margaret, dare I put such thoughts onto this page you may yet read?

Frankenstein’s last thoughts pursued his delusion to the end
.

“Must I die,” he asked, “and my persecutor live? Tell me, Captain Walton, that he shall not in the end escape.”

I could not refuse comfort to one so disconsolate, and I said, thinking my words meaningless, “He will not.”

“You shall take up my burden? O swear it! Swear you shall take it up—for the sake of all men, for the sake of your dear sister, swear to me you shall hunt down the creature and destroy it.”

“I give you my word.”

He pressed my hand, then once more I was alone
.

I lost all count of time standing watch over him, until at last the crew grew fearful at my grief and sent two men to bring me above deck
.

Death followed me, matching my pace, tread for tread
.

Later, a noise drew me back to the cabin. Hanging over the corpse stood a manlike form, gigantic in stature, distorted in proportions. Its face was concealed by long locks of ragged black hair, and one vast palm was extended toward the body. When the creature heard me, it turned, and I saw its face. Never have I seen a vision of such appalling hideousness. Involuntarily I flinched and shut my eyes. Then, all at once, I remembered, dear Sister. All at once, I
believed.

Frankenstein, my dearest friend, had not lied. There truly lived a creature that had been created by man
.

“I am a wretch,” it said
.

Its voice was soft, lovely, and beguiling, which made it all
the more horrible to hear such evil words uttered by its black, scarred lips
.

“I have murdered the lovely and the helpless; I have strangled the innocent as they slept; I have grasped to death his throat who never injured me.” He turned back to his creator. “He, too, is my victim. I both pursued him and enticed him to follow until he fell into irremediable ruin. Now there he lies, white and cold and unmoving.”

“And finally free from your power to torment him!” I cried out
.

“Am I free from his? Like any man, I desire fellowship and love. He has cursed me to a lifetime of hatred.”

“Like any man?” I repeated. “Do you mock me? Do you mock
him?”

It tried to straighten but the small quarters prevented it from doing so
.

“Is it mockery? There is no place, no one, for me—here, or anywhere—as he surely must have known. Now he is dead who called me into being.”

Its expression grew decisive
.

“I, too, shall be no more, for where else can I rest but in the death I was born from? Mayhap my spirit will find the peace that my body never had.”

Having said this, it rushed past me and up to the deck, leapt from the ship, and landed on an ice raft that lay close to my vessel. It was soon borne away by the waves and lost in darkness and distance
.

Can a man change so quickly, Margaret? We are promised that, by grace, salvation can come in an instant; I already knew
condemnation could be as swift. Suddenly there was something at work in my soul that I did not understand
.

What did the creature’s existence mean? What did it mean to
me?
I had pledged my word to destroy what I thought did not exist—a pledge empty of all intent save to comfort my dear brother
.

Then I saw it, Margaret. Then I heard it speak
.

In a single moment, my empty pledge became a solemn vow. Naught else mattered but its fulfillment
.

I ordered the ship to change course away from the main passage to follow what I alone had seen. The creature had said it would destroy itself; it had said it would return to death. But what were lies to a murderer?

I had to
see
the vow fulfilled, Sister
.

I had to see the thing dead
.

Midmorning, as the passage ahead narrowed, the sails fell slack. No wind lifted the canvas, no cloud drifted by to be mirrored in the flat glassy water. The world was still, lifeless, and white, the only movement the subtle encroachment of ice both before and behind me, too slow to be seen, yet always present at the corner of my eye
.

I set a watch to climb the rigging, to line the rails, to peer out over the ice, searching—for what? For anything that should not be, I told them. For hours, for days, the crew watched in silence. Boards creaked though no one walked the deck; ropes slapped though no wind stirred. In the distance, cracking ice roared. The men leaned forward and stared, so still for so long, their clothes, their very beards grew thick with frost. Even their eyes seemed glazed as they stared unblinkingly
.

On the third day, on the third watch, all the crew cried out at once: in the near distance, a thin curl of smoke. Next to it stood a black blot against the white. It appeared all at once, as if our eyes had been enthralled until the thing wished to be seen
.

I slipped a hunting knife into my belt and ordered the dinghy into the water. Two men rowed me to the large floe. I bade them to return to the ship and then walked toward the smoke until I reached the end of the ice, where it broke off in sheer angles to the black waves beyond. There, at the very edge, the creature had made its camp
.

It sat amid a pile of strangely shaped, upward juts of ice, a king in a ceilingless cave, making its throne among stalagmites. Neither the sharpness nor the rawness of the ice seemed to bother it. Indeed, the fire that had attracted me burned several feet away—and the fuel that fed it was the thing’s outer garments. Clearly it had no need for warmth
.

With indifference, the creature watched me approach, regarding me with that visage so horrible I did not know how I might look on it and live
.

Priests are advised not to address the Devil when they mean to exorcise it. Why did I speak? Why did I listen? I should have leapt upon it at once and slit its throat
.

“You said you’d return to death.” My breath came hard and fast, my body spewing out the too-frigid air. “Instead, you still live. You could have disappeared. I would not have known. You could have gone to the very pole and stolen my only other treasure
—and I never would have known my loss.”

“Who are you?”

“Robert Walton, captain of the ship.”

“You’re angry.”

Its dispassion infuriated me
.

“You murdered my dearest friend. Now he is gone. And you still live!”

“I spoke in unexpected grief. He was my father.”

“Father?”

Ripping off my gloves, I pulled the knife from my belt and threw myself at it. It was like throwing myself against stone. At once it seized my throat and shook me. In its giant fist, I was as small as a child. I slashed wildly; my blade raked its neck. With its dreadful features drawn up in rage, it threw me to the ground, kicked my arm, and sent the knife skidding toward the water. I scrambled after it. What power would I have without my knife?