End of Book Review Questions: Frankenstein

What were your thoughts and reflections on this chapter and the death of Elizabeth?

For most of chapter 23, I (and I assume many other viewers) believed that Victor was going to be the one killed, and I felt as if Mary Shelley definitely tricked me when Elizabeth was killed instead. While Victor worried about his encounter with the monster, the actual death of Elizabeth was very anticlimactic and Shelley didn't drag it out unlike deaths in other books. It was also very shocking when Alphonse died of natural causes when there was no real mention of his health issues or clues foreshadowing his death in the previous chapters. 

In what ways might the Creature & Victor be considered “doubles” for each other?

The creature and Victor can be considered "doubles" for each other as both of them are incredibly lonely and were both linked to Walton. Both did not have a lot of friends or much of a social life. Both characters kept themselves isolated in different periods of time and wanted to stay away from others in order to work and learn (Victor learned about science, the creature learned about society). 

In the final chapters, Victor and the creature are involved in a mad contest of revenge. Record at least four statements made by each character that reveal his motives, feelings, or state of mind. Note the chapter number after each statement.

Victor

• All was again silent, but his words rang in my ears. I burned with rage to pursue the murderer of my peace and precipitate him into the ocean. I walked up and down my room hastily and perturbed, while my imagination conjured up a thousand images to torment and sting me. Why had I not followed him and closed with him in mortal strife? But I had suffered him to depart, and he had directed his course towards the mainland. I shuddered to think who might be the next victim sacrificed to his insatiate revenge. And then I thought again of his words -- "I WILL BE WITH YOU ON YOUR WEDDING-NIGHT." That, then, was the period fixed for the fulfillment of my destiny. In that hour I should die and at once satisfy and extinguish his malice. The prospect did not move me to fear; yet when I thought of my beloved Elizabeth, of her tears and endless sorrow, when she should find her lover so barbarously snatched from her, tears, the first I had shed for many months, streamed from my eyes, and I resolved not to fall before my enemy without a bitter struggle. (Chapter 20)
• This letter revived in my memory what I had before forgotten, the threat of the fiend--"I WILL BE WITH YOU ON YOUR WEDDING-NIGHT!" Such was my sentence, and on that night would the daemon employ every art to destroy me and tear me from the glimpse of happiness which promised partly to console my sufferings. On that night he had determined to consummate his crimes by my death. Well, be it so; a deadly struggle would then assuredly take place, in which if he were victorious I should be at peace and his power over me be at an end. If he were vanquished, I should be a free man. Alas! What freedom? Such as the peasant enjoys when his family have been massacred before his eyes, his cottage burnt, his lands laid waste, and he is turned adrift, homeless, penniless, and alone, but free. Such would be my liberty except that in my Elizabeth I possessed a treasure, alas, balanced by those horrors of remorse and guilt which would pursue me until death. (Chapter 22)
• As time passed away I became more calm; misery had her dwelling in my heart, but I no longer talked in the same incoherent manner of my own crimes; sufficient for me was the consciousness of them. By the utmost self-violence I curbed the imperious voice of wretchedness, which sometimes desired to declare itself to the whole world, and my manners were calmer and more composed than they had ever been since my journey to the sea of ice. (Chapter 22)
• "I was hurried away by fury; revenge alone endowed me with strength and composure; it modeled my feelings, and allowed me to be calculating and calm, at periods when otherwise delirium or death would have my portion." (Chapter 24) 

The Creature

• Farewell! I leave you, and in you the last of human kind whom these eyes will ever behold. Farewell, Frankenstein! If thou wert yet alive, and yet cherished a desire of revenge against me, it would be better satiated in my life than in my destruction. But it was not so; thou didst seek my extinction that I might not cause greater wretchedness; and if yet, in some mode unknown to me, thou hast not ceased to think and feel, thou wouldst not desire against me a vengeance greater than that which I feel. Blasted as thou wert, my agony was still superior to thine; for the bitter sting of remorse will not cease to rankle in my wounds until death shall close them for ever. (Chapter 24)
• 'Frankenstein! you belong then to my enemy--to him towards whom I have sworn eternal revenge; you shall be my first victim." (Chapter 16)
• "For the first time the feelings of revenge and hatred filled my bosom, and I did not strive to control them, but allowing myself to be borne away by the stream, I bent my mind towards injury and death." (Chapter 16)
• “I, like the arch-fiend, bore a hell within me, and finding myself unsympathized with, wished to tear up the tree’s, spread havoc and destruction around me, and then to have sat down and enjoyed the ruin.” (Chapter 16)